Minibars and solitude

For my summer holiday this year I went to visit Bulgaria, largely because I've never been there before and it was an itch needing to be scratched. On arrival, the local mosquito population made sure that there was scratching aplenty across the 800+ km three-city trek.

Before I sit down to process exactly which beers I drank on the way, I'll say that my overall impression of the national scene is quite poor. Pale lager from multinational brewing interests rules supreme, of course. And while there's an independent end of the industry as well, doubtless run by the same breed of idealistic enthusiasts that makes microbrewing happen everywhere, it looked to be under-regarded and showing little signs of individuality. Which is to say that hazy IPA and milkshakey fruit beers were hard to avoid, try as I might. On the plus side, I never had a problem finding somewhere to sit in the specialist beer bars, and that included ones where capacity didn't go much into double figures.

The tone for that was set on day one in the capital, Sofia. Bar one was High Five, where I counted the seating as ten stools and a toilet. On two visits on different days, those were occupied by precisely zero other drinkers. Beer one was July Morning, a Helles from Sofia Electric, whose beers occasionally show up in Dublin. This one, a bit underdone at 4.4% ABV, had a tang of vinegar about both the aroma and the flavour, though less pronounced in the latter. Looking around, I guessed that turnover and freshness were the issue here. Beyond the beer's initial problems, there's a crunchy biscuit malt and a token pinch of lemony hops, which still leaves it well short of being a good Helles. There seems to be a bit of a tendency for brewers these days to turn out the same sort of mediocre lager they've always had, then pinning the H-word on it to make it seem classier. I'm not fooled.

I switched to a brewery from way over on the Black Sea coast next: Metalhead, of Burgas. Heavy Low is a triple IPA and again the pour let me down. It was the very tail end of the keg, and presumably as a result of which was horrifically dreggy. I'm not sure it was technically fit for sale but accepted the 200ml glass of grey/green sludge anyway. The aroma is strong on garlic as well as alcohol heat from the 10% ABV. I think there is a decent and clean resin-and-fruit hop bomb somewhere in here, but that was overlaid with dry and gritty plasterboard, rendering it completely unenjoyable.

Beside it is Varushka Oatmeal Stout, from a contract operator called Zavera. This was dark and wholesome-looking, and an approachable 5.5% ABV. It begins well, offering heady aromas of coffee and cola but follows it with quite a lacklustre flavour, giving mostly porridgey cereal with a token dusting of chocolate. The texture is unforgivably thin for an oatmeal stout, and the finish unacceptably quick, so they really haven't used the glutinous grain to the proper extent.

I had made short work of my shot of triple IPA and moved on to Kokiri, a New Zealand-style IPA by Sofian brewery Cometa. Though claiming to be double dry-hopped there wasn't much of an aroma from the hazy orange glassful, just a slightly unpleasant vegetal or sweaty note. At least its flavour had a decent dankness to it with a burst of pithy bitterness and a lacing of Germanic grass and spinach. That all fizzled out quickly again, and again I found myself wondering how long it had been in the bar. If the aim was to be unexciting then it accomplished it, but I somehow doubt that's the case.

It says something about the choice of bars available that we were back in High Five a few days later. Switching up the nationalities, I picked Valeksander from Estonia's Anderson's brewery, a pils. I like a dry pils but this was too dry for me; husky and earthy, with a rustic grainsack roughness. "Crisp" tends to be a positive term when it comes to pale lagers but this was too crisp, drying out the saliva ducts like a cream cracker. It's only 4.7% ABV so the brewery may have intended it for quenching thirsts, but for me it did the opposite.

For the final beer here, I returned to Sofia Electric for Electrolyte, canned from the pub's self-service fridges. It claims to be a gose, though an unorthodox one, brewed with juniper and cucumber but no salt or coriander. Despite this, there's a definite briny quality to the aroma, while the flavour is all sweet pickle and cucumber skin. It is, of course, a shameless novelty beer, but it's a very well-executed one and it did do the job of a proper gose, even if it's not made like one nor tastes like one. 4% ABV refeshment is what it's about, and it delivers a fun set of flavours as well. My faith in Sofia Electric was restored.

Maybe I chose unwisely, but I came away with a feeling that you're better sticking to the packaged beers at High Five instead of the draught.

Not far away is another specialty beer bar: Crafter. This is much roomier with modern Scandi-style décor and furniture. On a Wednesday evening there were ten beers on the menu board, the music was pumping, and there was not a single other customer in the place.

Another gose and another Cometa beer for me: Fat Mosquito. This is a tad stronger, at 5% ABV though the same hazy yellow as the Sofia Electric one. They don't seem to have used the extra strength to give it extra character, however. It begins on a very basic lager-grain aroma and has a soft saline texture but little by way of a salty taste. You get a little lemon and lime piquancy, suggesting New World hops at work, but no real sourness or bite. A thirst was quenched but a desire for interesting-tasting beer was left unsated.

The darker beer beside it is another nordic: Kohia Nelson IPA by the Latvian brewery, Ārpus. It's a big and chewy number, all of 6.5% ABV and feeling every bit of it. The aroma is pithy and sharp so I was surprised to find a fruity and fleshy flavour behind it, giving me ripe mandarin and strawberry, with a late addition of apricot jam and some exotic jasmine spicing. It lacks zing and is maybe a little on the soupy and warm side, but tastes colourful regardless. One to chomp through slowly, perhaps.

The next bar excursion was to Bira Bar, an English theme-pub of sorts, with the added novelty attraction of cask ale. It does feel a bit like a proper pub, albeit a rather poky and cramped one, and there was even another drinker there of a Thursday late afternoon.

Cask beer is provided by the Hopscotch brewery, and on the day they were pouring Popivka, a 4% ABV bitter. It's the brown sort, or maybe "amber" if you must. As is too often the way of cask beer outside Britain (and often in it) I got a pint that was murky and a little too warm. This gave it an overall savoury quality that's almost beefy. Struggling to find the good points, I picked out some pleasant dark autumnal fruits -- plum and damson -- but otherwise I found this very much on the twiggy and soapy end of the English ale spectrum, which I guess counts as authenticity. While I don't think keg dispense would have done it any favours, cask really didn't help it here.

That was quite a contrast to the hazy yellow beer beside it: PizzoPivo from local brewery Kazan. Ostensibly, this is another gose, but as the name implies, it has been hacked with pizza ingredients, namely tomato and oregano, a particular novelty I have a soft spot for. And it didn't let me down. Here the gose base is sturdy: clean and tangy with an invigorating seaspray spritz. The herbal side is strong but not overpowering, tasting to me more like fresh basil than oregano. An extra savoury side is brought by the tomato, tasting more of seed than flesh, and that makes it the best of these two soup-like beers, and indeed the less-soupy one.

That stop was on the way to Vitamin B, which Sofia Electric advertises as their official brewery tap. It was tricky to find, in what looks like a converted domestic house: through a gate, up a set of front steps and through a hallway leading to a choice of front or back room. They had just opened for the day, so maybe that's why we had the place to ourselves.

Token Pilsner from Token Brewery is one I had seen in all the craft beer places so here is where I had it, on draught. It's really not a great example. 3.5% ABV did not leave it wanting body, and the appearance is a perfect clear yellow. But the flavour was a disconcerting mix of earth or putty, with a foetid grape skin bitterness and old, musty cereal grain. I don't think freshness was the issue, but honestly I wasn't keen on examining the taste too closely. Suffice to deem it a curséd pilsner and leave it there.

The purple emulsion in the picture is Vishna, a sour cherry beer (sour, with sour cherries) from Sofia Electric. In the way of these things it's not actually sour but smooth and chewy, with lots of warm and stewed sweet fruit. It's simple, but the cherry flavour is big and bold, and that was enough to endear it to me. It's my kind of dessert.

Our final stop in Sofia is a restaurant called Aubergine. This is a little bit of a trek out of the historic centre of the city but is thoroughly worth it. The food is superb and there's a very decent beer list to go with. I only had the one, and a fairly mainstream one at that: Glarus seems to be a large independent brewery, and the oldest. It's based in Varna in the east but I saw its beers everywhere I went. Glarus Pale Ale is 4.2% ABV; clear and golden with a biscuit lager aroma and a perfumey hop flavour. As such, it seems a bit industrial: mass-produced from heavily-processed ingredients and then heavily pasteurised. Clean but dull was my verdict on that, and I never got round to trying any other Glarus beers. Oh well.

So that's Sofia, as I saw it. The beer, like the city, has its good points but ultimately was something of a disappointment. I hope that I just caught the bars during an off-week or something, and that there is a market of drinkers to sustain them. Their hearts are in the right place, it's just the throats which weren't. Next stop was the second city of Plovdiv, where I was hoping things would be altogether more colourful.