La Vie en Bière

Taking any massive city like Miami, London or Brussels in its entirety is just too daunting. As a visitor one can race around trying to see all the iconic buildings and museums and end the holiday more tired than when it began and with a camera full of the same pictures that all tourists have taken. We argue instead that beer is a fantastic way to structure one’s time in a metropolis.

Often not keen on taking in only museums and monuments, we have lived La Vie en Bière for two years and found it an amazing way to enrich our travels. We continue to visit new countries and cities, finding unique locally specific beers, have found a warm and inviting community and have tasted beers that were both surprising and delicious.

Beer is embracing local ingredients whether it’s the taste and chemistry of local water, the “wild” yeasts used for a sour beers, the malts or hops grown in the region or more commonly the adjuncts of local fruits or spices that make beer a kind of local beer ecology (beercology?). While Budweiser and many other big brewers want a completely generic product that could be brewed anywhere in the world, many brewers are experimenting with and discovering local beer styles even if they are far from hop and barley-producing areas. Many of these craft beers will only be available in that city. Get them while you can because it might be your only chance.

Beyond sampling an ever growing number of delicious local beers, the beer community provides a Cheers-esque welcome the world over. If you’re at all interested in beer or already are a seasoned suds seeker, brewers, shop attendants, servers and almost everyone working in the craft beer world is willing to discuss the ever growing world of beer. There is little if any condescension or snobbery in the beer community, instead it is full of warm, talkative people.

While Plato’s characters in the Symposium soared to great philosophical heights after having consumed no small amount of wine, beer does just as well. No barstool bard has yet revealed to me the many of life (if such a thing exists). Instead, you will learn a lot about on how they see their city changing as breweries are not often located near marquee attractions. Conversations often wander into the state of the city and not only the state of its beers. You will not only gain local knowledge about beer but as well about restaruants or anything else that interests you from your newfound friends.

And if this rambling introductory essay seems a little too pedantic, beer is just so much better now. From the death of beer creativity in the 1970s in the US, beer is only improving at shocking rates. Varieties abound. From a radler to a barleywine to a geuze there is a beer style for everyone. If fact in your travels you will find things that challenge your very definition of beer and many of these beers might become your new favorites. Outside of the Reinheitsgebot, the German beer purity laws that say that beer must only include water, barley and hops, no one I think can be sure what beer is now, or at least what it can taste like. I have sampled beer that tasted like tootsie rolls, burnt aluminium, funky cheese and many other good and not so good flavors. I would say the beer universe is much like the universe itself, in a state of constant expansion as long as brewers continue to innovate and we those who choose to live La Vie en Bière can support this amazing wave of innovation.