OLD WORLD Beer travel happens.


Or at least it happened to me. I never set out to be a beer pilgrim, but sometimes these things have a way of overtaking you. You find yourself in a cozy farmhouse pub enjoying the best tasting beverage you’ve ever had, and you think to yourself, “Why have I never had anything like this at home?!” There is simply no replacement for sipping a pint of bitter in a draughty English pub, or losing count of how many rounds of kölsch you’ve ordered while sitting in the shadow of a German cathedral. So get out of town and experience new drinking cultures. Trust me – that San Diego pint will taste even better when you get back. – Sam Tierney


With current trends in American brewing leaning more towards exotic and extreme flavors, it can be easy to forget that the majority of our brewing practices are firmly rooted in the English ale brewing tradition. Drinking at a pub in ENGLAND can be a profound experience. There’s something about a spot-on pint of real ale pulled from a cask via handpump that just feels right. Cask ale is a living, breathing beverage that truly has to be drunk in the right surroundings and handled by the right cellerman to show its full potential. The Campaign For Real Ale (CAMRA) has worked tirelessly over the past decades to make sure that this tradition is alive and well. A pilgrimage across the pond to experience ale in its natural surroundings is a must for every serious beer fan. The Great British Beer Festival in London August 2nd-6th will showcase the best real ale from all of the UK. Whether you’re looking for traditional ales like those from Fullers, or the more modern stylings of Darkstar and Thornbridge, you will not be disappointed.


SCANDINAVIA is a fantastic beer destination, and Copenhagen really is the secret center of the beer world. Bar Den tatoverede Enke specializes in Belgian beer, Café Svejk offers Czech choices, Ølbaren always has a quality line-up of German styles, and Charlies Bar provides authentic UK cask ales. Worthwhile local brewpubs: Brewpub København, Apollo, Færgekroen, Streckers, and Nørrebro Bryghus, which won several medals at World Beer Cup. Visit the former Carlsberg brewery (now a museum and small brewery), where yeast cultivation and professional brewing were born. Ølbutikken, one of the best beershops in the world according to ratebeer.com, is nearby, as is MikkellerBar, with twenty taps of Mikkeller beer as well as taps from all over the world. In the Swedish capital of Stockholm sample beers from renowned local craft breweries including Närke, Dugges, and Nils Oscar. Find Akkurat for one of the best selections of Belgian lambics in the world. Norway is home to a small amount of brewers who are blending world influences: Nøgne Ø, Haandbryggeriet, and Ægir Bryggeri. Cheers to Jesper Kjær for his help with this entry.


BELGIUM has been called the Disneyland of beer. In this one small country you can find a greater variety of beer than anywhere else in the world. From the six Trappist monasteries and their famous abbey-style beers, to the lambic brewers of the Pajottenland, the amount of possible destinations is daunting to say the least. Brussels is perhaps your best point of entry, and here you have plenty of world-class destinations. For a window into the archaic past of Belgian brewing, a visit to the Cantillon brewery is in order. One of the last truly traditional lambic brewers, Cantillon ferments all of its beer spontaneously with wild yeasts and bacteria. After one to three years of maturation in oak barrels, the result is a dry, tart, and complexly fruity beer that is then either blended to make gueuze, fermented again with cherries to make kriek, or fermented again with raspberries to create framboise. If left unblended, the beer is known as lambic. If lambic isn’t your thing, Moeder Lambic, Delirium Café, and Le Bier Circus all offer a dizzying array of Belgian beers.


AMSTERDAM may be best known in the beer world for being the home of Heineken and Amstel, but there are several beer bars within walking distance of the city center that showcase the best from the Netherlands and Belgium. Nederlands Biercafe ‘t Arendsnest is the place to go for the best in Dutch beer, with a dizzying array of beers all from small and specialty brewers. In de


GERMANY, the land of Audi, bratwurst and Heidi Klum, can be a cornucopia of unique beers and drinking destinations for the astute traveler. Amidst the order and engineered precision of German society, there exists an extraordinary amount of traditional and flavorful regional beer styles. Munich, home of the famous Oktoberfest, is the origin of the delicious dunkel, a dark, toasty lager, as well as the strong and sustaining doppelbock lager, which was originally brewed by the Paulaner monks in order to sustain themselves through the Lenten fast. A quick train north to the Franconia region will bring you to the town of Bamberg, home of rauchbier. Rauchbier is a lager that is brewed with malt smoked with beechwood. Some say it tastes like ham, but I think it tastes like awesomeness. Berlin has retained its own specialty in the sour and refreshing Berliner Weisse, which is often served with woodruff or raspberry syrup


Wildeman features a wide variety of Dutch and Belgian beer, as well as selections from England, Germany, and the US, and is located in the site of an old distillery. Café Gollem now sports several locations and was one of the first pubs in the Netherlands to start featuring Belgian Trappist beers, including the famed Westvleteren 8 and 12. Slightly further from the city center is Brouwerij ‘t Ij, which is located in an old public bathhouse/windmill and produces a wide variety of beers that span Dutch and Belgian styles like wit, tripel, and bok.


to cut the acidity. If you are getting sick of lagers and wheat beers, head over to the Rhineland and the cities of Dusseldorf and Köln. Dusseldorf is known for its altbier, which is a brown top-fermented beer with a rich malt flavor and occasional strong hop presence. The kölsch bier brewed in Köln is pale in color and closer in flavor to a pils, but has a unique fruity flavor from the top-fermenting yeast used in its production.


Although the beer of SPAIN is less celebrated than the wine, it still has an interesting story to tell. Each province brews its own brand of cerveza, mirroring the cultural, social and political divisions between regions. In the metropolitan capital of Madrid, Mahou Cinco Estrellas rules all, claiming “Si Hay Mahou, La Vida Es Cinco Estrellas” (If There’s Mahou, Life’s Five Stars). What it lacks in robust flavor it makes up for in sheer availability – you’re guaranteed to find this beer or its younger sibling, Mahou Clásica, on tap at any madrileño bar. To the south you’ll find Cruzcampo in Sevilla and Alhambra (or the 1925 Alhambra Reserva in a beautifully- embossed emerald green bottle) in Granada. To the east just a short bullet train ride away, Barcelona’s flagship beer, Estrella Damm, awaits you. Barca’s slightly more flavorful Voll Damm Extra packs a punch at 7.2% and is packaged in menacing dark forest green cans. On the other end of the scale, 0.0% ABV “sin alcohol”


beers are quite popular with the mid-day bar crowd. Looking to break the hegemony of the country’s macro lagers, a few craft breweries are starting to pop up in Northeast territories.


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Citizens of the CZECH REPUBLIC drink more beer per capita than anyone else on the planet, which seems fitting because they also invented the style of beer that has overwhelmingly dominated the world over the past 150 years: pilsner. The pilsner style was the creation of a German-born brewer, Josef Grolle, who was working at the Plzensky Prazdroj Brewery in the Bohemian town of Pilsen. The original pilsner beer that he created is still brewed today as Pilsner Urquell. The Urquell we can get over here suffers from wear, but visit the brewery’s old lagering cellars and you can taste the Kvasnicovy version, which is unfiltered, unpasteurized, and full of wonderful Saaz hop flavor. Jet over to the capital, Prague, and you can visit the world’s oldest brewpub, U Fleku, open since 1499. Only one beer, a dark lager, is offered, but it’s more than worth your visit. Another can’t-miss brewpub is Klasterni Pivovar Stravoh, which is located in a monastery on top of a hill near the castle. Make the hike up from the Danube, and you are rewarded with several wonderful lagers including a tmavé (dark), polotmave (amber) and seasonals including doppelbock and pilsner.


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