Everyone wants more. Check out any of the multiple beer chat boards on the Internet and you won’t have to search long to find someone complaining about the lack of diversity in their local beer markets, or railing about the difficulties they’re facing finding this beer or that one. Living in Toronto, I’ve been know to complain from time to time myself about the lack of brands available in my local stores.
But as a food and beverage writer, I also have the benefit of travel to broaden my beer horizons, seeing both the best in beer selection and the worst. And let me tell you, seeing the worst makes me pause to appreciate the relative abundance I have at my fingertips. Take, for example, Bucharest, Romania.
Having just returned from a few days in the Romanian capital, I can say without fear of contradiction that the depiction of Bucurestis as beer drinkers is spot on. Although there is much to be said about Romanian wine – “very good” and “surprisingly inexpensive” are two that spring to mind – the booming business in Bucharest bars and restaurants is in beer, mainly bottled beer. And let me pause right now to note that the best of the local brews I could find, the SABMiller-owned Ursus, is a fairly dry, well-hopped lager that I quite enjoyed. Timisoreana, from that same brewery, wasn’t bad, either.
The problem was that except for a couple of dark lagers crafted broadly in the Czech cerne tradition, pale lagers were about all there was available. Sure, if you flocked to one of the expat bars, like the Hilton’s historic and, I must admit, quite enjoyable English Bar, you can avail yourself of exotic draught brews like Guinness or Smithwicks, but for the general populace, pale lager was about as far as beer selection went. (For the record, I stuck to Ursus and Romanian brandy during my visit to the English Bar.) Worse still, the most heavily promoted and widely available brands weren’t the local brews, but international, mass market labels like Carlsberg, Gösser and Heineken.
So the next time you find yourself bemoaning the absence of this or that Belgian ale, or wishing that one of the five or six craft brewers in the region would come out with a new style, pause for a moment to thank the Beer Gods that you have more to choose from than do many, many thirsty Romanians. And then go on to press your local brewers and stores for more.
