Lisbon - A craft beer scene at its genesis

This piece was originally written in September 2017. It was intended to be published (in edited form) in the first issue of Beer Buzz, a new magazine planned for the Manchester Beer Scene. The magazine has been slower to come to fruition than planned so thought I might as well put it here.
Since our visit in 2017, at least one of the breweries featured has ventured to the UK so piece is a little dated, but hopefully it will be of use to some who are visiting the city.

Most drinkers planning an overseas beer jaunt would likely be looking at booking for the Netherlands, Bruges or Prague with their rich brewing heritages. However, the “craft beer revolution” is happening all over Europe and the well-researched beer tourist can find quality local brews in a variety of specialist beer bars in most major cities.

Even then, Portugal is unlikely to be the first destination that would come to mind – the dominance of Sagres & Super Bock, who share 80% of the market, hasn’t made it a beer lovers paradise. Sagres is part of the global Heinekin empire while Super Bock comes from the Portuguese privately owned Unicer group who also make soft drinks, wines plus Carlsberg lager and Somersby “cider” under licence.

However, things are changing with the major cities of Porto and Lisbon now boasting a variety of craft beer bars and brewery taps which have sprung up over the last half decade. So it was that in seeking a late summer sun break with added beer incentive, we set off for Lisbon armed with some internet research and a healthy thirst.

Beer Station

The first bar we came across is one of the newest – The Beer Station is nestled in a public square just below the city’s Rossio train station. It’s clearly aimed at the more tourist end of the market with laminated beer menus set out on the extensive outdoor area indicating a fairly static range of both draught and bottled beers – although a few white spaces do have the current guests entered in marker pen.

With all draft beers priced at €3 for 20cl and €5 for 40cl (with flights of 3 x 10cl for €5), it was time to dive into the menu. Letra F, an American IPA from Letra brewery in Portugal’s third city Braga was a well-balanced refreshing drink that hid it’s 6.5% strength well. Lisbon’s own Cerveja Musa take musical inspiration for their beer names – our first experiences of what would be a brewery we would become very familiar with were Red Zeppelin – a red session IPA – and Mick Lager.

Lisbon is a city built on seven hills with steep slopes and staircases linking its districts. Climbing up hill from The Beer Station we arrived at the city’s first brew pub – Duque Brewpub which opened in early 2016.  A wall of taps and a blackboard boasting 12 beers suggested a bar aimed more at the local craft beer fans, although the majority of accents heard on both of our visits here were American.

Duque Brewpub

The brewery was visible through a door to one side of the bar, but surprisingly there was only one ‘Duguesa’ beer on the bar, the 4.5% Pilsner – the barman explaining that while there are three regular beers in their range, they can’t brew them quick enough to keep them all on at once in the bar. Both Letra and Musa that we had already encountered each had two beers each listed so in the interests of experimentation as well as the Pilsner, we selected Joe Da Silva – a Sorachi Ace hopped APA from Oitava (written 8^a) Colina, another Lisbon based brewery.

A couple of booths, a central table with stools and a drinking shelf with high stools exude the kind of trendy chic that sees the humble pallet being the UK equivalent’s material of choice. Sadly, being chic didn’t make up for them also being incredibly uncomfortable so we didn’t hang around. At a later visit, we got one of the limited number of seats outside and took the opportunity to sample from the extensive bottle menu.

Away from the more touristy areas of the city, the city’s first craft beer bar Cerveteca Lisboa shuns the shabby chic for the clean minimalist look – light coloured walls, polished wood floors and simple modern artwork on the walls in this bar set into the base of a steep hill. The obligatory wall of fonts is supplemented by two handpumps on the bar with a total of 12 draft beers listed on the blackboard – the Portugese offerings being indicated by an asterisk. A wide selection of cans and bottles can be selected from the retail shelves with chilled versions behind the bar if you want to drink there.

Museu de Cerveja

Given its location on the corner of the central waterfront Praça do Comércio (Commercial Square), unsurprisingly the Museu da Cerveja (Museum Of Beer) is an unashamed beacon to tourists. Primarily a restaurant where a steak & fries will set you back €25, the menu includes a selection of 20 bottles from micro-breweries advertised as “Home Made Beers” alongside a selection from other Portuguese speaking islands and countries. Unfortunately, the only draft beers advertised on the menu as “Do Museo” turn out to be from the Super Bock range.

A short walk to the foot of the historic Alfama district will take you to LisBeer, a dark almost cave like space on the ground floor of a centuries old house. A loose-leaf beer menu lists an impressive choice of both local and world beers (although we wasted no time in telling the bar man that Trooper and Spitfire do not represent the best of British beer). Unfortunately, the majority of the most interesting bottles seemed to be sold out -  apparently the week’s delivery was yet to arrive – so we selected draft beers from Dois Corvos and Musa – duly served in a Trooper glass. It was late at night on a Tuesday when we called, so possibly we didn’t catch them on the best night.

Quimera Brewpub

To find Lisbon’s real beer gems, it’s necessary to take advantage of the city’s excellent public transport network – made up of metro, buses and trams where a 24 hour pass costs €6.15. A ride on the 15 tram takes you past the waterside clubs to the hip Alcântara del Mar district where Quimera Brewpub oozes atmosphere from its dimly lit tunnel of a home. Family run, when we called, the landlady was practising for the bar’s weekly jam night on her ukulele, breaking off to make us feel very welcome.

Eleven beers included 8 of the pub’s own brews ranging from Cherry Sour to Coffee Stout, supplemented by other local brews from Musa, Lince & 8^a Colina – the latters APA being the outstanding beer of the visit. The owner was happy to offer us tasters of all the beers and talk us through the extensive bottle selection. While quiet when we called on Monday evening, we’ll make sure to head back on a weekend next time when reports are that the place comes alive.

On the opposite side of the city, the industrial Marvila district houses two of the coolest beer spaces you will find anywhere. Although the brewery was only founded in 2013, the tap room at Dois Corvos is already well established as the destination for the serious craft beer fan in Lisbon. A long thin room boasts plentiful seating running down one side with the shiny stainless steel brewhouse at the end.

Dois Corvos

Twelve taps are mounted on a tiled wall below a blackboard which advertises beers available in 25cl and 40cl measures as well as bargain rate growler fills in 1 and 2 litre sizes. Beers as diverse as a Hibiscus Gose and a 10% barrel aged barley wine were available, but standout offerings were Last Mango In Paris, a 8.5% IPA bursting with murky flavour and Galaxia a smooth milk stout.  If the beer wasn’t enough to tempt you to extend your visit, a range of affordable snacks including pizza and the local speciality Assa Chorizo – a chorizo sausage grilled at your table  - is available throughout the day.

Musa Taproom

As of August 2017, visitors to Marvila can also visit the tap room of Musa brewery, located just round the corner from Dois Corvos. It is early days for this newest entry on the city’s beer scene – evident during our visit by the number of locals who were clearly calling in for the first time to check it out – but they clearly expect their newly created tap room to become a popular destination with a large ground floor space supplemented by a mezzanine floor overlooking the impressive brewery beyond. A kitchen was due to open during September.

The brewery which began brewing in 2015 must have great fun thinking up beer names with Gold Save The Queen, Baltic Sabbath and Twist & Stout amongst those on offer – even the water was imaginatively listed as Wish You Were Beer.  While possibly not hitting the quality and consistency of Dois Corvos, the beers are good – Café D'Ale Mar coffee pale and Phycho Pilsner stood out from the brew tap’s selection.

Living amongst Manchester’s well developed and burgeoning beer market, there is something refreshing about witnessing the formative years of a craft ale scene just emerging in a town and country that while it has a long history of brewing has seen it suppressed and overshadowed for so many years.

It is only four years since the city’s first craft brewery opened, with its first craft beer bar following a year later and this is clearly a scene which is growing rapidly and already has some breweries and bars that could hold their own against the best in much more established brewing nations. With its Mediterranean climate, numerous historic churches, castles and other attractions to help pass the days, it’s a city well worth a beer lover giving it a visit.

Welcome to the musings of a GeordieManc

That’s me, 47 years old, the first 18 of them on the right side of the Tyne, followed by the move to Manchester coming up 30 years ago. The last 10 or so of those has seen much of my free time immersed in the world of beer and cask ales in particular (more of that later) – a subject which is likely to form the majority of these musings.

Growing up in Newcastle in the 70s and 80s, cask ale did not feature much in my early drinking years. The first alcoholic drink I remember having was a can of McEwans Export given to the children to keep them quiet at one of my parents' annual house parties – I’ve never been too sure about the date but I’m guessing may have been the Christmas of 1977. I don’t know why I recall it but guess something about the distinctive red can stuck in my mind. I faintly remember not being overly impressed by the liquid but hell, it was that stuff what adults drank – I wasn't going to knock it back.

By the time I was 16 and 17 and my friends started those tentative ventures to see if they could get served in pubs, I had a disadvantage of being pretty much the shortest person in my year as well as being one of the youngest - so had little chance of persuading your average doorman in the Bigg Market that I was 18 (not that I didn't manage to slip in on the odd birthday party). In those years I went through varies stages of home brewing – back in the days when every Boots had a large home brew section selling all sorts of kits - I tried my hand at wine, ale, 'lager style’ and cider. As with many young taste buds, they were almost certainly all pretty awful, but they were alcohol on a pocket money budget – we drank it!

By I eventually turned 18, a group of friends and I had pretty much adopted The Bacchus on High Bridge as our "local". Now the Bacchus of 1988 was nothing like the pub of the same name that occupies the same site in Newcastle today – back then it was divided into two sections with a bar which connected the two. Most of the time we sought out a corner at the back where us youngsters could hide away from the real drinkers in the main bar.  Knowing what I know now, I was probably missing out on real ale, but back then I recall my drink of choice was whatever lager was cheapest.

When I arrived in Manchester to study at UMIST – now subsumed into the University Of Manchester – I became a bitter drinker for one very simple reason. In the Oak House student bar, Webster’s Bitter was 67p a pint. I don't recall what the house lager was, but I do recall it was 69p. I was going to be on a budget – decision was made, I was a bitter drinker! The Oak House bar didn't do cask ale, but the bar at the neighbouring Owens Park halls did – Courage Directors tasted better than the Websters did, but I found my head didn't like it – even the odd pint would give me a headache the next morning.

Over those next three years, for various reasons my drink of choice would graduate to being Newcastle Brown Ale. This was nothing to do with my heritage, it arose from joining the UMIST Students Union events team where early in my first year one of the team worked out that could by ‘Newcy Brown’ at Booker’s cash and carry for 50p a bottle. As the crew's equipment store was just outside the back door of the union nightclub, we could easily nip out to our own private bar – complete with fridge disguised as a flight case – for some reason the only flight case in the room with a padlock fitted! I am sure the Union's bar manager knew what we were up to – he couldn’t have failed to notice that the crew's inebriation was out of step with their visits to the bar.

It was at UMIST that I first came to appreciate the variety and flavour that real ale offered when the events team provided the music for the UMIST Real Ale Festival. Although not serving on the bar, as the event was held on the third floor of the building, it was a long way from the fridge so it made sense to drink the festival ales. Today’s spoilt for choice “craft beer” fans would not wish to travel back to that era – the exotic selection included Theakstons, Timothy Taylor, Holt’s and Robinson’s!

Sharansky's Disco at UMIST Students Union

Three or four nights a week DJing (at UMIST, Oak House and latterly the Owens Park Bop) combined with the lure of “the fridge” meant I didn’t get much other real ale during my student days, although there was the odd pilgrimage from the halls in Fallowfield to Ladybarn where you could get an Old Tom in The White Swan and an Owd Roger in The Derby Arms – two pub, two pints and you were merry. The occasional Sunday afternoon would be spent in the city centre supping Sam Smith's Museum at the pre-IRA Sinclair’s Oyster Bar.

When I graduated in 1991, Sinclair’s became a more regular haunt and I had also been introduced to the beer heavens that were The Beer House (now The Angel) and The Crescent. Many a happy night discovering some great beers – made up for the pig awful beer in most of the music venues I spent my other nights in – some things never change. Along the way, I continued helping out at UMIST festival for several years after graduating including moving from the music side to doing some cellar work and also began discovering other beer festivals.

I have lost track of when and where I joined CAMRA, but according to their records it was March 1997. What I do remember is that I largely joined for the benefits. This was pre the Wethervoucher, but as a relatively young engineer trying to save the pennies I realised that a couple of night's entry to Stockport Beer Festival and a trip to Oldham Beer Festival was costing around the same as the membership fee. I'd get a free newspaper and if I went to more festivals I'd be making money!!!! (Applying good alcohol induced logic of course).

By the time I met my future wife Caz in 1998, I was a committed real ale drinker, rarely touching anything else (apart from in fore mentioned gig venues). Getting together with a dedicated Carling Black Label drinker provided  bit of a challenge – back in the late 90s, you still had to seek out real ale so even being armed with a Good Beer Guide wasn’t enough to find mutually acceptable pubs. Thankfully the same period saw the emergence of the early hop forward ales so while my favourites were Phoenix Wobbly Bob and Moorhouse's Pendle Witches, Caz was slowly weaned off the Carling and onto Marble, Hopback and the early days of her Pictish worship.

By 2005 while we were living in West Didsbury we were increasingly venturing to Chorlton of a weekend where, unlike the pubs of Didsbury, The Bar and Marble Beer House were welcoming of drinkers with a well behaved 11-year-old in tow. When we heard about a new beer festival being held at a church in the area, we took no persuading to visit the first Chorlton Beer Festival. Having been used to beer festivals being cramped noisy events like Stockport, it was a breath of fresh air. Only 36 beers but in such a relaxed setting.

Chorlton Beer Festival 2011

We returned the year after with a weekend ticket – with more time to sup, I remember setting off from one end of the bar with the aim of drinking through to the other end. I don’t think I managed to complete this self-imposed challenge, but it got me noticed and got me in conversation with several of the volunteers from Trafford & Hulme branch.

In 10 years of membership of Stockport and South Branch I was never tempted to go to a branch meeting and only ever went to two socials. At the first we went to the rendezvous point a little early and sat in a corner of Didsbury’s Dog & Partridge awaiting the CAMRA group. When a bunch of old men almost universally approaching or exceeding twice our age came in, we kept our heads down and didn’t let on that we had been intending on joining them. We gave them a second chance next time they came round  to West Didsbury and we fared better when there were at least some other people our age – although turned out that they weren’t regular members – they were the new manager of a local bar and her brother dragged out for moral support while she “got to know” her local CAMRA branch.  The regular members didn’t impress – a standout comment was being told that “West Didsbury isn’t really our area” – talk about feeling included!

So it came to pass that the good folks at Chorlton fest explained to us that you didn’t have to be a member of the branch you lived in and not long after we requested a transfer into the branch area that started 500m up the road from home. Although our “activism” started slowly at first, it didn’t take long to become more heavily involved as our daughter got older. Within a couple of years of moving branch I was on the branch committee and eighteen months later I was training to be a bar manager at the National Winter Ales Festival.

I’ve bored you enough with my “beer journey”, but hopefully that gives you an outline of what got me to a position of being a CAMRA branch chair, several roles and Manchester Beer & Cider Festival and a bar manager at GBBF. I am sure my experiences within CAMRA over the last ten years will come up in future musings – if I ever get round to writing them – this one’s been a week in the gestation.