Nepo Brewing is another one of my favourite breweries with some quirky and intriguing beers. The brewery is located off towards Wrocław and they have been trading since 2014, now having their own taproom.
It was the mango sticky rice beer that caught my eye, I mean, what more could someone want from a beer? This was a special beer brewed just for the festival, a 6.8% punchy little number.
And this was the decadent treat that I hoped it would be. It was creamy, it had lots of mango, it was thick and slightly sweet. Delightful, and look at the lovely healthy colour.
I’m on something of a mission to eat at every Indian restaurant in Warsaw and I rarely repeat a visit, but this venue is located near to the stadium where Warsaw Beer Festival was taking place. As I had to pretty much walk by it to get back to the hotel, I thought that I might as well pop in.
It’s a comfortable and clean venue, with the temperature and lighting being appropriate. I won’t drone on for too long about the restaurant as I wrote about it when I visited with my friend Richard a few years ago.
Their favoured beer was Żywiec Białe, which was certainly agreeable to me. This is a wheat beer with a gentle and light flavour, although that transpired to be a little bit knocked about by the curry that I ordered.
I went for a chicken vindaloo and it had a decent amount of spice to it, with the chicken being tender. The curry had a richness of flavour, the rice was fluffy and the naan bread had some texture to it.
I considered this to be a second positive experience at the restaurant with friendly service, a clean environment, reasonable prices and decent food and drink.
I haven’t had any beers from Green Head before, but they seemed to be attracting some considerable interest at Warsaw Beer Festival. They were founded in 2018 and their brewery is located roughly half-way between Warsaw and Gdansk.
The beer that seemed to be drawing the most attention from the brewery was “I’m Green” and I note that it was pretty much the same colour as the football pitch. It was a quirky beer, gently sour, a tropical taste and I’m not entirely sure that the colouring was particularly natural, but there we go. I like beers that are a little different and although this isn’t the first green beer that I’ve had, they don’t come along often. I can’t imagine why not….
I visited this stand every day of the Warsaw Beer Festival, not in a stalking sense, but their beer range did change every day and I didn’t want to miss out too much. I consider Funky Fluid to be the best brewery in Europe, so this was always something that was likely to surprise and delight me.
The selection on the first day.
This is a pizza from one of the food trucks and it was very delicious. But, that’s not the highlight here, it’s the already mostly drunk Batch #1000 from the brewery. They gave me this free as it ran out whilst pouring, so that was a bonus. Anyway, this is their 1,000th recipe and this verged on being one of the best beers that I’ve had, up there with Goose Island and their Bourbon County Stouts. It was smooth, even at the 13.5% ABV and it had sherry notes, toffee, dark chocolate, bourbon and it was beautifully decadent. And the pizza complemented it beautiful.
And a quick mention of the Gelato XTREME : Banana, Mango & Yuzu. I mentioned this Craig from Norwich beer festival as I think more beers need yuzu in them. I’m not sure that he was convinced. Anyway, it was thick, creamy with heaps of banana and mango. Decadent, quirky and moreish, as well as being a challenge for the next brewery to try and clean that glass.
Anyway, always a delight to see Funky Fluid and to try several of their beers.
I had to start somewhere and this year’s beer festival started at Browar Moczybroda. They’re from Poznań and I’ve had a couple of their beers before in Poland, both of which were decent. This was about as quiet as the three-day festival was, so I took advantage of that. The brewery have been trading since 2018, although I don’t think that they have a taproom in Poznań.
I was pleased that they had plastic glasses as I didn’t want to try and get an actual glass back on Wizz Air. These cost £1 and they are refundable, but I’ve kept mine. The beer is the Jack Mangow, a 7% DIPA, which had a robust mango taste, it was juicy and I’m convinced that this was healthy. A very decent start to the weekend.
After a brief stay in Łódź, I went to get my train to Warsaw at the rather impressive Łódź Fabryczna railway station. This was heavily modernised in 2016 and it still looks in a decent state of repair. it first opened in 1866 as the terminus of the line linking Łódź with Koluszki, helping drive the city’s rapid industrial growth.
There has been a large investment into the Polish rail network over the last decade and these spacious, open and welcoming railway stations have been established in many cities. They might lack the heritage of the original station, but they do feel modern.
There’s my train, the 13:34.
Down to the platforms which go off for some way in both directions.
And here we are, the train was already waiting for passengers at the other end of the platform. This is one of the regional trains operated by Łódzka Kolej Aglomeracyjna (ŁKA).
It’s only about an hour’s journey into Warsaw and although it got a little busy, there was still plenty of space. As usual, there were plenty of power points and numerous tables. The journey was relaxed, with, yet again, no-one putting their feet on the seats or playing music loudly. Another joy to behold…
And safely into Warszawa Zachodnia (Warsaw West), which has been completely transformed over the last couple of years, but more of that in another post. That meant I was safely in Warsaw and ready to quickly check-in to my hotel and then head to the Warsaw Beer Festival.
I’ve stayed at this Accor operated Ibis hotel twice before but that was over eight years ago and I was pleased that this hotel hasn’t bothered with the new Ibis rooms, as I’m one of those who prefers the old style. I suspect that there will be an investment soon, as I’m not sure that they’re had a renovation in a decade.
This design adds some character to the whole arrangement, I like it.
The room, and I was given a larger one which had three sets of windows. I feel that city noise adds to the authenticity of a night’s stay, so I opened all of those windows straight away.
The welcome gift, this was delicious. I like welcome gifts.
The hotel’s bar area.
I didn’t eat at the hotel’s restaurant, but for my hundreds (well, two) excited readers, here’s what I could have had.
My welcome drink was Żywiec Białe and I managed to confuse the very helpful member of staff. She didn’t speak much English, although they had nearby staff that could, so I ordered this beer in my bestest Polish. Unfortunately, their standard beer on draft is Żywiec and she thought I was trying to order that, but my beautiful Polish tripped off my tongue after the third go and all was well. On that note, the team members here were all very personable, it all adds to the atmosphere.
Cheeses, meats and the various salad type options. There were some hot breakfast options, but they looked a bit rustic for my liking.
The bread selection and the little croissants.
That’s a smoked cheese and I kept going back for that, it was unusually decent and went rather well with the tomatoes. I can definitely do healthy, especially with that mango smoothie thing at the side. The selection was quite broad and I liked that the breakfast area wasn’t that busy.
The Novotel is next door and is a bit too decadent for me, although Richard would have merrily booked in there. Although, I noted that it was actually full the night that I was staying, which made choosing that bit easier.
The hotel night cost £42 (actually less as I used reward points) including breakfast, which I thought was perfectly good value for money. I’ve missed this city, I’d like to come back sooner rather than later. And, as I mentioned, I don’t dislike that they haven’t modernised much recently.
Next on the list for Łódź was this mix of cafe, board game centre and craft beer bar. It opened in 2022 and appears to have built up a quite a loyal following of customers since then.
The craft beer list and the team member was friendly, engaging and personable. It’s a nicely balanced beer list with a range of styles in there with 13 keg lines and a selection of bottles.
Some of the board game selection, although I didn’t investigate them as I thought being on my own reduced the excitement of them slightly.
There’s no shortage of board games, the bar is there on the right. It’s noted that there particular times when staff teach customers certain games, it all sounds really rather social.
The beer is a collab between Funky Fluid and Vault City, two of my favourite breweries. The beer is the Gelato XTREME : Crema which is a punchy 8% pastry sour which has flavours of banana, vanilla and peach. Rounded, smooth and pure decadence.
The venue had a rather nice atmosphere, there was a friendly welcome and they had an interesting selection of beers. All really rather lovely and a proper community atmosphere.
On my walk from the railway station to the city centre, I noticed this rather impressive derelict building. I’m not brave enough to be an urban explorer, but it’s one of many buildings that are left in ruins in the city which was once an industrial heartland and powerhouse.
And a rather better view of the frontage. Adam Osser’s factory grew out of his cotton business, with the spinning mill built in 1903 for Majer Feinkind, Albert Jarociński and Adam Osser, who later took control himself. After damage in the First World War, production was restored, and in 1923 the business was turned into a joint-stock company. Like so many factories in Łódź, it then lived several different lives, textile production first, wartime conversion by the Germans to aircraft and car parts, then the communist-era continuation of that mechanical profile under the name Polmo.
After the factory collapsed in roughly the mid 1990s, the site drifted into ruin, was looted, and even lost its former office building to arson and demolition. All very sub-optimal. There were plans in 2018 to revive the place with offices, services, research functions and a hotel, but they came to nothing, leaving it as another of Łódź’s splendid and broken monuments to industrial ambition. There is a lot of money coming into the city, so it’s perhaps just a matter of time before something is done with this site.
I might not be an urban explorer, but there are photos on this website of braver people who are.
This is the mural painted by Eduardo Kobra in 2014, commemorating the life of the locally born Arthur Rubinstein (1887-1982). He was a great patriot, although when he was born the city was part of the Russian Empire.
And here’s what the mural looked like in 2018 when I was last in the city. It’s only lost a little vibrancy and is certainly a very noticeable artwork.
