Former Yugoslav Republics Special!

I’ve just returned from an excellent week-long holiday in Macedonia as well as a day spent in Belgrade before my flight home. Naturally I took the opportunity to try as many beers as I could for the blog and managed to sample beers from Macedonia as well as Slovenia, Serbia and Kosovo.

Skopso ad, downtown Skopje

Variety is not something that Macedonians seem to appreciate when it comes to beer and I was only able to try a few from Macedonia itself. Pivara Skopje and it’s ubiquitous Skopsko dominates the market with its only real competition coming from Zlaten Dab, brewed by Prilepska Pivarnica. Fruit-flavoured lager shandy seems to have taken a hold in that part of the world with German-style Radler available in a range of different flavours.

Zlaten Dab ad, Bitola

I’ll be posting eleven or so different beers over the next couple of weeks from that part of the world. I also ate and drank so much that I feel like a need a detox so expect the blog to be dominated by Balkan lagers for the foreseeable! Annoyingly my phone went kaput so I lost pretty much all of the beer-related photos I had taken for the posts so most images will be lifted from the internet...(images in this post are my own).

Spotted outside a bar in downtown Skopje

In other, unrelated news Wetherspoons have released the beer list for their October 2013 beer festival and you can find it here. The list features some interesting stuff from American craft brewers as well as 40 real ales including decent sounding offerings from Bath Ales, St Peter’s and Purity that I’ll be keeping a keen eye out for..