BrewPub 360 Recap
Every meetup in this series looks to explore Barcelona’s growing BrewPubs. These places brew ales, beer, larger, bitters and stouts. It was my aim to show that to get great quality beer associated with expat bars, the local smaller breweries are offering great taste sensations.
Our route took us to different and historic brewery venues. It also took us over the three main BrewPub types - the Beerhall / Restaurant, BrewPub Shop and Tapas, finally BrewPub and Brewery plus tapas live music venues.
The first visited was CocoVall Barcelona’s first (and probably only) varied beer type beer hall. The city’s la Oveja Negra has a beer hall vibe, but does not have varied beer types. Second the Growler was a brewpub / shop, the third, La Cervesa Artesana we planned to visit was Barcelona’s first BrewPub.
We had a lot of sign-ups for the event. In the end we were joined by CL2017 and CL2018 attendees and new local guides. Anna @AnnaBcn , Laura @Laofdez Elaina @Elenkies, Jordi @GeorgeBrown Daniel and myself finally attended. We spoke English, Catalan and Spanish during the event.
WHAT WENT DOWN AT COCOVALL
A large venue with a mixed clientele. It is located in the heart of the tourist district a stones throw from city’s Gaudí building - Casa Batlo. There’s a wide selection of most beer types.
The food offerings were very varied with a distinct Northern American influence. This caught the interest of the group. Various snacks and few beers went down well.
The place was very vibrant and very popular. There were a lot of board games but tables were a little cramped and very busy. We were fortunate enough not to have a larger group as there wasn’t a lot of free seating space.
OLIVES AT THE GROWLER
Our next stop was a smaller brewpub and cold tapas bar. The ambience was very chilled out, with a very homey feeling. We ordered a round of drinks and their yummy spicy olives. The place was not too packed and the bar tender was nice, but he was a little unsure what we were doing with the tripods. We explained, but I could see he was a little hesitant. So we took discrete photos. When we were leaving he had come around and was really interested in what we were doing as local guides and invited us back to do photos.
Time flew very quickly at the bar. We saw a wanted poster for a guy who looked a lot like a certain Google Moderator Paul. Perhaps he beat us first to the location and made it dry ?
CHANGE OF PLAN
As a final plan for people wanting to hang on we thought to goto a restaurant last. We were all pretty famished and so we decided to passby the last pub, and goto a nice Indian restaurant next to it. We agreed to give it a visit at a future time. We passed it. Here’s how it looks!
The Indian restaurant was a success. There were a lot of plates our group hadn’t tried.
The service was really friendly. The waiter told us how to eat raw chillies and even put some in tempura. It was very good value and we all left in very high spirits.
It was a great success as a lot of the group molded and we suggested future local guide Barcelona meet up themes.
Barcelona’s BrewPubs In Context
In the early 2000’s the city had a lot smaller selection of varies brew types outside pilsner, larger and beer. Those which offered stout and bitter were distinct to expat U.K. and Southern Ireland theme sports bars.
Nowadays pubs offering similar beer types are owned by national and international owners. They have a very distinct character to expat bars.
There’s a new national hops fermentation has grown in quality and scope. There is a fashion for more gourmet and beer quality, not necessarily quantity.
Nowadays local brewpub produce matches bar or even betters, mass produced foreign lagers, bitters and stouts. There’s now a lot of breweries with an in situ bar where you can see the fermentation, while it ferments inside the customer ?
