Liverpool ~ and Higsons relaunched yet again

Higsons sign on a building next to the
Ship & Mitre (reflected in the marble).

I met my friends Carol and Ken from Wigan in Liverpool yesterday.  Beginning in the Ship and Mitre, I had St David's Ale (4.5%).  I don't remember the brewery, but it wasn't Brains who brew a beer of that name.  For some reason I expected a pale beer, but it was dark and tasted like a good mild rather than a stout.  We next went to the Vernon and Rigby's but stayed only for one in each pub as both were noisy with the football; Everton were apparently playing.  We finished in the Lion Tavern where Brewdog Trashy Blonde was on - an extremely bitter beer that Sean who runs the pub said was too much for some customers, but I liked it.  I wonder whether it would have seemed quite so bitter 25-30 years ago, when beers were more likely to be bitter than now.

I was asked whether I'd had the new Higsons which was launched at the Liverpool beer festival.  I haven't, but I'll keep an eye out for it.  It is brewed by Liverpool Organic, whose excellent 24 Carat Gold I had in the Guest House recently; I wrote about 18 months ago that they were trying to reproduce Higsons.  It is the second time that a brewer has tried to relaunch this long lost Liverpool beer, one of Whitbread's casualties.  There's nothing about Higsons on the Liverpool Organic website, which isn't surprising as brewery websites are often incomplete and out of date.