Fruit tasting beers in Budapest
Belgium put fruit in casks and changed beer forever. Budapest caught up — here are four spots where you can taste the result.
Belgian beer has become a very trendy thing, and one of the things that has made Belgium stand out as the beer capital of the world is their approach to the subject. Far from the purists in Germany, the Belgians like their beer strong enough to get properly drunk, and are not averse to flavouring their beers with orange peels, spices, and even fruit. The process is simple: fruit is put into the cask that the brew is fermenting in, and left to ferment together. This trend has spread to Hungary as well, and Budapest now has several places where you can buy high-quality fruity beer. Here are four of the best.
Want to taste them with a guide? Join our Budapest Beer Tour.
Belga Söröző
Simply and quite aptly named the Belgian Beer House, this wonderful little restaurant and pub has everything going for it: a unique repertoire of beers that cannot be found anywhere else in the city, a wonderful location, great food, and a unique atmosphere. Located on the Danube overlooking the corso on the Buda side, the food is traditional Belgian (French food, German portions), and the atmosphere is a mix of a pub and an abbey — a veritable sanctum of brew.
Csakajósör!
Part shop, part pub, part gallery, this establishment is a new twist on enjoying beer. The shop has a selection of beers that is truly a sight to behold, with almost every beer imaginable from all over the world present, albeit in small numbers. There is also a draught bar and a little club area where you can sit down and enjoy a brew. Their name means "only good beer", and they live up to it. Reasonable prices and excellent quality make this one of the standouts of Budapest.
Élesztő
If you are interested in home brews, local microbreweries, and small batches taken straight from the cask in front of your eyes, then Élesztő (which means brewer's yeast in Hungarian) is the place for you. A large selection of awesome beers — including quite a few fruity ones — are available here, all local wonders with a few imports. This place is a tad more expensive than the others on the list, but it is as close to a brewery as you can get without going to one, and most of the staff brew their own beer. A place for aficionados.
Rizmajer
Csepel is home to one of the best breweries in the country. One of the few microbreweries to scale up significantly is Rizmajer, and they have an intense selection of all kinds of fruity beers — their cognac and cherry one is by far the most popular (they also make corn and ginger beers). They have staple beers produced year-round, and seasonal specials for a few weeks at a time, so it is always worth checking what is new at their brewery-restaurant.
Taste them on the crawl
The Budapest craft beer scene pairs perfectly with a night out. If you want a guided introduction to the city's bars and nightlife, our Budapest pub crawl covers the best spots in the party district — including stops where the beer menu goes well beyond the usual lagers.