October 2023. Belgrade.
Just back from the Balkans with a thousand photos to be dutifully categorised into posts about craft beer bars, buses that make you queasy, pub cats, churches and unpronounceable menu items. If you’re after a blog about plain Shropshire boozers, best come back in a week after my trip to Wem.
Day 1 in Belgrade was packed, but it was hard to get a feel for the place. Safe but scruffy, flowers and graffiti, old music
in a youthful city.
We had a coffee (a Costa franchise, they were everywhere) in a shopping centre as smart as Cambridge’s Grand Arcade, and headed back from the fortress to Skadarska.
I wondered what the “real” centre is, as Republic Square was just too dull.
There’s a danger that when visiting a new European city you end up visiting the craft beer bars rather than the local boozers,
and Mrs RM couldn’t resist the call of Dogma, yards from ourultra-trad Zavicaj lunch stop.
I didn’t want to go in, it looked far too young, but how could you resist a place with beers called “Hoptopod” and “Huddle” at £3 a nearly pint.
We couldn’t.
“It tastes like Brew Dog” said Mrs RM, who’s an expert on these things. (That means she liked it).
And you could indeed have been in Brew Dog’s Manchester flagship.
Talking of Manchester, Dogma were showing the Premier League highlights on two screens with a 3 second difference between the two, so I got a chance to see City lose twice, which was great.
I’d have stayed for one, but I’m a sucker for beers called 7th anniversary NEIPA that give you 7% for £3.50. Actually I’m guessing it was 7% as Serbia doesn’t believe in ABVs. Or calories on menus.
Good for them.
Just before we left Paranoid came on,
and the young lad shouted “Ay Ay”. But not in a Brummie accent.
retiredmartin 
It’s funny how far and wide the word “craft” has traveled.
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I think the word “craft” in Europe means the same as it means to Mrs RM and myself; keg, colder, strong. To be fair those beers in Belgrade were all from very small breweries and all very good, if largely indistinguishable from beers in any other “craft bar”. It’s Bass and Black Sheep that are the distinctive beers now !
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“Abandon All Hops Ye Who Enter Here”
As it says over the entrance to the Donnington brewery
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Hop oil is what you want, mmm.
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I hop oil never need to try that.
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7/10
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We met Vladimir, the Dogma brewer, by chance in the Miner’s Arms a few years ago. He told us his brewery tap was opening the next day. I had to ring him to ask where it was despite being a few metres away, and he made it a great night for a group of us. I thought the beers were pretty damned good too, much better than Brewdog. So maybe the crafty stall you found didn’t dispense them in the same way. Either way sounds like a great trip.
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They were very good indeed, and not over-carbonated, but stylistically similar to a lot of beer in craft bars.
By Miner’s Arms you mean the one near Dronfield, obviously.
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Almost. Think the one in Belgrade might have closed down but not sure. Know what you mean, so many places seem to think they have to replicate a stylistic range.
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