Castle – pub – castle – pint – castle – more money – cask ales – rest – cliffs – haggis – castle – whisky – train – cask ales

Alas, my trip is nearing an end, left on the agenda was a few days in Spain and a drive back to Lisbon to fly back to Beervana. From Gibraltar we headed north up the coast of the Mediterranean to the town of Estepona for a day on the beach. Note, my camera had to be kept in check on the Spanish beaches to keep this blog at an R rating, not sure the Spanish women would take to kindly to some gringo sitting on the beach with a camera.

A few new beers were found in Spain, none really worth writing much about, so here is a quick summary:

Mahou – Standard pale lager around 5%, clear golden with a quickly falling white head. Lower on the bitterness with less crispness leaving this as the unideal hot day beer. Served ice cold, fair enough on a 100+ degree day, this beer only got worse as the ice chill went away, now lacking it’s refreshing/cooling effect you are left with a glass of High Life.


Mahou Negra – Some sort of dark lager, not sure it deserves any real technical category, while I haven’t had Session Black yet I’m sure it will leave this beer in the dust. In fairness this beer wasn’t all that bad, soft roasty chocolate and caramel flavors to the malts, soft bitterness and a dry finish. Tasted under attenuated and had a bit of a mineral jaw clinch note to the finish. The Spanish and Portuguese seem to do better with their dark beers, you just don’t seem them as often.


Estrella Damm – One of the more popular beers in the area, another fizzy yellow pale later, this one holding a slight leg above Malhou due to the moderate increase in bitterness. I might have event detected a note of hops in this… is that possible? Fairly crisp and dry in the finish, although some grainy husky qualities to the malts up front. If Mahou was Steven Baldwin, Estrella might be Billy Baldwin.


The German Influence? I encountered a line of beers sold looking rather German and tasting rather Crap

Kensels Pilsner – Brewed in the Netherlands, this un-Pilsner was grainy and awful as ever. Not really any hops to be found, watery and bland, a pale lager in disguise. At under fifty cents a can  I didn’t hold out much hope, but thought I’d give it a shot, how international of me.


Meiburg – This one it turns out is actually brewed in Germany, but you wouldn’t know it by the taste. Another faux Pilsner, all malty up front with no hops to it. Please the heat is killing me, where are those damn lupulin bitterness shots when you need them!? Grainy like the previous beer, this ones malt profile slightly better, a bit more bready character to it.


Voll-Damm Doble Malta – A Spanish “Marzen” at 7.2%. Actually not all that bad, but my standards were pretty low at this point, being this beer deprived can lead to some wild claims. Lots of excess alcohol character to it, I bet over here that means you are getting your moneys worth. Bread and caramel up front, some bitterness in the finish but allowing the sweetness to carry into the finish. Finish had a bit of a metallic note and a lot of booziness, eh, drinkable.


Now, onto “craft beer”

We ended the day driving to Sevilla where we would stay until we headed back to Lisbon for our flight. Sevilla is a beautiful city, plenty of classic structures and charm remain in the heart, the modern city encircling from a distance. As  we toured the city I stumbled upon the first microbrewery of the vacation, Artesanos de la Cerveza La Fabrica.

La Fabrica was tucked into the corner of a mall, standing like nothing more then your average Macaroni Grill or Hometown Buffet, only tipped off by the crossed mash paddles on the sign above the door and the wine barrels sitting out front. Inside however contained one of the more unique drinking facilities I’ve encountered. Picture this… each table has it’s own 3 headed tap tour in the middle, accompanied with glass rinser, complete control for pouring your own libation. A screen on the wall monitors all of the tables consumption live, accurate to the centiliter, creating an atmosphere of competition amongst the tables. As we sipped and savored on beers and tapas we watched what looked like a bachelor party split between two tables proceed to put this system to the test, you could see the liters start racking up. I’m sure OLCC would have a field day with this system.

La Fabrica was about the size of the Green Dragon. A large bar stood front center, towering above were two copper kettles with a giant wood barrel between that seemed to house their cool/keg system for the bar draughts. They seemed to make only two beers (funny to have 3 taps per table with 2 beers), light and dark as they called them, but maybe they plan to expand their lineup in the future.

La Fabrica “light” tasted like an American wheat crossed with a pale. Poured hazy gold with a tall white head, already this stood out from the other beers I’ve been seeing on my trip. Smooth wheat flavor underneath but no German esters about it, then finish with a soft herbal hopping. Finished contained a bit of a soapy note, like cleaner a bit, while it didn’t overly ruin the beer it seemed to clash with the hops a bit. Overall sub par on the Beervana scale, might fit in at Tugboat or something, but as far as beer on this trip pretty A OK to me.


La Fabrica “dark” I’m still scratching my head about. Poured a darker rusty red with a tall beige head. Nose shows hints of fruity tartness and acidity, almost faint Flanders brown note to it. The nose showed more of this then the flavor, but it still had something odd going on in the background. I’m really doubting this was intentional, probably an infection that ended up working in their favor, but none the less proving some tartness that made this a decent thirst quencher. Notes of cherry and fruit cake from the malt. Now to be real about this, these descriptions are bold and the flavors much more subtle, again this beer wouldn’t hold it’s own in the Beervana scene, but this might have been the best beer of the trip, at least the most unique.

Finally it was time to leave, we headed back towards Lisbon to catch our plane. 3 countries, 2 continents, 1 territory behind us. Adeus, salam alikome, adios, and good bye.

Maps, not needed, Gibraltar is a Brittish territory composed of a big old mountain and a town situated on a peninsula off of Spain. Gibraltar has been hotly contested for almost all of it’s history, being a strategic point at the entry of the Mediterranean this allowed the mountain to be hollowed with miles of tunnels and cannon port holes into a nearly impenetrable fort. Over it’s history it has been controlled by almost everyone possible at one point in time, but the English have controlled it for the last 300 years… although Spain is pretty pissed about that and wants their land back.

The town of Gibraltar is a duty free shopping paradise for cruise ships, but shopping not being my thing, and the exchange between the dollar and English Pound left things far to pricy for my taste.

We headed up the rock to see what the fuss was about. First you enter the mountain into these giant natural cavern chambers, 80 foot tall ceilings of stalactites hang above while stair cases guides you through it. Previously this area was a bomb shelter triage facility, now converted into a large open concert hall… which must sound incredible. Ok, cool and all, what next?

Well, as we headed up the mountain more we discovered those Trunk Monkey commercials aren’t a joke or even original…. no the rock of Gibraltar is in fact guarded by monkeys, ferociously cute little buggers that you really don’t want to piss off. I mean, look at this guy..

All was good though, our guide gave us some peanuts to keep them happy, that is until they ran out, then my guide thought it was a good idea to trick the monkey, so he told me to act like I had one in my hand and let the monkey tried to get it. Lets just say the monkey didn’t like looking, well like a monkey, so a monkey bite I received. Yah, I’ve seen Outbreak and 28 Days Later, I should have known not to trust Brittish people. The other interesting thing about the Monkeys is they are only on Gibraltar, none reside off the peninsula in Spain. Originally they were brought there as pets and now they flourish there but never found any desire to cross over to Spain.

Next we toured the cannon tunnels, which I belive our guide claimed 3.5 miles of tunnels in the mountain, only about a quarter mile is open for tours though. I’m still not entirely sure why you would ever attack this place, probably just easier to cut it off from their food supply, but if you wanted to take fort the hard way this would have been quite a feat.

Anyway, upon completion of the “Rock” tour we headed back to town. I noticed a number of traditional English pubs, even doing a double take on one that I thought said the Horse Brass at one point, just ignore the Fosters umbrellas out front, I’m not sure what the heck is going on there. It was however confirmed that there were no breweries on the peninsula, so sadly Tetleys, Bass, and the like were about all you’d find here.