For many, the idea of running a pub with their friends is a dream, discussed over a few pints with no real intention of actually doing it.
However, for Patrick Mills, 26, and Jay Sankey, 28, it is reality. Both from Huyton, they have known each other for the best part of 20 years. Together they run Cask Micropub on Queens Drive in Stoneycroft.
Cask opened in 2015. Founded by Ian and Michelle Barton, the pub had a successful start to life, selling local beers and ales from its compact and homely venue on the main road's junction with Stoneycroft Close.
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Popular with regulars, it also charmed award judges. Cask won the CAMRA (Campaign for Real Ale) Liverpool Pub of the Year in 2016, 2017 and 2018.
However, the pub closed in 2019 when Ian and Michelle decided to retire. It was revived by former engineer Patrick and his dad Eric Mills, who reopened Cask in February 2020. Initially, it would not be plain sailing for the family, who run the venue with Jay.
Patrick told the ECHO: "My dad's expertise lay in the public house game, he's owned restaurants and ran bars his entire life. He stepped away from his last site around 2008, when the world fell apart, then with the financial crash.
"I was a contract engineer. I came away from that in 2019 and I was really keen to get into this game - the micropub scene, real ale and taking it back to its bare bone roots as a proper community pub, the way a lot of public houses were back in the day."
The 26-year-old added: "We opened on February 18, 2020. We had four weeks and two days and then the world ground to a halt with lockdown, which presented its own challenges.
"The very next day was a Saturday - March 21 - and we sat down with our heads in our hands, basically wondering what we were going to do. That day we decided we would open back up on the Sunday doing takeaway beer.
"We got the message out on WhatsApp and the Cask WhatsApp group. We said on social media that we would be doing takeaway.
"We turned up at 5pm on Sunday, March 22 to a queue spanning the close, with people waiting to pick up their two pint containers. It was milk cartons that we actually bought from a dairy farm - unused, obviously.
"We slashed the price of a pint for an incentive for people to continue to be customers of ours. In essence, we were the new kids on the block only being open for such a short period of time, so the customers didn't really get a chance to know us in the way we would have wished.
"But it did us good once the doors could open again. People did make the excuse to come down, show their face, to have a pint out of a real glass."
The story is remarkably similar to another Liverpool micropub. The Little Taproom on Aigburth Road was open for a week in March 2020 before the first coronavirus lockdown enforced its closure. Like Cask, the South Liverpool venue got through the pandemic by selling takeaway beer in plastic milk bottles.
During the lockdowns, Cask delivered to people all over Merseyside - making regular drives to Garston, Mossley Hill, Litherland and Seaforth. Now, three years on from the start of the first lockdown, Cask is a fixture in its Stoneycroft community, offering drinkers something different from a regular pub.
Patrick explained: "My passion behind it was building the community aspect back into the pub. I used to drink in The Bard in Prescot and that's what got me into the world of real ale.
"We try to stay as Northern as possible with the beer. We do deal with Liverpool breweries, we've got Top Rope and Carnival in, things like that.
"And we do try to work with the surrounding areas - Manchester, Lancashire beer. We deal a lot with Tatton Brewery, Mobberley in Knutsford - they're a fantastic brewery with really high quality beer. We go as far as Wigan, we try to stay fairly local but try to spread our support for wonderful beer across the North.
"The idea is that we are offering a different experience on the beer pumps as well as the customer base that we have in. We have characters of all sorts and beers of all sorts.
"We know what our customer base enjoys. We take note and we listen so we can provide them with the weird and wonderful beers that fit their palate.
"I'd say 90% of the close behind the pub are customers of ours - it's a real community aspect of that close and the surrounding area. There are a lot of people that choose to meet at Cask."
The way in which Patrick, Eric and Jay run the pub has continued the success that their predecessors found. Cask won a CAMRA Special Award in 2021, which sits in pride of place next to the bar, and has also been shortlisted for Liverpool pub of the year in the last two years.
On the back of that, Cask is expanding - with a new venue in the city centre. They have bought The Coach House on Maryland Street, which will open next month as Cask Coach House.
Patrick said it will continue the micropub tradition of the Stoneycroft venue and they will lean into The Coach House's unofficial status as Liverpool's smallest pub, while keeping the same prices as their existing spot.
With an exciting new venture on the horizon and a successful existing venue to keep up, Patrick is very happy with his decision to swap engineering for running pubs. There is nowhere he'd rather be than serving his eclectic group of customers.
Patrick said: "It's a great way to make a living and we are very, very lucky. It can be trying - not the friendship side - just the industry we've chosen to be in.
"There are stresses and strains and tiffs. Especially having my dad involved, me and him argue every bloody day if I'm honest and then boils over to Jay, because he's a part of the family and the frustrations are carried through.
"It all just becomes one big boiling pot, but it's the boiling pot I'd choose to be in, definitely.
"When it's good, it's really, really good. Friday is our busiest day of the week and there is no better feeling than being in a busy pub, whether it's me and my dad or me and Jay behind the bar, you've got a big smile on your face."
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