Some Spanish IPAs, o EE-PAHs

Your average beer in Spain has an IBU rating similar to the age of my students, and the oldest one I teach is 10 years old.  As someone who can’t get enough hops, I suffered from severe IPA withdrawal for the first month or so that I was in Spain.  And although the cheap and wonderful wine, as well as many a gin tonic, helped ease my pain, I was still hurting. 

Slowly but surely, however, I was able to find some quality IPAs after a little hunting.  The first one I had was from Kadabra, a brewery out of León. It’s not the best I've ever had, but at the time it was just nice to have a beer that seemed to at least have heard of hops before.

 

The Cibeles IPA is also pretty solid, and living in Madrid, it’s the most local you can get. 

 

I’ve also had the Domus Aurea IPA a couple times at Tierra, the resident Chipotle stand-in in Madrid, and although their burritos aren’t as good as their American counterpart, they do offer a solid selection of craft beers, American and otherwise.  Domus is a Toledean brewery, and their IPA offers a complex hop profile while still being smooth. 

 

The watershed moment in my IPA hunt is when I paid a visit to Más que Cervezas and threw myself at the feet of their expertise.  I was rewarded with several quality recommendations.   

The first was a damn good IPA or here EPA (euskadiko pale ale). The brewery is Laugar and they're located in Gordexola, Bizkaia in Basque Country. 

The second was Kince Lupulus Double IPA brewed by Keltius Cerveza Artesanal in Ourense, Galicia. Kince is a play on quince (15), so there are 15 different types of hops or lúpulos used in the brewing process.  This one stands up against practically any IPA I’ve had in the states and packs quite a punch. 

The third one wasn’t technically an IPA, but it’s also one of the most unique and tasty beers I’ve ever had, in any country, so I’ll include it here.  It’s a winter honey style ale brewed by La Socarrada out of Xàtiva, Valencia.  It’s brewed with rosemary (romero) and rosemary honey (!), and it was declared the best beer in the world in 2012. 

 

It presents itself as embodying the essence of the Mediterranean, and it is by far the best example I’ve experienced of a beer made in Spain that really embodies the unique terroir (to borrow the wine term) of Spain and offers something special and unprecedented in the beer world, whereas a lot of them tend to be much more imitative of American or British styles of brewing.  If you’re going to try any of these beers in this list, go with this one.  You won’t regret it. 

Craft Beer in Madrid: Where to Get Your Fix

So now for the good stuff. The craft beer craze has come to Spain, and while it is still a fairly underground phenomenon, it’s becoming more and more visible each and every day, powered by small groups of dedicated and knowledgable brewers and consumers. 

Madrid held the Thielmann International Craft Beer Fair last year, which was the first event of its kind to be held in the capital.  The fair was a big success and will be happening again this coming fall.  Similar fairs are popping up in other Spanish cities like Bilbao and Barcelona, and new bars, breweries, and shops are opening in all of the major cities. 

Two of the most prominent craft breweries in Madrid are Cervezas La Cibeles and Cervezas La Virgen.  Cibeles’ brewery is located in Leganes, in the southwest part of the city, and La Virgen is based in Las Rozas in the northwest part of the city.  Both breweries offer tours and tastings of a diverse selection ranging from wheats and lagers to IPAs and barley wines, all with a distinct Spanish sensibility.  La Virgen boasts a beer that they claim is the perfect companion for a bocadillo de jamón.

But besides going to the breweries themselves, how do you get your hands on this stuff?  Both Cibeles and La Virgen are becoming more widely available in bars around the city, normally bottled but sometimes on tap. 

I’ve already talked about several bars in Malasaña that offer a great variety of craft beer.  I’ll add Café Gaspar to that list.  Located just south of dos de mayo, they offer a good selection of mostly Spanish craft brews in a laid back atmosphere.  On the other side of Fuencarral in Chueca, La Buena Cerveza has a great variety, along with a clean and modern design.  They also host frequent themed tastings, sometimes paired with food.

There’s a newly opened bar and beer shop just west of Calle San Bernardo on Calle Palma called, fittingly, Palma Brew with a knowledgeable staff and a cool, unfinished wooden table kind of vibe. 

Just to the north, Prost Chamberí sits inside of el Mercado de Vallehermoso, a short walk away from the Quevedo metro station, and offers an excellent selection of bottled beer as well as a rotating tap list and some pretty bomb pinchos, as well as being far off of the tourist trail.  In the same neck of the woods, just north of metro Bilbao, there’s Cervecería L'Europe, offering Spanish brews, as well as everything from Belgian Geuezes to German double bocks. Further south, in Lavapies, there’s Cervecería El Pedal, which, like Irreale in Malasaña, offers a rotating tap list as well as bottles to take home.

If you’re looking for a large selection and something to enjoy in the comfort of your own home or nearest plaza, however, a beer shop is your best bet, and luckily there are several very good ones around.  My favorite is Más que Cervezas, located just north of metro Anton Martín. 

They have a wonderful selection of beers from all over the world, including a particularly impressive selection of beers brewed all around Spain.  Their staff is super helpful as well, and they made plenty of recommendations the first time I went in, all of which turned out to be delicious beers.  Heading west towards Retiro, you'll find the positively punny Be Hoppy Madrid. Just a couple metro stops down by Atocha Renfe, there’s Espuma, which offers workshops and tasting besides a great selection. 

Located in the Ópera area, La Tienda de Cervezas, which besides offering a variety of world beers, also offers the tools and materials to brew your own, should that float your boat.  Similarly, Cervezorama in Malasaña offers beers by the bottle and the equipment necessary for home brewing. 

Many of these bars and shops have opened within the last few years, and so the future promises to be bright and tasty for beer lovers of all backgrounds.  In the next post, I’ll talk about some of the beers that I’ve tried from all around Spain.  ¡Salud! 

Beer in Spain: The Standards

For those coming from the USA, where you can step outside damn near anywhere, throw a rock and hit a newly opened micro-brewery/brew pub/taproom, the beer scene in Spain will come as a bit of a shock.  And it’s not that Spaniards don’t drink beer (I would say the majority of them drink beer the majority of the time), but rather the type of beer they drink.  Or don’t drink as it were. 

This is not to say that there is no “craft beer” or cerveza artesanal as it’s called.  In fact, if anything the scene is burgeoning in very exciting ways, but it’s still a long way away from the ubiquity that it’s achieved in the good ol USA.  Meaning that while you can get (really) great craft beer brewed in Spain, you’ll have to hunt for it and I've already talked about some very solid places to get your fix.  Regardless, you better accustom yourself to the local brews, the beers that will be on tap wherever you go, be it café, old man bar, restaurants, clubs, you name it.

The nice thing about Spain is that much like the culture itself, what beer you drink will depend on where you are in the country.  So in Madrid, you’ll be drinking Mahou, Cruzcampo in Sevilla, Estrella Galicia in Santiago de Compostela, Alhambra in Granada, etc. 

And all of these, while similar insofar as they’re all lagers/pilsners, are not created equally.  Everyone has their opinion and their favorites, and so here’s my two cents.  In terms of overall availability and taste, Estrella Galicia is my favorite.  If a bar has it on tap vs Mahou in Madrid, that’s my kind of place.  Alhambra is also quite good, and it’s my preferred plaza beer.  

Then comes Estrella Dam, San Miguel, followed by Mahou, and the worst of the worst is Cruzcampo. 

The best “cheap” beer I’ve had is Moritz, but it’s only available in Barcelona as far as I know so it’s unfortunately not a regular option for me in Madrid.  

More or less, all of these are the equivalents of our US domestic beers…Budweiser, PBR, etc, and so the best way I can describe them is as beer, with a strong emphasis on the lowercase b, recalling the stuff you sucked down out of solo cups at college keggers. 

You can drink them all like water, however, and especially when it’s hot as fuck like it’s been these last few months, they get the job done.  But for those accustomed to the wildy hopparific and bitter notes of pine and grapefruit and chocolate espresso stouts, these beers will taste about as exciting as a glass of water. 

In the next post, however, I’ll offer up some recommendations about some decidedly unboring craft beer currently being brewed in Spain. 

Vienna

Vienna was the third stop on the winter trip, and it serves as a bit of a cautionary tale, or at least a tale about when circumstances coincide in ways that are less than ideal.  I arrived in a very very cold Vienna, more or less at the midpoint of my trip, suffering from too many good times in Berlin and Prague and a serious case of Prague withdrawal.  There wasn’t much fuel in the tank for exploring and the inclement conditions definitely didn’t help things.  Of all the trips I’d taken before and that I’ve taken since Vienna, it stands out as the one place that I didn’t really love, but I chalk that up to that aforementioned conditions. 

That being said, there were still some cool stuff to see and do.  Vienna is famous as one of the capitals of classical music, especially opera, and their opera house is magnificent.  Tickets normally start at about 40 € or so, which was obviously outside of my price range, but they offer standing room tickets for only 2,50€, allowing you inside of the building and to see the show. 

The catch is that there’s only a set number of tickets, and so you have stand in line outside in the cold to get your ticket.  So despite a lingering feeling (or lack thereof) of frostbite in my toes, we were able to get in to see a performance of Die Zauberflöte (the Magic Flute) by Mozart, which was really neat.  And for 2,50€, I didn’t feel bad about leaving at intermission. 

I also really enjoyed the Freud Museum, located just off one of the canals in the Bergasse neighborhood.  The museum is housed in the flat where Freud lived for the majority of his life, before he fled the country to London as the Nazis closed in on Austria’s capital.  Coincidentally, a lot of Freud’s belongings are housed in a museum in London, including the infamous couch, but there’s still plenty to see and take in as part of the museum. 

As someone who had read a lot of Freud in college, it was neat to be in the flat where he went about exploring and developing his theories of the unconscious.  Vienna has a ton of other museums, as well, and I didn’t get a chance unfortunately to visit the Leopold Museum, which houses works by Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt. 

Despite blustery conditions, we also checked out the Schönbrunn Palace in the southeastern part of the city, and while it was impressive in the snow, I can’t imagine how beautiful it would be in warmer weather, with the surrounding gardens in full bloom.  And as such, the last statement encapsulates my feeling about Vienna as a whole.  I would love to return someday with warmer weather and the ability to wander around freely without feeling like hypothermia was a real concern.