Barcelona – more than a shut pub

It was a plan put together with all the military precision of Fred Karno’s army. But it was my plan. And as it involved beer I believed it would all come right on the night.

It was due to begin in mid March with a first visit to the Barcelona Beer Festival , a treat denied me for previous editions by a required presence at a Festival of a different kind at Cheltenham.

However, after 40 years of watching horses run round fields, retirement brought the joy of being able to divide my time fully between London and Santiago De Compostela in the green (ok, wet) region of Galicia in the north-west of Spain. It allowed me to chart a new course.

The first step was five-days in the Catalan capital, and thanks to a craft-drinking pal and festival veteran from Santiago I was armed with handy insider tips.

Among beers I was eager to find were those from Soma, the Girona-based brewery who last year was Spain’s top-scorer on Untappd, and the rapidly up-and-coming new boys Cierzo from Zaragoza.

I’d not actually come across anything from Soma though had heard plenty, while I was already firmly in the Cierzo fan club.

I was also looking forward to meeting more people involved in the world of Spanish craft beer and getting this blog off to a flying start.

Barcelona would be followed by summer schleps to northern Portugal; Braga, for the second edition of the Hopen in late June and a couple of weeks later to Artbeerfest Caminha for one of the Iberian peninsular’s biggest international beer events.

Well, as I said, that was the plan.

Then it and so much of what we took for normal was put on hold. 

I still made it to Barcelona. The festival was cancelled at the 11th hour but I had scored a great deal at the Room Mate Anna hotel opposite the Cocovail Beer Hall and Barcelona is a great place to delve into Spain’s burgeoning craft scene – something which will hopefully form much of the future content on here.

Cocovail, opened in September 2016, leans on Catalan beers. You can expect to find a range from the local Edge Brewing, winners of this year’s Barcelona Beer Challenge among their 24 taps.

Garage’s brew pub and BierCab with its distinctive ceiling decoration also had a first-evening look-in, before I dedicated the following day to the former’s range of lauded IPAs and juice bombs. (You can expect to read more about these venues in future.)

That fateful Friday evening news filtered through that the Catalan authorities were to introduce an imminent lockdown. Time was about to be called. So I called for Clinging To A Rock, which seemed appropriate and was pretty much as nice a 9% DIPA as you could wish to find.

The following day dawned to shuttered premises. Streets that would normally be bustling were eerily quiet. The odd coffee and sandwich shop offered takeaway to clients adhering already to what we have come to know as social distancing. 

One superbly stocked bottle shop, OKasional Beer, soldiered on to provide sufficient sustenance until I hightailed it for the airport.

Back in London home delivery was soon to replace trips to the local. Battersea brewery Mondo delivered a case via a moped courier within 80 minutes of ordering on the first Monday of the UK lockdown. It set a trend.

Deliveries arrived from breweries I had hitherto not discovered, including Drop Project and Ora, while bottle shops Ghost Whale, Craft Metropolis and A Hoppy Place also ministered to beery needs.

A Twitter thread that started with someone posting a picture of a bottle of Peroni became the place to virtually prop up the bar in the months before pubs were allowed to reopen.

They say you never truly miss something until it’s gone. Well, I missed the pub.

As we began to emerge from lockdown in July I have been back to the pub, enjoying a very socially distanced pint of Polly’s down the Cask, my local in London, on re-opening day.

I have also travelled. It may not have been back to Spain, but I was able to enjoy a couple of weeks in France.

More about that next time.