Eastern Europe Beer

[birvine]

A few weeks back I returned from a bicycling trip along the Danube from Vienna to Budapest. Being that close to Germany and their beer knowledge I expected somewhat of a tasty selection of beer.

Stunned was I to find that they were all fairly fizzy and light lagers. I asked most places what they had on draught but it was like here - different name/brand but same flavour.

This being said, we had wheat beer in Vienna and again in Esztragom which were excellent.

Am I missing something (like where to find good beer in Austria-Slovakia-Hungary) or is it simply a fact that their wine is where I must concentrate my efforts (it was excellent)?

B

 

[DieterVonBrauhaus]

Most western European lager beers are good because of the traditions they use to lager it. What happens is the further east you go, example Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Bosnia you tend to have quicker turn around in lager-ing. Of course those countries used to be under communist rule and supplies were limited under communism. I remember my Berlin born wife said that the East Germans didn't know what to do with all the new things on the shelves after the wall fell.
Wine is much better there because of the vast farmlands with hills facing the sun and many opportunities for the farmers to subsidize part of their land to wine growers.

 

[jfr1111]

There are McDonald' in Paris, not only French cuisine, and the pubs in Britain don't only serve tasty and delcious bitters: they have their bland lagers too. Bland food and drink is a worlwide phenomenon

 

[rockfish42]

Ron has some info at
http://www.europeanbeerguide.net/
Scroll down past his book offers for quite a bit of decent information.

 

[Pivzavod]

I was in Odessa, Ukraine & Vienna in early September. Odessa = Eastern Europe, Vienna = Western Europe.

Beer in Ukraine was nothing special and I went to a brewpub and tried Wheat & Dark beers of theirs. Both were nothing special and Wheat beer had no in your face flavor you would find with German Wheat strains. I was told by my cousins and others that a lot of beer is fake. What they told me is they make beer from powder for flavor like soda and add industrial alcohol to dilute. 5+ different people told me that. I also heard in the past of the same thing with vodka. They run a fake batch under official brand and sell it somewhere for dirt cheap. Those distributors flip it cheap to stores who sell it cheap and a lot of alcoholics buy that **** and die later.

In Vienna I tried Wheat beer in Australian pub (sort of like Outback Steakhouse) and had a average Wheat beer. Later on in my hotel I went to a bar and they had 4 taps but only one was working. I had 2 nothing special lagers of some kind.

 

[milldoggy]

Bulgarian schumensko is fairly decent. The problem is most brewerys went under state rule(communisum) in east Europe and after the fall, carlsberg or heinken bought them all. So they just make the standard bad light fizzy pilsner beer. Now this year bulgria had wheat beers and malt beverages. Turkey effe has a good dark.

Seems the beer movement is starting over there.

Warsaw had two brewpubs, was the the beer up to par with the average Am brewpub, not really, but is a good start.