People, passion, place

We’ve been all over the world in search of the best brews for Beer52 members – a quest that’s taken us from Pyongyang to Pretoria to Peterhead – and have been lucky enough to experience the full range of distinct cultures that contribute to the global craft beer movement. 

So, what exactly do we mean when we talk about a “great beer city”? Great breweries are a must, of course, as are great pubs and bars. But individually, they’re only parts of the wider picture; an ecosystem of beers, people, places and ideas that make a city and its culture truly distinctive. 

To use a music analogy, some of the best songs ever written have been one-hit wonders, while there are plenty of classic albums that don’t feature a single song that has topped the charts in its own right. The cities featured in this issue are complete albums – albeit albums that hopefully also contain several standout tunes.

But what are the magic ingredients that make a beer city great? Generally, we’ll see the breweries within that city interacting with each other in some meaningful way. Sometimes, this will mean mutual support, working together to promote each other and the city, on the logic that – as the old cliché goes – a rising tide lifts all ships. Elsewhere, it will mean an exciting friction between old and new, or between mainstream and exotic, where breweries push one another to new heights of success and creativity.

Grass roots interest in beer and brewing is another key piece of the puzzle. As well as festivals and beer clubs, this almost always involves an active local homebrew scene. As much as craft brewing has professionalised in recent years, with the rise of internationally recognised qualifications and apprenticeships, by far the most common tale among newly minted craft brewers is of a garage hobby run out of control. These creative, self-motivated individuals will already be deeply rooted in the local scene, with connections to their peers, to pubs, to the wider culture.

Which brings us onto the fact that great beer also almost always lives with other great cultural products, whether that’s other forms of booze, exceptional food, exciting theatre and music, or a heady combination of all these things in one place. Fundamentally then, a great beer city has something important to say, and its craft scene provides a window onto this wider culture, place and people. Particularly for the traveller, beer becomes an expression and celebration of the other things that make the city distinctive.

This month’s box celebrates these cities, with a small taster of what we believe makes them special, and a selection of beers that we believe sum up their unique beer cultures. We’ve focused purely on great European beer cities, though there are plenty more we could have included, not to mention our many favourites outside of Europe. This is a theme we’ll definitely revisit again in future boxes, so don’t be too distraught if your favourite didn’t make the selection this time round; get in touch and tell us where we should head next.