Beer #58 - Krali Marko Svetlo Pivo (FYR Special!)

Krali Marko is seemingly the cheap option for lager drinkers in Macedonia. I was pretty excited to see a beer that bares my name and my hosts translation of ‘Krali’ as ‘King’ (King Marko) only heightened my enjoyment of the label. Disappointingly the lager is seriously bad. It’s produced by the same brewery, Prilepska Pivarnica, that brew the relatively superb Zlaten Dab. Krali Marko has been brewed since 1924 and is the company’s original beer. I can’t really think of anything positive to say about this as it was about as bad as a lager can be and I ended up pouring most of the 1.5 litre bottle away.  






Brewery: Prilepska Pivarnica
Country: FYR of Macedonia
ABV: 4.5%

Beer #52 - Zlaten Dab Svetlo Pivo (FYR Special!)

Next up on the Macedonian beer list was Zlaten Dab, brewed in the south of the country by Prilepska Pivarnica. By my reckoning this must be the second most popular beer in the country (although that is solely based on my own perception alongside the knowledge that Skopsko is number one). I much preferred this to Skopsko and indeed it was my favourite Macedonian beer. It’s very light and therefore very drinkable, lacking the bitterness of Skopsko, and it’d be my recommendation for anyone looking to try a Macedonian lager.








Brewery: Prilepska Pivarnica
Country: FYR of Macedonia
ABV: 4.5%

Beer #51 - Skopsko Radler (FYR Special!)

So according to my highly detailed research a Radler is shandy-style mix of beer and a soft drink that originated in Germany. The name translates literally as ‘cyclist’ which apparently stems from it’s popularity as a sports drink(?!). Radler seems to be a big deal in the Balkans, as well as this lemon variety from Pivara Skopje I spotted a variety of other flavours (grapefruit, red orange) from other breweries. This one I actually liked. It’s unsurprisingly rather sweet and tastes a lot like cloudy lemonade (which I’m a big fan of) with a hint of beer. It’s certainly more soft drink than beer but I’d rather drink this than say, a Smirnoff Ice or whatever the current British alco-pop equivalent would be, although at 2% ABV you’re probably as well off with a class of lemonade. The take home point is that this wasn’t anything like what I expected and was actually quite enjoyable.

Brewery: Pivara Skopje
Country: FYR of Macedonia
ABV: 2.0%

Beer #50 - Skopsko Svetlo Pivo (FYR Special!)

It makes sense to start my posts on Macedonia with Skopsko. The beer is the dominant player with (according to wiki) a 64% market share in the country. It is brewed in the capital at Pivara Skopje which became part of the Heineken group in the 1990s. As with most of the forthcoming posts it’s a ‘svetlo pivo’, a light beer, or to you and me, a fairly crappy European lager (I don’t really know how I’m going to find enough to stay about most of these beers as they all taste more or less the same to me!) Skopsko is served pretty much everywhere in Macedonia, I found it quite bitter in taste for a light lager and therefore not quite so quaffable/inoffensive as most beers of this style. It was okay but, where possible, I went for an alternative option.

  

Brewery: Pivara Skopje
County: FYR of Macedonia
ABV: 4.9%

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..