Drinking in Switzerland

A bunch of us attended a conference in French-speaking Switzerland last week, and knowing of breweries like Brasserie des Franches-Montagnes and Docteur Gab's, I was looking forward to tasting more craft beers of that ilk while in town for nearly a week. Switzerland has a tradition of craft brewing, both German-style lagers and the more Belgian/British-style ales, but in the small town we were stuck in there were very few bars or restaurants, and almost all those we found served only cheap lager; at best there might be one brune on offer (and Swiss taste in brune seems to run to the yeasty and chewy, rather than any of the quality or flavour you might expect from French or Belgian styles). Where better quality beer was available, it was in the form of a white or wheat beer in the German or sometimes Belgian style, very crisp, dry, subtle—actually pretty nice on a hot day (although it was raining non-stop the mid-July week we were there!) and lacking the gummy, chewy, spoiled sweetness that some English wheat beers suffer from.

The Bull, Highgate

In Highgate to see a band play the other night, we turned out to be in a very nice little brewpub, home of the London Brewing Company microbrewery. It was relatively quiet when we arrived, and service was pleasant and professional, but felt a bit all-hands-to-the-pump already, with three different table waiters and several bar staff milling around frantically serving about two people total. Hard to imagine what a busy night would look like! The menu looks really great, with high-end gastropub food, although the prices are equally high-end, and there was nothing appetizing in the vegetarian selection. (There is a surprisingly wide range of gluten-free offering, though.)

There is such a thing as Italian Real Ale!

An Italian friend of ours spent three months in England earlier this year on an exchange. She arrived hating beer (being from Italy, that's not all that surprising; look what shit they get served up. Plus, they have wine, which goes better with pasta ;-) ). She was open-minded enough to attend a few beer festivals with us, however, and seemed to be developing a taste for the less hoppy (and less lagery) real ales by the time she left. Imagine our pride when we received the following emailed report on the state of craft beer in her home town in Italy!

I looked forward to tell you that the craft beer bar eventually reopened, Birra Cerqua.

The venue is very small, so it gets crowded quickly, but there's space outside as well. The atmosphere is relaxed. The guys who work there are very friendly and easy-going, even too much perhaps late in the night! They invited us to attend I don't know which phase of brewing yesterday, but eventually we didn't go. Next time.

The Moulin Brewery

Moulin is not, perhaps, a place name that springs immediately to mind in the context of beer. In fact, this small village in the shadow of Mount Ben Vrackie, near Pitlochry in Perthshire, is home to one of Scotland’s first microbreweries. The Moulin Brewery’s main market for its four beers is the village pub, the Moulin Inn, although they are to be found in other nearby hostelries too and, in bottled form, also further afield. So while Moulin itself may be off the beaten track for some, it would not surprise me if Moulin beers popped up in well stocked off licences in Edinburgh or Glasgow.

The Old Brewery in Greenwich

The latest stop on our tour of the Top 25 Bars in London was the Old Brewery in Greenwich, the flagship brewpub of the Meantime Brewery, just down the road from the brewery itself and with a wide selection of their own ales available. In brewpub tradition there are beer tanks on display in the restaurant section, and copper piping on show everywhere, although I didn't think anything was actually brewed on-site. The range of beers, on cask, keg, or in bottles, is impressive (with a handful of guests, including Adnams and Darkstar), although the prices are a good pound above the London pub average, and the service is truly abysmal. I arrived at the bar with only one other person being served by the single barman, waited patiently, only to have someone arrive beside me just in time to be served out of turn. Okay, shit happens. When this new customer (who at least had the grace to be a bit embarrassed) was finished, the barman just wandered off. I caught his eye, and he turned around with a disdainful, "Everything alright?" (If I hadn't been here to review the bar, I might have left already.)

Tied House in Mountain View CA

Finding ourselves in northern California, a state that offers fine locally produced microbrews, but with the usual problem of nonexistant transport to anything further than cheesy campus sports bars serving watered down, fizzy lager, we decided to track down a Californian brewery/restaurant, distance being no object this one night. In the end we picked the Tied House in Mountain View, which was only a $25 cab ride away, and served a most satisfactory range of food. As for the beers:

I started with the Ironwood Dark, which was billed as an "English style" brown ale, and was very good indeed: nice and malty, with a hint of overripe fruit in the odour, sweet to the tongue and then satisfyingly bitter on the swallow. My only complaint was that it was served a little too cold and fizzy for my liking, but it was still a great brew. (Ryan noted: "a nice malty dark brown ale, not too hoppy or bitter.")

Later in the evening I moved onto the Oatmeal Stout, a more typical American beer style, which was also a good example of its kind: pretty rich smoky odour, but served too chilled and frankly a bit watery on the first taste. It was more satisfying to drink in hefty mouthfuls, and offered good bitter smokiness on the swallow with a hint of fragrant cedar charcoal that made it a little more unusual.

Ryan moved onto the Alpine Gold, which he reports as "an easy generic pils style without being too watery" (explaining that he "thought it would be a better pairing for the baja veggie burger"). One of our companions also tried the New World Wheat beer, but found it too sweet and bubblegummy, and on that advice none of the rest of us risked it.