Man, European beers. What a rabbit hole, eh? I didn’t set out to become some kinda expert, not at all, nothing like that. It was more like, I was chatting with a mate, or maybe just scrolling through something online, completely unrelated, and someone mentioned some fancy-sounding beer from, I dunno, Belgium or the Czech Republic. And it just got me thinking, ‘Crikey, how many of these things are actually out there?’ You see the usual stuff in the shops, your Heineken, your Stella Artois, maybe a Guinness if you’re lucky, but that feels like just scratching the surface, you know?
My Highly Unscientific ‘Investigation’
So, I kinda, sorta decided to, like, ‘look into it’ a bit more. My ‘process’ for this grand European beer tour? Ha! It was a real patchwork job, let me tell you. Nothing you’d read about in a serious guide. It basically boiled down to a few key ‘techniques’:
- Asking mates down the pub if they’d tried anything interesting from ‘over there’.
- Randomly clicking on stuff online when I was supposed to be doing something else. You know how it is.
- And, well, the most important bit: some ‘hands-on research’ whenever I saw something new or unusual at the local bottle shop or a bar that had a decent selection.
There were no spreadsheets, no detailed tasting notes like those fancy wine people do. More like a mental note of ‘yeah, that was alright’ or ‘oof, that one’s a bit strong’. Sometimes I’d try to jot a name down on a scrap of paper, but half the time I couldn’t read my own writing later, or the name was so long and complicated I just gave up.
You start with the obvious ones, maybe. The German beers – they’ve got that whole purity law thing, right? And yeah, a lot of them are pretty solid, clean, no-nonsense. Then you stumble into Belgian beers, and it’s like a completely different world. Some of them are incredibly strong, some taste like fruit or spices. I remember trying one, couldn’t even pronounce the name, and it nearly blew my head off. Good, but wow.
Then you’ve got your British ales and stouts. A different vibe altogether. More, I dunno, traditional? Easy drinking some of ’em, others dark and heavy. And of course, you can’t forget the Czech pilsners – some say that’s where it all started. Super crisp. I even tried a few from places I didn’t expect, like Poland or Italy. It’s just a massive, sprawling mess of breweries, from tiny little places to huge global giants. You think you’ve got a handle on it, then someone mentions another dozen you’ve never heard of.
This whole ‘exploration’ thing, it honestly felt a bit like when I tried to clear out the attic last year. Started off with grand plans, ‘gonna sort everything, label boxes, be super organized!’ An hour later, I’m surrounded by dusty old junk, I’ve found three things I thought I’d lost, and the whole place is even more chaotic than when I started. That was me with these European beers. A few definite keepers that I’d drink again, a whole bunch that were ‘yeah, okay, not bad’, and an enormous pile of ‘what on earth was that one again?’
So, yeah, that’s my big adventure into the world of European beer brands. Can’t say I’m an expert now, not by a long shot. Mostly just confirmed that there’s an absolutely staggering amount of beer out there. Probably should’ve just stuck to my usual pint, would’ve been a lot simpler, and definitely easier on the old brain trying to remember all those names.
