A Quick Guide to Beer Lover's Paris

Check out this quick guide to beer hotspots in Paris! Very informative...

The Beer Advocate - Paris

Check out this informative website about beer in Paris. It's not thorough, nor is it updated very regularly, but it does have a few good links to some brewpubs and bars worth checking out if you find yourself thirsty for a pint while on holiday in Paris.

Happy Hour in Paris

It's Catching On

Microbrews in Paris

A friend of mine just recommended a shop in Paris (near les Halles) that sells French artisinal beers (Thanks K!). Check out the "Cave à Bulles" for a very large selection of French microbrews (who woulda thunk it)?

Hoegaarden

A weissbier, a whitebeer, a bière blanche, even a Hefeweizen would sound good attached to a bottle of Hoegaarden. It's really quite a lovely beer, and one that I first fell into on the Mediterranean coast.

Nostalgia's a funny thing...for me it was less about who I was with and what I was doing, more like where I was and what I was tasting. A Belgian beer on the Mediterranean coast might not seem logical, but I accidentally ordered a Hoegaarden at a café overlooking Nice's Marché des Fleurs. The lemon that was wedged into this white, wheat beer's tall glass made the sweet taste of summer wheat as delicious as lemonade used to be when you were young. But as an adult, you might be looking for something more complex. I regret to say that Hoegaarden isn't terribly complex as far as wheat beers go...you might compare it to Widmer with a little more subtlety. But what I like about it is its ability to transport me to a place I used to know, and a time I used to live.

My Blogs

http://allaboutsolarenergy.blogspot.com/
http://mostsearchedterms.blogspot.com/
http://barackobama2010.blogspot.com/
http://beerpeople.blogspot.com/
http://foodiesinparis.blogspot.com/
http://earn-some-dough.blogspot.com/
http://nelsonweddingphotos.blogspot.com/
http://crosschannelfriendships.blogspot.com/
http://ftap-guide.blogspot.com/
http://seinfeldtopfive.blogspot.com/
http://punditsareidiots.blogspot.com/
http://ftap-info.blogspot.com/
http://www.simmonsfields.com
http://www.renewablesolarinfo.com

The Frog and British Library

For the hangers-out at the BNF François Mitterand, this pub is very noticeable because you will pass it every day on your way from the Métro to the library (corner of Tolbiac and Avenue France). While most would agree that this pub is in a terribly un-Parisian neighborhood (tall, glass buildings recently built over dockyards and train tracks), the beer here is quite nice. Most of the beers are in an English or German style, but there names are a collection of jeu de mots, or play on words. InSeine (insane + Seine) is by far my favorite of the group. It’s a lightly hopped English amber ale with a mild, smooth introduction and a relatively malty finish. I have to admit, coming from California where hops and explosive flavors were the thing, I wasn’t quite used to the more mild and subtle taste of the classic English bitter (in the same way it takes getting used to the difference between Californian and French wines). However, the toned-down flavors do allow you to appreciate to quality of the malt and presence of grain rather than the overwhelming sense of sugars that come in the Californian variety.

The atmosphere is alright...you have the option of sitting out on the sidewalk, and even in the coldest of Parisian winter days there are people huddled outside enjoying a beer and a cigarette. On the inside, it’s a cross between a Starbucks, a French Brasserie, an English Pub and an American Sports Bar. Go figure that one out...They do offer a good selection of Football (Futbol, that is), Rugby and American Football games on big screens but if you’re not interested, you can settle into one of their armchairs and chat with your friends or read alone. The beers are a little expensive, to be sure, but their Happy Hour price of five euros/pint is worth the trip in a city where that’s about as cheap as you’ll find.


http://www.frogpubs.com/

Brewpubs in Paris? Say it's so...

As some of you may know, I’m currently out of the US on a research trip to Paris, France. The old stereotype about French beers and French beer drinkers are largely true, in that both of them suck. Seriously, so many people drink beer in Paris cafés, but they’ll take their little half-pints of Kronenbourg (the French equivalent of Budweiser) or Panaché, and nurse it for about an hour-and-a-half, at which point they’re happy to pay their three euros and leave. My father once told me, as a rule of thumb, that he never drank beers that came from the French parts of France...if they come from Alsace, Lorraine, or French Flanders than fine, but anything else is sacrilege. I couldn’t agree more.

Or, should I say, I couldn’t have agreed more. If you’re looking for a good French beer in the grocery stores, you’re out of luck. If, on the other hand, you’re willing to move beyond the grocery stores and the traditional French café/brasserie, you might be pleasantly surprised to find that the Microbrew revolution has finally made its amphibious assault on the shores of France.

It used to be that tourists who were looking for a good beer had to go to the numerous English/Irish pubs across town. My favorite was the Bombardier, Place du Panthéon in the 5th arondissement. It was always nice to get a hand-pumped bitter and sit outside on the terrace in front of the Pantheon and the St. Etienne-du-Mont (in itself a wild mixture of weird 16th and 18th century French architecture), but the 8 euro asking price sorta turned me off. Even the relative bargain of 5 euros during happy hour seems steep considering that some British pubs have lowered the price of a Pint to 99p (with the exchange rate being what it is for foreigners, that’s about 1.10 euro or $1.35). So my appetite for fresher, better and cheaper beer was tickled, and what will follow in the next few days is a critical analysis of some of the better brewpubs that I have run into here in the City of Lights.

Is it time to rediscover Heineken?

Before the craft-brew craze hit the United States (I’m relatively young, but I can still remember those days) Heineken was one of the only escapes open to the discerning beer drinker in the United States. It isn’t even that good, really, but it was something about the green bottle that screamed exotic and kept bringing people back to its green-bottle counterparts St. Pauli Girl and Beck’s. Fortunately we’re no longer subject to the tyranny of the green bottle, as the mico-brew revolution has ushered in the age of the brown bottle democracy; it remains to be seen how destructive the Civil War between West Coast and East Coast Brewers might be for American Beer History.

Back to the point...in Europe it’s much easier and much less expensive (relatively speaking) to get your hands on the old world’s equivalent to MGD, to I recently set out to re-evaluate my relationship with the old guard beer aristocracy. I was surprised to find that it wasn’t quite as mediocre as I remember, and there’s a lot to be said about an appreciation for Pilsner style lagers that have mostly been left behind by today’s craft brewers. It had a good introduction, lacked bitterness, and was surprisingly smooth going down. It doesn’t quite hit the spot the way Czech Pilsner’s like Urquel or Budveis do, but it’s highly preferable to its Dutch counterpart Amstel or the French mockery of Pilsner style beers like Kronenbourg or 1664 (not to mention the American macro-brewed lagers). So the next time you have a craving for an old worldly beer, give your old tyrannical master a second chance!

What's New in Beer?

Norman Miller has an excellent article previewing 2009 from the beer-lover's perspective:
http://www.heraldnews.com/entertainment/x512379652/Take-a-sneak-peek-into-09

Speaking of Belgians...

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Belgians Buy Budweiser

Colbert Report Full Episodes
Paul McCartney Appearance

Funny Political Videos
More Funny Videos

Grimbergen

So the craze for Belgian blondes has finally gone nationwide...Blue Moon seems to be the standard bearer for the corporately oriented US market. I know this because my parents' neighborhood in Baltimore County is corporate beer central, and I've never seen Hightopps more crowded than on $2 Blue Moon night. Honestly, I find the blondes (beer, that is) to be a little too sweet, so I generally turn it up a notch with an abbey style beer. You may be most familiar with Leffe, and so was I...that is, until my neighborhood liquor store was getting rid of cases of Grimbergen for $6 because of a shipping accident. I said, "Sure, why not?" I went in with no expectations, and found a beer that was generally balanced with a good malty flavor and a molasses aftertaste. If you're new to abbey style beers, be careful...after distillation they are aged in a controlled environment for several months to several years, the result is that they have a very mature flavor and a very high alchohol content. Anyhow, if there is any knock on Grimbergen, it's that it doesn't go down as smooth as a Leffe or a more traditional Belgian Abbey on draught might. But for the price, I couldn't beat it!