I begin by sharing two stories, both from Kyrgyzstan.
The first is that while horse riding along Lake Song-Kol (I believe Kol and Kul merely mean “lake” in Kyrgyz, so this is a bit like saying Lake Song Lake but it is what everyone calls it in English), we stopped at a yurt camp with our guide to sleep for the evening. Shortly after we arrived a large number of middle-aged Kyrgyz entered the camp. These were, we learned, friends of the patriarch of the family that ran the yurt camp, and they had come for a big party. A little while later, while Grace was off to the privy, I was standing outside when some of the party spotted me. The loudest of the bunch, a man with an impressive array of gold teeth (if he had any real teeth remaining, they weren’t obvious) approached and asked where I was from. I told him I was American and he shouted “TRUMP” in my face, assaulting both my ears and my nose with the scent of pure booze. Older Kyrgyz men frequently shout TRUMP upon making my acquaintance; one earlier that day declared me “SON OF TRUMP,” causing peals of laughter from the assemblage and a deep sense within me of having gotten clowned.
Back at the yurt another of the men declared, “Trump хорошо, Obama хорошо, Putin хорошо” (Trump is good, Obama is good, Putin is good). While I couldn’t quite get on board with his judgment of world leaders I appreciated his broadmindedness. Thus acquainted, I was taken by the arm towards where their cars were parked to try “schnapps”. At this point Grace returned and we both had shots of vodka pushed into our hands with the instruction to down in one. This repeated twice more in short order. The men seemed particularly impressed with Grace’s fortitude and all wanted to take pictures with her.
Grace and our new comrades
After that we sat down to dinner with our guide, a slim and reserved 23 year old with no English, who had been mostly scarce while we revelled with the old men. I asked him what he liked to drink and he responded that as a Muslim he did not drink at all. The fellows outside were likely nominally Muslims too but the rules appear to be a little different in Kyrgyzstan.
Over the next couple of days I pondered over what it would be like if I too did not drink. Surely I would be healthier, more clear-headed at times perhaps. I thought about giving it a try, to see what a new clean-living me would look like. That second night, having eaten some lamb soup for dinner I was afflicted by atrocious food poisoning and had to shuttle back and forth in the freezing cold from my yurt to what I came to term “The Outhouse at the End of the World”.
The Outhouse at the End of the World, in less physically distressed times.
After that I concluded that if anything is going to ruin my health on this trip, it’s unlikely to be beer.
The second story took place in the town of Karakol, a center for trekking into the Tian Shan Mountains. Having planned a trip for the next day up to the Altyn-Arashan valley we stopped by a convenience store to buy a nightcap. Wanting a larger sized beer I was faced with two choices: beer in a plastic bottle (tastes bad) or an oil barrel-sized can of Baltika, a common Russian Beer. I chose the latter. A guy about my age was paying for a couple things, and in barely-accented English he asked Grace and I where we were from. Upon hearing I was American, a sly smile came over his face and with a barely perceptible eye-roll at my massive Baltika he said, “Ah, you are American, and you love beer.”
Well, quite. I am very fond of beer in its many varieties, since my early education at what we called the “magic beer store” near UNC, with its rows of IPAs, stouts, saisons and wits. Travel, or leisure travel, is at least in part about consumption- consuming foods, sights, sounds, cultures, experiences. One of the things I was looking forward to consuming on our trip was beer- the vast array of beer the world might have to offer. Of course, upon further investigation most of what the world has to offer is pretty mediocre to outright foul mass-produced lager. But as I am dedicated to documenting my experiences here are the beers I have imbibed, and sometimes enjoyed, since we left London. I will provide for each a brief description as well as a rating.
The third category is whether it fits in a Buc-ee’s brand beer koozie. For the uninitiated, Buc-ee’s is a chain of gas stations in Texas famous for their massive convenience stores which seem to mainly supply everything you’d want to have a nice time drinking beers all afternoon. I was introduced to Buc-ee’s by my pal Jonesy when he took us to a totally empty beach south of Houston (which I very much hope will recover from the disaster it is facing and go back to being the bizarre and fascinating place I visited). We bought a case of beer, ice, cooler, snacks, and Buc-ee’s brand koozies for less than the price of a salad in New York. As we are traveling to many hot places it’s important to keep our beers nice and cold, and so I have brought Buc-ee along to measure the world’s beers on their commitment to being ICE COLD, just the way we Americans prefer. Without further ado:
Greece
FIX
Is It Good: Yeah, it is pretty good! A dry flavour pairs well with the pretty hefty carbonation they pack into this one. Closest comparison I can come up with is Miller High Life Light, which for my money is probably the finest domestic light beer purchasable by the 30 rack. This is a totally OK beer, good in the sun as long as it’s freezing. A good start to the trip.
Does It Fit Into A Buc-ee’s Koozie: Yes, and quite snugly too.
Rating: 3 out of 4 Santorini afternoons
ALPHA
Is It Good: It’s OK. Bit of a stale aftertaste, like the end of a Bud Light keg. But nothing atrocious. Stick to Fix.
Does It Fit Into a Buc-ee’s Koozie:
With aplomb.
Rating: 2 out of 4 Santorini afternoons
VOLCAN
Is It Good: I thought so. This is a Greek craft beer, apparently made using local honey and water filtered through volcanic rock. That’s all well and good; the honey comes through fine and the beer doesn’t taste dirty, so I guess the filtration works. Grace thought it had “too much flavour”, which is unsurprising because Kronenbourg is about the limit of her beer preferences.
Does It Fit Into A Buckees Koozie: No documentary evidence, but I feel confident that it would if put to the test.
Rating: 3 out of 4 made-up volcanic filtration systems
MYTHOS
Is It Good: Hell no! It’s bad!
The people of the former Soviet Union have an interesting way of making tea: you brew a pot of really concentrated tea, pour some of that into a cup and then pour plain hot water to fill. This tastes like you made some super-concentrated PBR, left it to sit and then poured in some half-heartedly carbonated water. Sloppy bitter malt flavour all over the place- you literally could not get this bad boy cold enough to make him palatable.
Does It Fit Into A Buc-ee’s Koozie:
Yes, one of its few saving graces I suppose.
Rating: 1 out of 4 Santorini afternoons
HELLAS PILS
Is It Good: I don’t really remember the taste, but I was having a nice time drinking them on a big ol’ sailing yacht with my beloved, so I’m gonna say yes.
Does It Fit Into A Buc-ee’s Koozie: If you asked nicely, it probably would.
Rating: 3 out of 4 sunset cruises
Georgia
NATAKHTARI
Is It Good: Being honest, it’s not. It is fitting that Natakhtari is the name of the town where Tbilisi’s crappy second airport is located; imagine a beer named after LaGuardia or Stansted and it pretty much tastes like you’re picturing. Also helpfully, it sounds a bit like Natty, as in “Natural” beer, which it vaguely resembles. In finding the above picture (because I forgot to take one) I saw that it has a rating of 4% on RateBeer, which seems fair.
However, it’s the only game in town in some parts of Georgia, such as Svaneti, where we were hiking, and I assure you that it does the trick after your third day of 15 km up and down mountains. Perhaps the most joyously received beer of the trip.
Does It Fit Into A Buc-ee’s Koozie: Nah, the bottles are usually at least 500 ml so a bit big for Buc-ee.
Rating: Ordinarily: 1 out of 4 frat fuels; After Hiking: 3.5 out of 4 hosannas to the beer god
KAZBEGI
Is It Good: Yeah, it’s good. This beer was elusive on our trip; several times it appeared on the menu only for waiters to inform me they didn’t have any, including in a bar entirely decorated with Kazbegi advertisements and a restaurant IN THE TOWN OF KAZBEGI.
Frustrated, I dragged Grace straight to the source: the Kazbegi Brewery, on the east bank of the Mtvari river in Tbilisi, where, I had read, you could pull up to a window and get anything from 1.5 to 10 litres of beer for basically nothing. I now know why they seem to have trouble distributing to the hinterlands; huge groups of men jostled to get their barrel of beer filled from a hose direct from the tank. The whole area smelt of wee and salt fish- a very romantic place to take my wife. I managed to acquire a meagre 1.5l for the two of us and, buying plastic cups from a nearby crone we sat down in a dilapidated beer garden (a corrugated shed over some dirt with some plastic and wooden tables). We were: overdressed; the only tourists; the only group that included a woman, so all in all very inconspicuous to the local manly drinking crowd. But most didn’t take much notice, deep in their own rituals of getting hammered and singing songs, and we were finally able to try Kazbegi.
It’s good; sweet and light but with a bracing layer of malt that hits you after the first taste. I couldn’t drink 10 litres of it but I could for sure drink a couple cheerfully with my boys in a crummy beer garden.
Does It Fit Into A Buc-ee’s Koozie: No! It was a litre and a half!
Rating: 3 out of 4 slurred toasts from your group of 10 dudes (ONLY dudes, ever, men and women don’t appear to hang out together much in Georgia)
BLACK LION
Is It Good: It’s ok, although they need to quality control their vendors; the two restaurants I had Black Lion were totally bizarre. In one I had a run-in with the Mtskheta mafia; in the other, we sat in an empty restaurant in a basement and were subjected to a Georgian-dubbed version of the Sandra Bullock/Melissa McCarthy teamup The Heat. The voice-over actors seemed to have their hands full reading their lines; I have never heard a more dispirited and inept dub job in my life, and I watched some pretty terrible dubs of Japanese anime shows when I was in middle school. Uh, the beer shows a trace or two of hops, but really odd ones, like the English hops that mainly seem to impart “mold” flavour in your worst provincial real ales.
Does It Fit Into A Buc-ee’s Koozie: Who knows; seems to only come in draft. I wouldn’t bring Buc-ee into such weird joints anyway.
Rating: 1.5 out of 4 depressed Georgian voice actors
ZEDAZENI
Is It Good: Totally serviceable- bit sweet for my liking but no problems with it. Good with barbecue, which we ate a ton of.
Does It Fit Into A Buc-ee’s Koozie: in bottle form, it would.
Rating: 2 out of 4 lamb skewers
ARGO
Three liters of perfection
Is It Good: Yeah, what a nice, well-balanced lager. Crisp and dry and drinkable. We were forced to drink a bunch of these while trapped under a garden umbrella with a rowdy quartet of Poles during a sudden massive rainstorm and they certainly helped make the occasion convivial. Thereafter I kept an eye open for Argo. It’s so tasty it still tastes good in a 3 litre plastic bottle which is no mean feat at all.
Does It Fit Into A Buc-ee’s Koozie: never saw a container less than 0.5L, so maybe not.
Rating: 4 out of 4 boisterous Poles
KARVA
Is It Good: The phrase goes, “If it looks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck…” I raise this only because Karva is a rather pale yellow, and has a vague ammonia bouquet.
Does It Fit Into A Buc-ee’s Koozie: Who cares.
Rating: 1 out of 4 ducks
SOME HIPSTER BEER
Is It Good: I can’t remember what this stuff was called. We had it at a bar in the same complex as our Tbilisi hostel, Fabrika, which was the hippest place in Georgia, as if a tiny chunk of Peckham or [insert wherever is cool in NYC now, I have no idea] was levitated to the Caucasus. The beer was fine but relatively mad expensive; it tasted like every other darn beer in the country pretty much. But it was drunk in a nice setting and we got to look like cool digital influencers.
Does It Fit Into A Buc-ee’s Koozie: Buc-ee’s is too mainstream for this beer, man.
Rating: 2 out of 4 aspirational man buns
Well, that’s all for now; stay tuned for the best (maybe) and worst (I certainly hope so, anything worse should be outlawed) of Armenian, Kazakh and Kyrgyz brewing!