If I may, I’d like to briefly take you back to the heady days of 2019, a time of beer festivals, pubs, bars and actual human contact..
As you may know, towards the end of 2019 we were brewing to full capacity in our site in Sandycroft, North Wales. We had just taken part in a month long session of meet the brewer events and tap takeovers for our 3rd birthday celebrations and some internal discussions were being had with regards to increasing our capacity.

We considered a number of options, including getting a bigger FV (and putting it.. somewhere) and even looking for an additional unit in the same area to turn into a dedicated fermentation space.

In the background of all this discussion, the prospect of moving the brewery was always light-heartedly discussed, we’d end conversations discussing what we’d want in our ideal situation with “well, when we move sites” and stick it all on our imaginary wish list.

Then Covid and lockdown happened, pretty much causing us to spin our wheels in place for the best part of 12 months. We still wanted to expand, but we had to time it right so we were ready to go when restrictions were eased.

While we were waiting out 2020 (and canning and mini kegging as much beer as humanly possible) we became increasingly aware that the lease on our Sandycroft site was due to expire in February 2021. As a result, talks of moving the brewery quickly intensified and ideas and budgets very rapidly firmed up.

We decided that we were going to move the brewery.

I won’t go into all the details of viewing locations, meeting with companies and physically moving a brewery during lockdown (that’s a blog for another time, although let me assure you that everyone we encountered or worked with conducted themselves in a responsible, Covid safe manner) but as I write this towards the end of January we are putting the finishing touches on our brand new site, with the intention of resuming brewing operations within the next few days.

So what about the site? Well, first off here is a (work in progress) picture..

So the new site, after an extensive search, we found a fantastic, 3000 sq ft (that’s over 4 times the size of our old site) unit in the Brasenose Road industrial estate. We’re situated in between Bank Hall and Bootle Oriel Road Merseyrail stations, with Oriel Road being about a five minute walk. Most importantly, remember that hypothetical list we talked about before? We got every single thing on there that we wanted, a professional quality brew floor, space for a dedicated office and staff kitchen, single story storage space (no more carrying bags of grain upstairs) and, most excitingly, space to hold tap room events and open sessions so all you lovely people can come and see the place (when lockdown restrictions allow obviously).

It goes without saying that all of us here at Top Rope are beyond excited to get to work in our new site and bring you even more, even better beer as we move forward. We’re delighted to be back in the Liverpool area (although we won’t forget about our North Wales customers and community, don’t you worry) and we’re really looking forward to (hopefully) a fantastic 2021.

See you in the pub (or perhaps even our taproom) somewhere down the line.

Ben xx