I wouldn’t say that it’s easy to get craft beer in Vienna, but it is out there and hopefully it will grow in availability in future years. This is Beaver Brewing’s taproom, which was highly reviewed on-line, and it’s not too far from the city centre.
It was hot outside and that’s where most people were sitting whilst embracing the sun, but I wanted to sit inside in the cold and near a fan with all of its rotating excitement. There was a friendly welcome from the team member behind the bar and this felt like my sort of venue. I had just eaten at another bar, but the American food options looked tempting and interesting.
They had nine beers available and I asked if they did flights. I was surprised and delighted that they not only did flights, but I could have one with all nine beers. This saves me choosing (I don’t need all that sort of stress in my life), I thought that this was a good idea and it cost around £10 for the flight which I thought was very reasonable.
And here we are, all of these are from Beaver Brewing Company. The numbering is 1 to 9 with 1 to 4 on the back row, 5 to 8 on the front row and then number 9 on the far right.
(i) Happy Trails – this didn’t taste its ABV, it was light, hoppy with a touch of citrus and maybe some tree sap.
(ii) Sunny Day – a rounded hop flavour, light, clean and smooth.
(iii) Globetrottin’ – I’m not sure that I’ve actually had a proper Vienna lager before, I try and avoid anything lager related, but this is an innovative spin on this beer style using some global hops. Slight toffee, malt and sweetness to it, but my lager friends such as Ross would probably hate it.
(iv) Bharbara – for just 3.2% this is very good, with a suitable level of sourness and tartness, lots of rhubarb and refreshing.
(v) Forbidden Pils – the forbidden here refers to the use of rice, it’s sweet and I’d rather more pils used this as an ingredient.
(vi) Pomona NEIPA – there’s strawberry punching through here with the beer being creamy, fluffy, fruity and very smooth. A rather lovely NEIPA.
(vii) Fireside – malty, roasty, liquorice. Delightful even though it was a very hot day (I might have mentioned that it was too hot in Vienna).
(viii) Witches Brew – I was surprised that this had a low Untappd score, it’s herbal, floral and admittedly tastes of pot pourri, but innovation is of the key… This harks back to the historic of brewing before hops and I rather liked the innovation going on here.
(ix) Big Lake Lager – clean, crisp and inoffensive.
I very much liked this bar, I had a rather lovely 90 minutes or so here. The welcome was friendly, the surroundings were clean and informal, with an excellent beer selection. The standard of their craft beers was towards the higher end of the scale, with some real innovation and experimentation going on here.