Don’t worry, the anti-tourist protesters will let you in if you drink high quality local beer. If you’re seen with a Mahou, however, you’ll be blasted with water that tastes better than the Mahou. To find the good stuff, Barcelona has four top stops to cool off after a long sweaty day wondering why the Sagrada Familia hasn’t been finished […]
“Craft” beer in Berlin is a little ironic (well, isn’t everything?) given that bottles of German Lagerbier from any corner shop are delicious, with plentiful choice and at half the price of something more “indie”. You want Kellerbier, Helles, Dunkel? It’s all there, in those slightly oversized glass bottles in all shapes and sizes, staring out of the fridges like […]
Situated conveniently on the train line between Prague and other common interrail destinations of Bratislava, Vienna and Budapest, Brno unfairly receives short shrift. This is Moravia in pure time capsule form, with charming 19th century buildings, the echoes of Communism (including a well-integrated Vietnamese community giving the local cuisine a welcome uplift) and pubs, pubs, pubs. The city is small […]
Budapest was waaaay ahead of the game before most of continental Europe. We first visited in 2008 and they already had epic bars, and by the mid-2010s it was considered an early craft-beer paradise among the central European traditionalists. Since then, not much has changed, with a solid scene of stalwarts without too much recent innovation – probably because they […]
Google “good beer in Ghent” and you’ll be sent down a rabbit hole of epic proportions, so much so that your paralysis of choice may render you incapable of even sipping a Belgian Blond let alone a 12% Tripel. We don’t claim to be the most in depth guide to the city – there are literally hundreds of quality drinking […]
We published a long-read on Leipzig in Ferment Magazine back in September – here are the highlights: Dr Hops: Eight taps, 100 fridge beers and a focus on German craft – what more do you want? Dr. Hops sits at the southern end of the buzzing KarLi neighbourhood and represents the best of the city in every way. Aesthetically modern, […]
They say Spanish beer is a great hangover cure for too much Sangria. Madrid has never been known as a beer capital, but the scene for indie beer here is as underrated as the city itself. Incredibly affordable by global craft beer standards, here are the top stops to hydrate yourself during the summer heat, all dotted around various neighbourhoods […]
In recent decades, beer lovers have had a challenge in France as most people there are really focused on drinking wine, but I think we can all agree that wine ultimately tastes like a small handful of grapes that have been squeezed into a cup of acid. Fortunately, it’s 2025 and grain is making a long-awaited renaissance in what once […]
Czech beer is basically perfect. Their totally neutral water profile means they concoct Pilsners that are almost unrecognisable from the macro gunk we drink in the UK, with heavenly clouds of foam and aromas of central European forests that will haunt your dreams (important distinction from haunting your nightmares). These beers are to be found everywhere in Prague, so our […]
It’s like they forgot Germany and Czechia are either side of them. The indie beer scene in Vienna is, in a word, Scheiße. We dug around for the dregs in case you need a switch up from Schnitzel and Sachertorte, but there’s clearly a reason Marx and Freud used to hang out in cafes and not pubs. AmmutsØn Craft Beer […]