We Are Between — Community and Togetherness at The Little Taproom on Aigburth Road, Liverpool
Once again, I’m pacing outside The Little Taproom on Aigburth Road on the phone to my family, trying to wrap up a conversation. Through the window, one half of the husband and wife owner duo, Si Perreau, nods at me and begins pouring a pint of the darkest available cask option. He knows this will be my order before I even cross the threshold.
This is not because I’m there every day. Si, and his partner in both life and business Aggy Perreau have a knack for making people feel at home and ease in the Tap, whether they’re a regular or stepping inside for the first time.
As a committed female cask drinker—usually mild, porter, or stout—trying to find a new local when I moved to Liverpool on my own was intimidating. More often than not, my beer order of choice would raise eyebrows and prompt more “traditional” patrons to ask a dozen questions about young women drinking such a “manly drink”. There’s none of that at the Tap.
When Si and Aggy opened, it was Friday, March 13th, 2020. Suffice to say, the joy of a packed opening couple of days was short-lived—the lockdown closed them and every other hospitality venue in the country just over a week later. However, the community was already behind them, and the pair quickly pivoted to doing takeaway cask and keg in milk cartons around the neighbourhood. The Little Taproom is also a distillery, and Aggy continued to create bottles of delicious vodka, rum, and gin to sell around the local area.
““For us, our pub is an extension of our homes, a space we’ve made welcoming and inviting to our customers.””
Photography by Matthew Curtis
Si tells me how the community ethos was crucial to the the Tap. “I've got a very strong viewpoint that pubs are inherently community spaces. Whilst there is a place for what you might call ‘faceless’ pubs, where the character and vibe of the place is essentially created by the customers who use it, we wanted to put a stamp of community on the place from the outset,” he says.
“For us, our pub is an extension of our homes, a space we've made welcoming and inviting to our customers.”
Traditionally, pubs are spaces to come together with friends, be social, and have fun. Stretching back to tavern culture, these were hubs of the community where people celebrated, shared information, and even conducted business. They were—and still are—integral parts of the community, and it’s why even the smallest village has a pub when other services like banks and post offices are abandoning out-of-city locations.
“In almost all instances, micropubs are owner-operated, they're being run by the people who genuinely care about the space they've created. Sometimes that can lead to quite exclusive feeling places, but we're very proud that we don't come across that way,” Si says.
At the Tap, part of this community space takes the shape of different clubs and events that meet predominantly in the cosy back room of the pub. From the weekly quiz, to a craft group who bring their own projects to work on, there are people from all walks of life that have a visit to the Tap as part of their weekly routine.
Despite the small size of the pub, the back room—otherwise known as the snug—has become a cosy nook for people to relax and chat with friends or just sit with a good book. This vibe soon sparked the Book Club in the Pub, originally run in conjunction with the now sadly closed Chapter Brewing.
“We've always welcomed small local groups to use our space as best as possible,” Si says. “The book club in particular was born from a conversation with one of my best friends Alyssa, something of a book club impresario, that I'd like to host a book club and she happened to be thinking of starting one.”
Alyssa, the book club impresario herself, explains why the pub was perfect for the club. “I chose the Little Taproom as the venue because its values and atmosphere exactly match what I wanted for the book club - relaxed, friendly, inclusive, and community-minded,” they tell me.
“One of my favourite things is when people new to Liverpool find out about us and come along for the first time, leaving having made a bunch of new friends, and keep coming back every month. I’ve seen some really strong friendships made over the years.”
Especially in cities, there is a loneliness epidemic. Moving to a new city as an adult with no support system makes it extremely difficult to meet people and make new friends outside of work. With this being the case, people are increasingly drawn to community hubs and extracurricular clubs where they can meet people and bond over shared interests, whether that’s crochet, literature, or bonding over unusual cask.
“The book club and the Tap were very supportive of Chapter throughout,” says Noah Torn, former owner and head brewer at Chapter Brewing. “Si and Ag gave us a platform to show our beer at its best and always showcased our new beers, including our Blindfold Off collab.”
Having new breweries and beers that you can’t seem to find anywhere else has become an ongoing draw for both cask and keg aficionados. The seasonal reappearance of Brass Castle’s Christmas Kitty is heralded and awaited with baited, dark beer-loving breath.
Recently, the Tap had a collaboration with Colbier for its 1st birthday—a brew you won’t be able to get anywhere else, ever again. It makes you excited for what’s going to be on and anxious to try these new brews from different indie breweries, just in case you don’t have another chance. It opens you up to breweries you’ve never heard of—and Si is always on hand to tell you where they’re based and what they’re like.
Not long ago, I saw the joy in a man’s face when he found out there was not only a GF cask on, but when Aggy also informed him that the staple takeaway next door also had a GF menu and he could bring his chippy tea into the pub to enjoy.
This kind of attention to detail by Aggy and Si hasn’t gone unnoticed by the locals.
Dean has been a regular since they opened. “During lockdown, Aggy delivered fresh beer in orange juice cartons to my doorstep every Friday,” he tells me. “The beer is the best in the city and it's a lovely place. It's so inclusive. I like to go in on my own with a stack of comic books and sit on any available single chair on tables with other people.”
“Now that I don't drink much, I can still go, as they have the best non-alcoholic beer on tap. Si and Aggie should be very proud.”
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If you’re in the Tap on a Wednesday night, you’ll be greeted by groups of people staring at their phones. However, this isn’t an unsociable act—it’s the Big Quiz in the Little Taproom. When you look around the regular teams, you see couples, groups, solo players, university-aged friends, alongside seasoned quiz addicts, and people just looking for some time out of the house.
Si mentions how quickly the quiz has grown as a regular pub fixture. “At first, it was just a regular event to increase revenue on an otherwise relatively quiet Wednesday night,” he says, with his trademark full-hearted honesty.
“I host it, and a little sub-community has evolved around the quiz where everyone bonds over that midweek event. It's now to the point where if the quiz isn’t held (this past week, for example, whilst I'm recovering from a spinal fracture), a lot of the teams still come down to drink and chat with one another because now that's ‘their Wednesday’.”
Despite the name, it’s not just people from Aigburth who come here. There are regulars from Liverpool suburbs like Speke, Garston, Dingle, Wavertree, and beyond making the pilgrimage to the Tap. While you pass plenty of other great boozers along the way, when you’re going to the Tap, it feels like you’re going to see friends. You want to see what the latest news is, to see who’s going to be in today, or what new beers are coming in soon.
And the beers always seem to be new. Colbier, one of Liverpool’s newer breweries, launched their business at the Tap a little over a year ago. Even newer still is Botelai, based in Bootle, who only launched at the end of 2024, and have already found a place on the Tap’s cask pumps.
““From day one, it’s been a rule that only indie breweries go on our bar.””
Si is proud to have only independent breweries in the Tap. “This is absolutely my hill that I'm dying on. I don't give a flying fuck about giant corporations like AB InBev, they can get in the sea,” he says.
“Indie breweries are essentially our siblings in this industry, micropubs can't exist without microbreweries. The industry is so stacked against these guys, just like the pub industry is stacked against little indie pubs like ours. From day one, it's been a rule that only indie breweries go on our bar.”
The success of the micropub landscape is the community being built between the owner-operator and the regulars who feel comfortable enough to call it a local. When asked about his favourite moments, Si says it changes every day, but some moments make him realize the power of the community that he and Aggy have created.
“Sometimes, that’s when a regular brings their newborns in. We've had customers coming out to us, feeling that we're safe people to share that with—that's very humbling but also incredibly heartwarming.”
Fundamentally, what Aggy and Si have created is just that, a humble and heartwarming space. It’s a special place that has managed to stay busy and keep flying the flag for indie breweries, where so many great boozers have fallen by the wayside. I, for one, will continue to prop up the bar with the darkest cask available, and once you step inside, you’ll want to as well.
