Spanish craft ales

Ravelleman

I've been living in Spain for two of the last three years and I've always struggled with their beer culture. Unless you want bland (but cheap) lagers there really isn't much on offer. The average supermarket will stock the likes of Guinness, perhaps a Trappist beer or two and usually the Gran Reserva version of the standard beer companies - nothing special.

Some bars stock slightly more "exotic" beers like Newcastle Brown Ale and some wheat beers but usually you find yourself stuck with a choice between San Miguel and Cruzcampo, a decision I'd liken to picking between cancer and AIDS.

Anyway, I was surprised to discover a little shop in Salamanca that sells craft beers. Knowing that the average Spanish person treats beer with relative indifference I was even more surprised to find that they stocked a number of Spanish craft ales. I'd like to offer my opinions on some here.

Happy Malt Luge Pale Ale, volume TBC: a friend mine had spoken to me very positively about this beer, which is made in Valladolid, a city that I spend a lot of time in. I was very disappointed, however. At around €2.50 for a 330ml bottle it's quite expensive. When I opened the bottle I got none of the hopped smell I expected. The beer itself was murky and the taste ill-defined. The texture was smooth, with few bubbles and a very thin head but ultimately the beer lacked anything to make it stand out. They also make a wheat beer and a lager but I will be avoiding them.



Domus Aurea 6%: this India pale ale, made in Toledo, was the second I tried. As I opened the bottle a wonderfully fruity hopped smell flowed out towards me. The smell just grew as I poured it into my glass. In term of flavour, I would liken it perhaps to O'Hara's Irish Pale Ale - very full flavour, richly hopped with a bitter but fruity aftertaste. I'm going to try their other two ales Regia and Summa later this week and I expect good things!



Sagra Burro de Sancho Rubia Ale 5% (Sancho being Don Quijote's Squire ): this is another ale from Toledo but this time a blonde one. The aroma is much less intense than Aurea but still has a fruity character. I found this one really refreshing after a long day at work. The texture is smooth but the flavour is much more refined than Aurea. For refreshment I rate this more highly than Aurea but as a tasting experience it's perhaps a little more limited. They also do a red ale and a stout in the same series, as well as a blonde and a red ale under the Sagra name.



Yria Golden Ale 5%: this one is from a small town in Castilla y la Mancha and is made by a couple that claim to have met while drinking international beers in a bar many moons ago. It pours as a dark gold colour with a thin head. People rave about the aroma on their website's review section but I must be missing this. There is a smell but it doesn't leap out of the bottle like Aurea. I don't pick up much of the hops, instead it's almost like honey. The flavour itself is nice, definitely with hints of honey but not at all fruity. Few bubbles and a smooth character. It's quite nice but nothing special. They make some special ales but I don't think I'll try them out.



I also have a bottle of Pagoa Gorri Euskal Garagardoa (Basque Beer), which is a red ale with a 4.7% volume. Depending on how it is I might try Zunbeltz, their 4.3% stout. More on that tomorrow.

I'll see what else I can find tomorrow in the shop too.

Hope someone enjoys this!

Ruben Remus

Ravelleman wrote: »

usually you find yourself stuck with a choice between San Miguel and Cruzcampo, a decision I'd liken to picking between cancer and AIDS

An ever-so-slight exaggeration, perhaps?!

Ravelleman

Maybe, just maybe.

Ravelleman

I tried the Pagoa Gorri this afternoon with lunch. It's a red ale, what they'd call a 'toasted' beer in Spanish. The colour is a really rich, autumny red colour and the head was minimal. The aroma was actually like toasted nuts, perhaps hazelnuts. The flavour was very nice indeed - much more bitter than many of the more readily available Irish reds like Smithwicks and with the nutty character carrying over. My girlfriend also had some and, while not being a real enthusiast, she really liked it, especially in comparison to some of the others I've been trying.



I also picked up bottles of Domus Aurea, Regia and Summa, as well as Kettal: El Almiar, a 5.1% IPA from Cádiz, and a bottle of 9% Hecate Mammooth 2012 6 Malt Imperal Stout from Granada.

I'll get through these over the next week and share my feelings on them.

Happy days.

BeerNut

I love the Pagoa stout, Zunbeltz. The Porterhouse used to bring them in and serve them in their tapas bars. Don't know if they still do, though.

_blank_

I found one in Barcelona last August.

Almogaver

Thread

irish_goat

BeerNut wrote: »

I love the Pagoa stout, Zunbeltz. The Porterhouse used to bring them in and serve them in their tapas bars. Don't know if they still do, though.

Porthouse Dundrum doesn't have a beer license anymore. Another ridiculous scenario made possible by the licensing laws were they can sell you jugs of wine but can't serve 330ml bottles of beer.

Ravelleman

In Spain you can get beer in McDonald's

Ravelleman

Here's blog post I wrote to review a nice IPA called El Almiar by Kettal. I even included photos.

(I have far too much free time at the moment!)

http://gowsbraus.tumblr.com/

Jason Fly

that's sounds more like locally brewed beers. Like this one:




There is more life than Cruzcampo (that's sold mostly in the south of the country because it's brewed there), San Miguel or Mahou.

Ravelleman wrote: »

In Spain you can get beer in McDonald's

are you sure?

Ravelleman

Absolutely sure.

What do you mean about locally brewed beers? Obviously they're local to somewhere.

Cruzcampo is a terrible beer and the mere fact that the litrona bottles are plastic, not glass, is enough to ensure that I never buy it.

Jason Fly

Ravelleman wrote: »

Absolutely sure.

What do you mean about locally brewed beers? Obviously they're local to somewhere.

Cruzcampo is a terrible beer and the mere fact that the litrona bottles are plastic, not glass, is enough to ensure that I never buy it.

I don't think there's anything special or exotic, most part of them come from small breweries that had rose in the last years. you won't find them anywhere but the area where they're brewed, and they've no tradition of brewing beer.
As you said, the average spaniard drinks Mahou or San Miguel, because you find them everywhere, they're awful, cheap and very popular (they are bottled in the same place, so the taste is basically the same. I think, they also work with the production of Heineken for the country, which makes it as bad as the other two).
Cruzcampo is even worse, but in the south of the country it's even more popular (and that plastic bottle makes Cruzcampo even cheaper, so they think it's the best beer of the world (yes, they do).

Domus, Lüge and all that stuff are not that good, but if you compare them to Cruzcampo or San Miguel, they are great, but still not that much...

Ravelleman

The brewing tradition over here would certainly go back 500 years or so. There are certainly local beers, or even better, regional beers in Spain - Estrella de Galicia - absolute filth, might I add - is much more popular in Galicia; go to Granada and expect to find Alhambra in most bars. But the beers I´m reviewing here are certainly craft beers - they´re made by small, independent factories; many are unpasteurised and unfiltered; they don´t spend much, if anything, on advertising and the like.

Spain at least has the tradition of the ´caña´, which is as much a social thing as a way of obtaining refreshment. On hot summer days like the ones we´re having at present there really is nothing like a nice cold caña with your friends on a terrace in the shade. So much of it is about the informal social atmosphere it conveys. It´s lager and it´s poor but it certainly is refreshing. I just try to find a terrace with Mahou.

And Domus Aurea, by the way, is easily comparable to some high quality pale ales that people rave about. I enjoyed it much more than, say, the bottle of Brew Dog Punk IPA I had the other day.

Jason Fly

Estrella de Galicia is rubbish, indeed, but you get into a bar in Galicia and you find the tap of San Miguel p.e. and the bottles, all dusty and mouldy because nobody drinks it, so don't expect to find any other brand of beer in that area of the country.

There's something you forget about the caña and why it's so popular. because it's cheap, it's a lager and sure is poor quality beer but it's terribly cheap... (and talking about how many cañas you get for a tener kinda goes against the rules of the forum, anyway).
I'm sure you know there's also the "corto" which measure could be around half a caña. but anyway they don't serve you an exact quantity, it depends on the kind of glasses they use. Normally a tall tumbler would be a caña and a small one, what means like a mixer glass in Ireland would be a corto. but if you go to the North of Spain you may get a tall tumbler as a "corto" because for a caña you get a big glass like the ones they use to pour out the cider, which full to the top of beer can be almost a pint (around 500ml of liquid), and the price is not much different. which is great.

I haven't tasted many english ales, but they're not great imho, so anything new and slightly different can be fair...

Ravelleman

That's one of the things I love about drinking in Spain - the size of your caña, your Vermú, your vinito can vary so much. Sometimes you go to a bar and wonder how they could ever make a profit by giving you so much for so little; others you wonder how they ever keep their customers, so miserly are the servings. If you order youself a copa in a bar they even bring the bottle over to you and pour it into your glass, expecting you to say when, albeit up to a certain limit. It's so much more customer friendly than Ireland where a spirit is measured exactly and doesn't even include a mixer.

Spanish is full of different words for different measurements. As far as beer drinking goes I rather like the porrón, for novelty purposes, and the cachi - 750ml of goodness.