winding down

Time just flies, that bastard.  Maybe it's fitting that the last place I had time to stop in is called Zlý Časy.  It doesn't look like there's much to it from the street, but it's much bigger than it appears.  It's not like a Tardis or anything, it just has room after room of tables, and several small bars on different levels.  Each area is cozy enough, and there's a nice patio - except today the neighbors seem to be doing some loud work.  Still looks nice.

Šnezova dark lager looked pretty good for an afternoon, although in the glass it's not particularly dark looking.  It's not especially strong in aroma, and the flavor is also very mild.  It's just a touch of bitter which disappears rapidly, none of the Central European grain- or grassiness.  For the most part it's a quiet and unassuming beer, a little bitter buildup at the back of the throat.  While it looks bubbly, and was very foamy from the tap, it has a very smooth texture.  A weirdly fruity taste starts to develop after a while, sort of banana-like.  I am pretty sure this is not a witbier, or has anything to do with that style.  It's not a distraction, really, although it is an odd thing to notice.  Still nice and relaxing overall.

flashback

So, there's another Bad Flash bar, not in an inconvenient location.  I thought I should visit them too, since I'm here and all.  The selection was similar, as was the decoration, although not quite the same.  Not as many mirrors, for one thing.

The stout from last time was there, but a black IPA can be about as good for me.  Bad Flash Black List could fool you into thinking it's a stout if all you go on is sight.  It has a real IPA aroma, though, tingly, hoppy, bright and citrusy.  There's kind of a burnt orange flavor, mostly smoky with a hint of sweet orange underneath.  A little heavy for an IPA, probably because of the toastiness, but generally smooth.  Well, the beginning of the sip is smooth anyway, the biting IPA presence comes roaring out pretty quickly.  Still, it's a good balance of sharp-sour IPA and smoky black beer, a bit more weight on the ale.  By the end of the glass it has distilled into a rather mild IPA, relinquishing a lot of the smoke from the beginning.  The flavor stays dark, quite pleasant even for a warm evening.

Next I had something on the lighter side, BF/Thornbridge Hoppy Lager.  It's a good beery color, like honey, with a light and somewhat thin foam on top.  Not terribly aromatic, a little bit of a hoppy funk and an underlying graininess.  Smells like a lager, really.  There's a surprisingly dark and even spicy bitterness in the flavor, not the bland grassy sweet the scent had led me to expect.  I find it peppery, with a fairly dry hoppy background.  It doesn't take long to settle down into a more typical lagery presentation, with a bitter front end blending into a sweeter, grainier tail.  Even as the taste falls into a general beeriness the smell remains a little prickly, even devilish, with a hint of sulfur.

While I was there they tapped a stout, so that couldn't go untasted.  Bad Flash Torpid Mind Die-Hard Imperial Stout is beautiful in the glass, with a fine dark color and a light beige head of good consistency.  The aroma is a little sour and wild, slightly fruity.  Like a chocolate raisin bar, maybe.  There is a definite bit of chocolate in the taste, but fruitiness follows right along, kind of a dried fruit I'd say.  It's not soft and subtle enough to be plummy, there's certainly a higher note to it.  Maybe grapey?  It keeps the sour chocolate flavor with a little bit of typical stout earthy bitter resting on top.  It's a snappy and attention grabbing stout, on the arrogant side even, but within reason.

There are some waiters who do their jobs very well, maybe even too well.  I was ready to leave, but got talked into one for the road, Zichovec Jane's Paradise APA.  I feel like it's nice to leave on a lighter note anyway.  The aroma is very aley, hoppy, a little pick-me-up.  The taste is citrusy, of course, but quite light.  It's fairly typical for a pale ale, although I get a bit of clove in there too.  Very nice to finish a night on.  Or begin, I guess.  It looks like I forgot to get a picture of it; enjoy the decoration of the bar instead!

Of course, when you're done drinking you have to walk home.  Or to the bus stop.

no acid

 My saga of good beer bars continues with an afternoon in Bad Flash.  There are actually two bars by the name (same place, different locations) and this one was a little more convenient to get to after class.  The other might be better for the weekend.  There's a respectable selection of beers on tap, mostly varieties of ale, but but there was also a stout!  Yippee!

No cool punny name for it, just BF/Kamenice stout.  It's a rich dark brown, with a vanilla-looking head.  The aroma is mildly sour, somewhat milky, but not spoiled.  The most noticeable part of the taste is the bitter, but it isn't terribly strong.  It's just little hints of coffee and a small poof of dark chocolate in the aftertaste.  It feels powdery somehow, although it still goes down smoothly enough.  The bitter starts to flatten out after about half the glass, leaving more of a milk chocolate sensation, nothing too sweet, fortunately.  It's also not a sticky or syrupy stout, just a basic black beer.  The feel is constant to the end, slightly dusty but otherwise clean and not clingy on the way down.  A real fine specimen.

Since I was there, it seemed like a waste to have just one.  Maybe something lighter to end on.  But not too much lighter...amber ale?  There's BF Zley Blesk American Amber Ale, so yeah.  This beer is a lovely rusty toast color, head about the same as on the stout.  The scent is sharper, sweeter, more citrusy.  It's not spicy like an IPA, but snappy and summery.  The taste has a good balance of bitter and sweet, making a refreshing drink.  Smooth oranginess washes over first with a seasonal flare, but a firm base of bitter is there to keep things under control.  It's also a clean flavored beer, not much lingering or stickiness.  The citrusy sweet stays at the heart of the taste, surrounded by a thin skin of pithy bitterness.  There's also a tad of sour, also leaning toward a citrus source.

Outdoor seating

Comfortable chairs

Lots of mirrors

Dog friendly, if that's a thing you need

familiar

While lots of beer stores in Madrid have taps, not all of them have separate stores and bars.  Well, none of them really.  That is, they don't share names.  Beer Geek, however, has its bar on one street and the beer store just a couple blocks away, and the store has taps too.  It's the familiar set-up, with all the shelves rattling full of bottles of many lands, including Edge Brewing, the lone representative of Spain that I saw.  I'm not quite in a position to be hauling bottles around at the moment, so I have to settle for a drink in situ.

Both taps were Czech beers, number one being Matuška pale lager.  It has a classic color and good white head, with a slightly grainy smell.  There is a strong grain taste, a bit sweet at first, then bitter oozes up from the bottom.  It's a also a tad sting-y, and sticks around at the back of the mouth and the top of the throat.  It's a robust kind of lager, deeper bitter than the standard varieties, and despite developing some tolerance for the bitterness, I find it never goes away entirely.  The graininess descends into a mild sour after a few minutes, although the level of sourness remains pleasant to the end.

Skol!

With time on my hands I went ahead and had a little of the other beer on tap too.  The Norwegian dude sitting at the counter seemed to think it should be taken off the menu to be enjoyed privately.  This was a Sibeeria creation, so a good brewery, and a session IPA, so not too much on top of the lager.  Léto (so appropriate) is a cloudy, lemony color, very thick headed, foam slow to dissipate.  It has a zippy light citrus scent, not overly orangey.  There is a stab of orange at first sip, but it quickly scatters into a rolling and very mild bitter.  It's an unassuming and fleeting flavor, clean drinking, very nice for a steaming summer day.  Probably on the light side for less oppressive weather, though.  Léto looks more like a NEIPA to me than Join, or Die did. It develops just a hint of identifiably lemony aroma, but actually gets less flavorful as time goes on.  Now, it could be due to some overloading of the taste buds, but this particular beer goes more watery than most I'm used to.  It was a damn good start, though.

little mysteries

The bartender at BeerGeek kindly gave me some recommendations for more places to explore for craft beer, one of them being Malý/Velký.  It's actually fairly convenient, being towards the other end of the nearby streetcar 22.  No transportation transfers!

It was a little strange to walk into.  The placard is in the street (which is in the midst of roadwork) and the sign is on the door, but it looks like you're just walking into an office building or something.  Then I saw a tiny mark on the far wall - M/V -> - which sent me past the door to the kitchen of the restaurant next door, and down a flight of stairs.  The bar is actually down there, quite cozy.  No flights here, so I just had to choose a couple.

First was Falkon Metropolitan session IPA.  It has a good color, slightly rusty, low head.  There's a clearly orange tendency in the aroma, but it's really not overwhelming.  There's not much spice to speak, in comparison with, say, All Day.  It's mostly a mild citrus sweetness.  The flavor is also a solid orange citrus, with barely any bitter at all.  That mostly comes out in the aftertaste.  It has rather a thick texture in the mouth, kind of rolls slowly through and down the throat.  It's a subdued sort of beer, while enjoyable.  It has good flavor but without complexity, easy to drink without feeling like you need to keep an eye on how many ingredients you can count.

I was in the "garden" at first, although I went inside after finishing the Metropolitan.  Just too hot outside, even in a patio.  There was a decrepit wooden floor out there, with one hole already in it, and shortly before I left a guy came and sat down in a chair on that wood and punched another hole in it.  Nobody seemed to be surprised or upset though, even him.

The previously existing hole

I was intrigued by Herr Axolotl, the raspberry Berliner Weisse.  That's not what I got though.  I'm not sure what it was, but it was not the pinkish beer that I think it should have been.  It was instead lemony and cloudy in color, not very aromatic.  There was an identifiable banana taste, but no raspberry whatsoever, very smooth and almost creamy.  It was something of a fruit cocktail sort of beer, although I guess it could have been a take on a Belgian witbier (none of the listed breweries for the taps were actually Belgian).  There was a little kick at the back of the throat, which wasn't quite citrusy in feel, but with some sharpness.  It wasn't a bad beer, especially on a sweltering summer night, but I'll be damned if I can tell you quite what it was.

Mystery!

geeking out

One of the most promising names on the list of potential beer places was Beer Geek.  How could you not love that?  It's a little bit of a journey, but simple enough to get there, and it's right across the street from the metro exit.  30 taps!  A good number of them are national craft beers too.  Ah, familiar ground!  I went for a flight, thinking that would be the best way to get a range of flavors without loading up too much on the alcohol before a long trip back.  I mostly managed to get different breweries too.

The H11 was still calming down.  Each beer got a photo on Beer In One Word

First up was Antoš Chocholáč pineapple gose.  It's pale, with a slight head, not much pineapple noticeable in the aroma.  The gose sour is there, but a second sniff reveals a little more fruit.  It does not, however, have a great deal of pineapple flavor.  It's dry, with a champagne-like feel, tart with an underlying bitter.  I can't quite pick out the pineapple at first, but it's a nice snappy day drink.  After a few minutes warming up though, there's pineapple to spare.

Next, Hendrych H11 pale lager.  Still starting off light.  It's a more typical beer color, and very foamy out of the tap but the head dies back pretty quickly.  Normal lager aroma, a bit sweet and grainy, with sort of an oaty background to it.  The taste hits with a strong bitter on top but gentle grassiness underneath, very much a Central European beer in that regard.  I find it a bit strong flavored for casual sipping, odd for a lager, but H11 is a strong contender to accompany an evening of brooding.

I was looking forward to seeing the take on NEIPA with Sibeeria's Join, or Die.  Similar in color to the lager, but with a much brighter aroma, citrusy and spicy.  The taste isn't as juicy as previous NEIPA's I've had, but a strong citrus flavor is present, very smooth and sort of creamy.  There's also a touch of bitterness, but it seems to be hiding in the background.  While not as singular as, say, La Quince's Green Mind, it's quite alright, except for the little flowery poof it develops when it warms up.  That's more like Valverde, no NEIPA at all.

Moving on, there was Cobolis Bavorská Pšenice dunkels weissbier.  Now we're getting a little more color.  It's ruddy and a little cloudy, something like a red ale, but the aroma is different altogether.  It strikes me as bacon/hammy.  The first sip is sweet, but then the smoked meat starts to bleed through, and it seems to be a bit oily in the mouth.  There's also a sour flavor that floats up from the sweet and makes a kind of bridge between the "vegetable" and "meat" flavors.  It's not what I expected, and I don't think I'll be in any hurry to try it again.

The last of the flight was another Sibeeria, Polární Noc Imperial Stout.  It'll be good to get that dunkels out of my mouth.  The beer is a good dark color, opaque black, dark beige head, not too strong of an aroma, perhaps a little touch of licorice.  With one sip there's an explosion of smoke and dirt (in the good way!) in the mouth, giving up a rounded sort of bitterness.  Again, there's something kind of hiding behind the main stage flavor, maybe peeking out from behind the scenery.  This time it's that sweetish licorice.  The stout earthiness does its best to upstage it though, and for the most past succeeds, which is perfectly satisfactory to my taste buds.

I couldn't resist one more stout before I left, and All-Stars Pizza Port Night Surfer was something new for me.  It's an oatmeal milk stout, so not too heavy just before hopping into the metro.  This beer is also nice and opaque, with just a little bit of light at the bottom of the glass.  The head is off-white, but not too resistant.  It has a very smoky taste for a milk stout, perhaps a bit of coffee mixed in, but I find it a bit clingy to in the throat.  Doesn't go down quite as cleanly as that Polární Noc.  Still, it's a flavorful and tasty stout, balanced in its bitterness, and goes to the bottom of the glass with no surprises.  What else do you want, really?

not so flowery

I was searching for suggestions for craft beer online and there are just lists and lists and lists.  Now, most of them center on places in the center, which may be good, or may be touristy.  At least U tři růží boasts of their own product.  There are even some tanks near the bar.  Hard to tell if they're in use, though.

It's still excessively summery, so I don't feel too bad about doing without my beloved black beer.  In fact, a light ale might really be a pick-me-up.  They have a Summer Ale right on the menu, like it's meant to be.  There's a soft citrus scent, but the taste is really quite bitter.  A little bit of sweet pokes up but mostly stays hidden.  It is an energizing beer, with a very lively feel on the tongue.  A bit of sour develops in the aftertaste after a few minutes and a few sips, but overall it's a clean-tasting beer, well-suited to a bright and unpleasantly sunny day.  Savored from indoors, of course.

I got a salad, since it was going to be a while before supper, and the two complemented each other pretty well.  The sourness of the beets and their crisp texture were calmed by the bitterness of the ale, a little surprisingly, and the beer itself lost some sharpness to the salad.  I think the Summer Ale might be a little too perky by itself, it really seems to benefit from a pairing with food or a snack.  As a conversation beer it could be a little distracting at first.  Not bad for a broiling afternoon!

(I forgot to get a picture of the outside.  Will remedy this week)

neighborly

Nothing like a brewery down the street to make you feel welcome in the neighborhood!  Well, Břevnovský Klášter isn't actually just a brewery, it's an old monastery.  Naturally, there's beer being made in a religious building, how could you expect anything else?  The monastery dates from the end of the 10th century, so quite some history behind it, but the brewing done today is of modern style.  While there are the typical lagers, there is also a black beer and an IPA on tap.  I know what I feel like today (and always)

So, the Benedict černé looks alright, it's a nice dark brown, although not quite opaque at the bottom.  The head is fluffy but thins out pretty fast.  The aroma is stouty, a little earthy with a touch of sour underneath.  It has a good smoky flavor with a bitter scratchiness at the end, no sticky sweetness, but it's awfully thin in the mouth for a dark beer.  Something like a hint of chocolate starts to build up, but it never quite comes out in the open.  It's actually rather nice for a summer black beer in that it isn't heavy in any way - light feel, light flavor - well, ok, the color is pretty dark.  I got a little snack with my beer, some delicious grilled cheese.  The two went very well together, no clashes of bitter beer with salty or oily cheese.  The beer is also a nice complement to the sweet jelly.  I can't remember what kind it was, maybe raspberry?

While a little disappointed with the lack of substantialness, it is a nice enough beer.  I'll probably have to go check out that IPA, since it's right down the street.

Might as well see the entrance

on the runway

How can you not just pick up everything you see in the land of beer?  Mostly lack of arm space, I think.  It's early days here, so I haven't had a chance to roam out looking for beer shops, which I believe do exist.  If I've been misinformed, there are certainly craft beer bars.  For lack of other avenues, the supermarket is always a last resort.  I have to settle for cans at the moment too, since it seems unnecessary to splurge on a bottle opener, and there's a can front and center that looks like a good start.  Braník, product of Staropramen, ought to be an easing into beers of the area, nothing too fancy just yet.

Indeed, very light colored, fluffy head but rapidly disappearing head.  Sweet and fruity aroma, a bit appley.  Bitter taste at first, but some sweet washes over.  The tail end goes back to bitter, but nothing very powerful.  It's a very easy going beer, would have been good with the spaghetti at dinner in fact.  It's very regular, not changing at all in flavor over time, really.  Although it's not a very attention grabbing beer, it is a nice one to have on a disgustingly warm evening, waiting for the place to cool down.  Other than that aspect, there's not a whole lot going for it in terms of memorability.

Hopefully there will be more experimental things to come.

keep your grip

Be Hoppy has a great variety of super looking beers, unfortunately a bit more expensive than many other craft beers.  I have to watch my pocket in the summer.  In times of plenty, I really ought to come down more.  I found a sort of middle point in Haand Bryggeriet's Raspberry Export Stout, as it's a different sort of beer than I often find but not too expensive for me these days.  Several other stouts were tempting, but in the end the raspberries convinced me.  Love my stouts and love me some raspberries too.  I'll be drinking raspberry Fanta soon enough, but I digress.

Ghost fingers?

There's a mild tangy raspberry smell that wafts off the glass, out of a light beige and fairly thick head.  The beer is dark chocolate in color more than black.  Still good and opaque, though.  The taste is a bit bitter, but light and goes down easy.  I was expecting a stronger sweetness, but there really isn't much, it's mostly bitter and earthy with a ping of sour in the aftertaste.  It feels oddly dusty in the mouth, but still refreshing.  Eventually a bit of chocolate incorporates itself into the middle of the flavor, adding that touch of sweetness to balance out the sour.  It comes out in an after-aftertaste too.  A good quarter of the glass down I start to get a little woodiness as well, not drowning out anything else, but adding a different note to the overall taste.  The song goes from low bitter to middle chocolate and high sour, ending with a descending chocolate fade.  The bitterness actually diminishes with time, leaving a fruitier beer, although still kind of fluffy.  It feels almost weightless, especially for a stout.  A fine choice for summer, offering the grounding of the dark beer with that airiness that fruity beers might aspire to.

Supplier: Be Hoppy
Price: €5.25