Follow the bear

Farra Funda is a tiny brewpub in the bohemian Barra Funda district of São Paulo. The draw here is that one of the owners is Dubliner Phil Keatley, who packed up his Crafty Bear brand last year and shipped out to Brazil. His business partner had already established the Jaysenberg brand, and they've joined the two operations under the common name of BrewYo. Everything is brewed on a tiny kit out the back of the pub, utilising all Brazilian hops and all kveik for fermentation.

There were two BrewYo beers on tap when I visited, and I began with the Hazy Session IPA. This is 4.8% ABV and a solid murky orange colour. It tastes a bit murky too, with a certain dreggy savouriness interfering with the hops. It's quite sweet overall, with notes of marmalade and orange cordial: low on bitterness and zest. A bright spot was a mild piquant pepperiness, presumably a kveik side-effect. Otherwise it was passable but not brilliant, in need of a cleaning up that the brewing equipment may not be able for.

Alongside it was the 6.6% ABV BrewYo NEIPA. This, too, was rather rough, but bigger flavoured and with more hop fun. There's a proper bitterness, like jaffa pith, but also some lighter mandarin notes. It has a decent substance and heft to it -- the marmalade here is spread on thickly sliced toast -- and it's very satisfying to drink. While one could probably tell it's brewed on the nano scale, it does a lot of things that New England-style IPAs produced on bigger kits do.

One Jaysenberg beer was hanging on: the American Amber. This definitely had a rub of homebrew about it, the flavour pulling in weird directions: sweet like strawberry, sharp like raspberry and no proper hop character. It's murky and mucky, like it wasn't quite finished when put on tap, or else it was the tail end of the keg. While the other two just needed a bit of a polish, this one would have benefitted from a serious deep clean. Make it taste of malt and hops, please.

Filling in two other taps was another small São Paulo brewery, Wayne190. Their Premium Pilsen was pretty impressive, being completely clear and with a crisp water biscuit aroma. Not much happens in the flavour, which is exceptionally clean and offers only a mild meadowy floral effect by way of complexity. Although it's a little strong for a pils at 5.1% ABV, it made for very easy drinking, each mouthful delivering a blast of refreshing coolness down the throat. It's a perfect house lager for a brewpub and I hope BrewYo manages to emulate it at some point.

Believe it or not, Wayne190's Maracutaya was the only Catharina sour I found in Brazil. I assumed they would be everywhere, though admittedly I didn't look very hard. It's an orange-to-pink colour in the glass and a light 4.2% ABV with loads of fizz. Although it's made with exotic fruit, it tasted more like prosaic raspberry to me; I didn't get any tropical juice. And although the aroma has an assertive acidity, it's not really sour either. Overall it's a bit basic, the fruit flavour jammy and processed-tasting, not fresh, while the high carbonation gets in the way. I can't believe I've had better experiences drinking locally-brewed Catharina sour in Ireland than Brazil.

That's all I've got for you as regards bar drinking. Next, let's go shopping.