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San Diego, California, USA: Best Damn Beer Shop and no bull. You have to have a huge amount of self confidence – or possibly hubris – to name your business the best damn anything. But Sid and Omar Mikhail clearly have the knowledge, youthful enthusiasm and determination to set false modesty aside and […] Abbaye des Saveurs, Lille A major interchange on the fast rail routes connecting England, Belgium and the Netherlands with France, Lille is the sort of place you remember primarily for passing through. Many a Belgian-bound British beer enthusiast will have found themselves hastily clearing up the formerly empty seat next to them for […] Shopfront at the Beermongers, Portland, Oregon, USA Portland, Oregon, is a beautiful, prosperous, civilised inland port city straddling the Willamette river. Looking west from the riverside, across a fine strip of parks and beyond the traffic calmed city centre with its free public transport, elegant squares and compact walkable blocks, thickly wooded slopes […] First published in Beers of the World June 2009 Westholme Stores, Goring-on-Thames — not your average local Londis. Beer writing is full of unexpected pleasures – such as finding oneself in a pretty English village interviewing the owner of one of the best-stocked beer retailers in the region over a plate of homemade […] The Lade Inn and Scottish Real Ale Shop, Kilmahog, Callander, Scotland A couple of decades ago, a Scottish Real Ale Shop would have sounded like a preposterous joke. Though Scotland boasted notable historic brewing centres such as Alloa and Edinburgh, in the post-war period Scottish brewers moved further and faster with consolidation and […] First published in Beers of the World April 2009 mi orge mi houblon I’m particularly proud of this piece as it was the first time I interviewed someone in a language other than English. Christophe Gillard speaks English more than well enough to offer assistance to the international customers in his shop, but […] First published in Beers of the World, February 2009 Bierkraft: Sometime in New York City… “Gourmet Grocery and Beer Emporium” reads the strapline atop Bierkraft, one of several specialist shops that cluster in Brooklyn’s leafy Park Slope neighbourhood, and the beer emporium of your imagination may very well look something like this. The […] First published in Beers of the World, February 2009 La Cerveteca, Barcelona Catalunya may be some way south of Europe’s “beer belt” and its Penedès vineyards may have a well-earned place in world wine guides, but this corner of the northern Mediterranean is also the heartland of Spain’s industrial revolution. In the mid-19th […] First published in Beers of the World December 2008 La cave à bulles, Paris Regular readers will already know that not all French beer comes from multinational-owned Alsatian fizz factories, but even if you’ve encountered the odd bière de garde or Breton brew, you probably have little idea of the scope and breadth […] First published in Beers of the World October 2008 De Bierkoning bierwinkel, Amsterdam Amsterdam has always had a good line in pubs with its celebrated bruine cafés oozing traditional gezelligheid (cosiness, homeliness). But a couple of decades ago you’d have been lucky to find anything other than a foaming but bland Dutch pils […] |
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