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Beer traveller
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A love of beer has seen Tim Webb comb the world in search of a good brew
The search for ultimate beer
I met Marjorie and Elmer on a freezing February morning sometime in the early 1990s. Elmer was hanging off the door of the telephone kiosk on our village green. He was wearing Bermuda shorts and a Hawaiian shirt, while waving at his wife of 40 years, stood four metres away, dressed in a long coat, fur hat and boots, her mittens dangling free, so she could work the camera. They were American, of course.
Nothing in my upbringing had prepared me for this kind of behaviour, so I nodded good morning, and passed by to collect my Sunday newspaper.
On my return, Elmer was covering up with cold-weather gear, so I threw safety to the wind and asked them what they were doing. Their answer changed part of how I look at life.
Travelling dangerously
Elmer had just retired after 40 years of working for the US telecoms giant AT&T. He and Marjorie had always wanted to travel, but never seemed to get round to it. “We told ourselves we didn’t have the time or the money,” Marjorie said, “but mostly I think we were just afraid. Europe seemed as far away as outer space.”
Elmer’s retirement had brought a generous lump sum and monthly pension, plus a new life full of free time, so they looked at the idea more seriously. They figured they were too old to go backpacking, hated the idea of organised travel with strangers and couldn’t afford a tailor-made tour of top hotels, so they chose a more dangerous route.
Elmer was obsessed with all things telephonic, so Marjorie suggested they head out to look for bits of telecoms history. They would start in Ireland, where her grandfather had been one of the first telegraph men, move on to the UK, which she had always wanted to visit, then head to mainland Europe for who knew what. They had booked a one-way flight to Dublin in the postChristmas dip and would carry on until they got bored, when they would find a flight back to the Midwest and regroup.
Week five had brought them to our village green because, I discovered, it had one of only three remaining Giles Gilbert Scott original rural kiosks from the 1920s. With the morning’s photoshoot, Elmer had been snapped hanging off the door of all three. His tropical attire was to prove to friends back home that he was on vacation.
Small things you love
What stuck was their reply to me asking whether they would recommend this way of setting an itinerary. Each gushed, their gist being that if you travel in search of small things you love, you get to know far more of a place and its people than from visiting all of its castles, museums and beaches.
They were heading to Cornwall to see the buildings of the first transatlantic cable company and radio transmitter before catching the Brittany ferry. I suggested that while in Plymouth they visit a new pub, created in a converted telephone exchange. They loved the idea, more so than any of the Pilgrim Fathers’ stuff.
In return they made me promise to stop aiming to drink beer on my holidays, instead taking holidays where I wanted to drink beer. Their words proved to be subtly life-changing advice.
God and the Good Beer Guide I have always travelled. I was weaned onto going abroad by parents who understood the importance of seeing the world beyond. As children in wartime Britain, their only travel experience was being evacuated from the industrial West Midlands to rural mid-Wales.
On package holidays I learned to put up with overcrowded swimming pools and the hotels’ limited cooking, but relished the night-time forays into town where, on makeshift café terraces, wrinkly, tanned seniors pulled on intense local cigarettes and drank glasses of something clouded by aniseed. The further off the itinerary we went, the more I liked it.
When university arrived and holidays became self-funded, I thanked God for creating the 1974 Good Beer Guide, and conjured train travel, hiking boots and youth hostels to find bizarre and remote pubs in hitherto unexplored places like the Black Mountains, Fenland and the Yorkshire Dales. In 1975, I explored Scotland, a place where the local brewers seemed never to have heard of hops or cask ale.
God helped again in 1977, when the first monthly pay cheques saw my girlfriend and I venturing to
Clockwise from
left: Schlenkerla brewery tavern, Bamberg, both inside and out; Abseits, Bamberg
Amsterdam. Ambling down Spuistraat, the Lord did not so much speak as pull on my collar, urging me to divert down the next small street on the right. That’s how we found the treasure that is Gollem.
A new world dawns
Gollem was and still is a tiny candlelit backstreet bar selling well over 100 beers, mostly from Belgium. In a single afternoon I was introduced to Oud Hoegaards (5 per cent ABV), a cloudy beer made from wheat; something strong and brown named Westmalle Dubbel (7 per cent), brewed by monks; a sharp, sweet-andsour, aged ruby-brown ale called Rodenbach Grand Cru (6 per cent); something described as Oude Gueuze (around 6 per cent) that was tangy and musty, like grainy vintage cider; and a rich liquid called Rochefort 10 (11.3 per cent) that doubled as an anaesthetic.
As a young man raised on mild and bitter, with the occasional pale ale or barley wine thrown in for variety, that afternoon expanded my beer world explosively.
It has carried on expanding ever since, though I soon realised that when it comes to finding new experiences, divine intervention is no substitute for careful research and relentless networking.
Flipping forward nearly half a century, I like to think beer has used me well. It has certainly brought a life full of fabulous and unique experiences, most so small that they would not have been spotted from the main tourist track. The draw of beer, pursued wisely, brings countless introductions to great places and how to understand them.
Even in a time defined by post-Covid-19 neurosis and the inconveniences of Brexit, travelling for beer remains easier in every sense than it was when my exploring began. Indeed, the only thing that is more difficult is that there is so much more to discover.
Entry-level beer travelling
Asked by trainee beer travellers where they should start, I recommend what I call the Big Four. Along with the UK, this means visiting the three other countries that had retained an active and distinctive brewing heritage at a time when interesting beer and brewing hit its historic low point in the mid-1970s: Belgium, Germany and the Czech Republic.
Belgium is unique for its massive array of heritage beer styles, formed by and in some ways forming the soul of a country blessed with so many enjoyable qualities. Often imitated but never bettered, Belgian brewing is defined by nuance and balance, its brewers being the virtuosi of fermentation and conditioning. Its boundless cuisine, the striking townscapes, great industrial archaeology and all those funny ways are just bonuses.
German brewing owes most to Bavaria, the world capital of small-scale perfectionist beer making, seen at its best in Oberfranken (Upper Franconia) and its UNESCO-ranked economic hub, beautiful historic Bamberg. Oberfranken’s smoked beers recall the time before the invention of coke ovens, when all beer was smoky, while the local
Left: Szynkarnia, Wrocław, Poland
Right and below:
Berlin has a vibrant brewing scene
Right: Head to Berlin for Vagabund Hauptstadt Helles
Above: Beer lovers are spoilt for choice in Paris where accessing good beer is easier than for many other parts of France
varieties of kellerbier are the primeval lagers from the days when local brewers first stored beers in Alpine caves to keep them fresh over the summer months.
My first visits to the Bohemian part of the Czech Republic were when it was still Czechoslovakia and under Soviet control. Our tour guide, relaxing off duty in a young hopefuls’ cave bar under Prague Castle, confided to me her rule for life: “First survive; everything else is luxury.”
Hops, beer tax, brewhouses and blonde lager all originated in Bohemia. Nobody understands beer until they experience the differences in flavour and texture between a glass of Stella and a pul (sic) of the supreme style of Bohemian blonde lager, Svetlý Ležák (4.8–5.1 per cent), or 12 degrees, poured slowly by a veteran server in a wooden-walled hostinec, full of Czechs of all ages.
The grand tour
So, armed with the basics, where to next? This is what has changed most in the past 40 years and in many ways was the driver behind Beer Breaks, a handpicked selection of 30 of the best and most enlightening places in Europe to drink beer.
Even as recently as the 1990s, after touring the Big Four, there was little more to explore. The rest of the world’s brewing highlights were written in the past tense. Today, in contrast, there are few national beer scenes outside the Islamic world that are not worth exploring, with new experiences arising all the time.
For ease and affordability, pick up a copy of Tim Skelton’s Beer in the Netherlands (Skelton Ink) and go enjoy the new Dutch beer scene, the most improved in Europe. The European country with the most breweries is now France, with 2,400, though it will take hard graft and
a good map to locate most of its taprooms and beer bars.
A few days in the Estonian capital, Tallinn, where rye beers are trending within an exceptionally high-quality beer scene, should leave a strong impression. Ditto Wrocław, the stout – and porter – rich craft beer bastion of Poland. If you prefer the heat, try Barcelona, where all brews are on trend, or Rome, where many of the finest beer venues are conveniently placed along the same tram route.
For unique, fly to Iceland, where regular strength beer was only decriminalised in 1989 and none of the 30 or so breweries is owned or even part-owned by any of the global brewers. With the marketing of alcohol outlawed, beer now accounts for two-thirds of that consumed in the country, with bigtasting pale and dark ales punching well above their weight. Every brand can be tried in the compact capital, Reykjavík, along with an array of local delicacies like dung-smoked char, salt cod and fermented shark.
Clockwise from left:
Barcelona has many beer gems; Belgian beer at Lambicus; a beer tasting flight at Abirradero
The world beyond
When you have wrung the value out of Europe, consider the US, which now has more than 8,000 breweries; its far roomier and altogether nicer northern neighbour, Canada; and most of Latin America, where, for example, countries like Mexico and Brazil now have around 2,000 breweries apiece. Brazil even has brewpubs that follow what it believes to be the UK model: brewing and serving uncarbonated cask ales via cannibalised handpulls – typically one for IPA, a second dispensing a beefy porter and the third an imperial stout.
Then there is Japan, where the brewers are as inventive as their Belgian colleagues, while national firms Asahi, Kirin and Sapporo gradually accumulate large craft brewers across the world, sometimes letting them carry on as normal.
I love the South African scene, where the hardiest bunch of brewing pioneers on the planet have battled an industrial monopoly, local and national government, water shortages, spiralling costs and the fact that the nearest other craft beer country is several thousand miles away, to bring a huge range of foreign and increasingly home-grown beer styles to market, most successfully in the Western Cape.
Travellers should note that all these countries also have great food options, loads of cultural history and large numbers of beer lovers with remarkably similar interests to yours, and most are keen to chat.
From the beer bucket list
Of the nations with impressive beer revivals, I have yet to visit Australia or New Zealand, though their bids for my time have recently been bumped up ahead of Russia and Ukraine, for obvious reasons. With the bucket list dwindling, however, the promise I made to Marjorie and Elmer has seen me drawn all the more to extreme travel.
I recommend Svalbard, formerly Spitsbergen, the northernmost community on Earth and an extraordinary destination. This Arctic archipelago used to be a mining area. Then, as the Russian and Norwegian companies gradually withdrew, the latter’s government decided to develop it as a climate research area, with tourism for maniacs. Emerging from Svalbar, a cosy beer tavern in Longyearbyen, after sampling the superb beers from the Svalbard Bryggeri, to find the sun high in the night sky at frozen midnight is memorably weird.
I liked Port Rexton Brewing, too. Serving a local population of 350, on a remote peninsula in Newfoundland, its all-female crew makes a dozen beers so well that it is the toast of the provincial capital of St John’s, 200 miles away. Its taproom in the old village schoolhouse has a great North Atlantic vibe.
In Singapore, one of the island’s 40 breweries sits on the 42nd floor of a global bank’s regional HQ, serving up exceptional views, good food and perfectly adequate beers.
Lessons from your beer
With experience you learn that trading centres tend to have advanced beer cultures. It’s the sad, tax-dodging enclaves like Andorra, Gibraltar, Luxembourg, Monaco and San Marino that make do with the so-so. Money obsessives often don’t care much for quality.
Beer is way too socially cohesive to appeal to the obscenely rich. Its ability to bring people together can show itself in strange ways. The surprisingly impressive Palestine brewery Taybeh enjoys cult status among Israeli craft brewers and beer lovers, just as the growing number of small independent producers and stockists across Croatia, Bosnia and Serbia like to trade brands, as memories of the last Balkan war fade with commendable speed.
Another thing that dawns with time is beer’s terroir, not from the soil in which its ingredients grow – grain and hops are both traded globally – but for being shaped to the preferences and diktats of a local market.
In northern Europe, brewers create big bold beers for countering the winter cold, while along the Mediterranean and Adriatic coasts, their equivalents brew lighter, drier, quenching brews, often containing local fruits. Countries where flavour hops thrive, such as Slovenia, spawn hop-forward beers that name the variety on the label, while those that tax beer heavily, such as the UK, perfect lower-strength beers in larger measures, as with cask ale.
And my point is…
Writing Good Beer Guide Belgium, The World Atlas of Beer and Beer Breaks is a huge privilege. All are travel guides of one sort or another. I use my accumulation of lived experience to shape them, based on an original idea by Marjorie and Elmer.
Owning a book is not essential to finding good beer, but it helps. Type ‘craft beer’ into Google Maps and it should find you a good enough mix of excellent, adequate and occasionally dreary bars and stores that feature better beers, often with more accurate opening hours. What the best beer books offer is the washed and combed version, leading their readers to waste a lot less time and money enduring the mundane ahead of enjoying the memorable.
The 20th-century revolution that nearly did for classy brews came about because large companies shredded their competitors and cajoled disempowered drinkers into buying dull beer, sold way too cold, at inflated prices.
The 21st-century counter-attack, which CAMRA was critical to creating, was built around a loose collective of concerned locals, interested travellers and reliable platforms, coming together in a sort of global self-help group to offer each other tips.
In 2022, beer has survived and everything else is luxury. So, go and enjoy it. This is not a rehearsal.
Tim Webb is the author of Beer Breaks (CAMRA Books). He has also co-written three editions of The World Atlas of Beer (Octopus, 2011 to date) with Stephen Beaumont, and penned eight editions of Good Beer Guide Belgium (CAMRA Books)
Right and below: Tallinn delights – Hell Hunt and Põhjala taproom
Right: Íslenski Barinn, Reykjavík Below: Beergeek, Prague
