CulturAle Press

BAV Dritta, Pale Ale/ Session Pale Ale, Birrificio Artigianale Veneziano, Greater Venice, Italy

Date:  December 20, 2018

The Story—   We talked about the Enoteca Al Volto yesterday.   It’s an easy walk from Venice’s best beer store, Beershop Venezia, and the nearby Black Forest Pub.   Al Volto cut its teeth on wine, but is emerging as a first rate place to try beers as well.

Italian city space is expensive.   a startup brewery is better off finding space for a brewery on the outskirts and hoping there are enough good beer bars to enable it to thrive.  It’s similar in the US – there are good beer bars in NYC, but few brewpubs.   Get out of downtown, though, say to Brooklyn and Queens, and there are plenty of places where a brewery can make it.   It’s tough for a tourist to get to those spots, but even harder to reach the outer areas of Venice.   Happily good beer bars on both sides of the pond save us driving and cabbing and give us more time for drinking.

The Beer—   A full body that belies it’s 4.5% but it also sports early and lasting rich oily citrusy hops.  Some metal and lots of citrus and citrus peel with just a touch of raw sugar before the lasting bitter.  Ellie thought it was a very good drinking SIPA, and she’s pretty picky.

Value — Good.   No cheapies in Venice.  Just get out your card and soak up the atmosphere.   You’re going to grouse about a nine buck pint draft?   What did you pay to get here and stay here?

This week we feature a half dozen really good European beers that we’ve found on both sides of the pond.   We make pilgrimages to some of the best beer stores in Eastern America once or twice a year and we also just bump into incredibly good beer in places we don’t expect.  Not all of these are on the shelves, but beers much like them are.  A few of our European greats are from places you don’t expect to find great beer as we move closer to publication of our European guide to great beer in “bad” beer cities.   (Planned publication 2019.)

Next week we’ll begin our countdown to the New Year with a list of our ten best beers of the last five years.  We’ve found them on both sides of the Atlantic and even a few in our back yard.  We’ve been lucky to find some of our favorite beers researching out first US Beer publication: Brews and Snooze-– Breweries you can visit and walk back to a fine place to spend the night.  Look for it in 2019.

About these posts:  We taste and evaluate over a thousand beers every year.  The beers posted here rank in the top quarter of those tastings.   Values:  “fair” is a good beer at an above market price, “good” is worth the money, “very good” is a bargain, and “excellent” is a steal.