The Architect, Chester

Housed in an extremely agreeable Georgian building this is, as mentioned, a Brunning & Price outlet. A multi room setup, slightly a maze, the main counter is in the middle from the side entrance, eight pulls here with a selection of mostly local stuff with two coming soons, the house beer isn’t labelled as to who is the source brewery only saying 47 beer miles away. The kegs on three T-Bars are tucked away almost below eyeline apart from a double with water! Decor has been adequately described before but just to add, the main room is split level with seating at chairs and tables in the lower section, higher seating on the servery level, a large bookcase split by a fireplace dominates the lower section back wall. Blackboards above the counter describe the cask beers with strength and “beer miles” which is standard B&P practice AFAIK. There’s a big outside seating area covered by canvas. Handy for the racecourse.

Official site of The Architect - www.brunningandprice.co.uk

Official site of The Architect - www.brunningandprice.co.uk

The Architect is a Brunning & Price pub just outside Chester city centre with substantial grounds overlooking the racecourse. We'd deliberately timed our Saturday visit on a non-racing weekend, which seems to be every other weekend during the summer. Nevertheless, this place was absolutely packed out on a Saturday afternoon. It felt like the races were on. Lord knows what it would be like with the horse racing actually taking place. Our group had swelled to 10 by this point in the day. Despite it being busy both inside and out, we managed to grab a table. The interior is typical Brunning & Price, with several sections, lots of nice soft furnishings, a focus on food but not neglecting beer, with plenty of staff on hand. Outdoors, there is a separate bar serving draught products, a marquee and a garden stretching down towards the racecourse with plenty of space for kids to run around. On the bar, the regular cask ale is Brightside Brunning & Price Original. Guests were Mobberley XPA, Peerless Triple Blond, Beartown Otso, Moorhouse's Pride of Pendle, Facer's Abbey Red & Weetwood Eastgate. The cider was Lilley's Tropical. Craft beers were Camden Pale & Eazy, Siren Lumina & Wild Horse Nokota. My Abbey Red was probably the beer in the worst condition of the day. It was certainly on the cloudy side. Despite being busy, I wonder if they're stocking too many cask ales. Unlike their Old Harkers Arms near the railway station, the clientele here don't seem to favour cask. I liked the impressive building, but it was simply too busy to enjoy and with beer quality lacking, I don't think it is worth making the diversion to this place.

Surprised to find I haven't already reviewed the Architect, as I have visited a handful of times over recent years. This is a fairly upmarket pub with a focus on food and several side rooms are laid out for dining with the bar area being more informal. There is also a private dining room upstairs. At the bar are eight hand pulls offering several beers that could be considered to be reasonably mainstream, but there was also a Joules beer, possibly one by Neptune (the logo looked familiar) and Mobberley Brewhouse. There also appeared to be a couple of craft keg options, from Magic Rock and Tiny Rebel. In addition there is a fridge full of craft cans and a big chalk board listing them all. A further four hand pulls were spotted on a small section of bar but these had two duplicated from the main bank and two were unclipped. My Mobberley Brewhouse Dark Winter (2019 Edition) set me back £2 for a half and was a pretty good stout. As has been mentioned, there is a massive beer garden and this is a big draw in the warmer months as I can't think of anywhere else in the city centre with a beer garden on this kind of scale.

A nice modern pub for a change. Smack bang opposite the racecourse so obviously on race days it will be packed with boring horsey bores. That said on other days its not too bad if a bit snobby. Several real ales available and a nice garden area that's very sunny on summer days.