The Brass Balance (JD Wetherspoon), Birkenhead

This appears to take up the ground floor of an old factory. Inside it's a modern looking square room with a curved bar to the right. It was alarmingly quiet on my Saturday afternoon visit. I always look at the price of the Steak Club to gauge how well a JDW is doing and this one at £5.99 is rock bottom. The bar has two sets of five hand pumps with the first having one unused as it lacked a handle, Titanic Nine Tenths Below, Coach House Farriers, Banks's Alpha 5 IPA and Dunscar Best. The second had Abbot and duplicates of the four other beers. I went for the Titanic beer which tasted like it was going sour. If that was the case it's a stunning achievement for a 5.9% ABV beer and means it's probably been on for well over a week rather than the recommended three days. This one certainly seems to divide opinions. I have to admit I found it pretty poor.

One of the most badly managed JDWs I've ever been in. Contrary to the reviews below the staff showed a complete lack of interest in the fact that people were waiting to be served. Once one bloke decided to finish chatting and came over to serve us he managed to forget to bring over Ms CAMRA's drink and charged us the wrong price. We watched the rest of the staff after sitting down, most appeared to be totally useless, the one exception being the guy who was delivering food and collecting glasses. He was working up a sweat whilst the other 3 were lounging around. All the guest beer clips were turned round and the only 3 ales available were Ruddles, Doom Bar & Abbott. To be fair my Doom Bar was in good nick though. Not very good at all.

A strange Wetherspoons in that the service is reasonably good.

Nice Weatherspoons good friendly staff nice beer garden had a good pint of Abbot ale

This Spoons had a couple of good ales on offer on our visit. We were visiting the Stork a few minutes walk from here so you couldn't really miss this one out. I went for the L1 Brewery Mersey Mist and L1 Three Graces. The pub also hosts a very large beer garden to the rear.