No this time it’s not a Belgium art collective with another whale that is stranded in Madrid. A strike by one of the main baggage handling companies at Brussels Airport left a Beer Idiot stranded at Madrid airport. And like every high school level business manager know airports are the best example of a bottleneck and domino effect in workflow.
After finishing my workday in Madrid there came a message that my 15:20h flight back to the city of chocolate and waffles has been cancelled.
So time to do what every self respecting beer idiot would do. Book a hotel in the center of Madrid, start your Tinder app and look up the craft beer bars on Google maps. And of course re-book your flight to the next day.
The combination of these apps and the basic human need for exploring brought me to the Bee Bar in Madrid center.
The first beer to get my attention was the Cuvée Delphine from brewery Struise Brouwers. It is a great imperial stout that is named after the illegitimate daughter of Belgium’s retired king Albert II. The logo on the label is an artwork from Delphine. As you can see there is a lot of Belgium beers on the menu.
The second beer I drank was a Milkshake stout from la Quince brewery. This one has a nice round chocolate flavor. After these great stouts it was time to be a bit more social on a Friday evening. So a small chat with one of the founders of Bee Bar tells me that the bar has been open for two years and that the focus is on beer pairing with cheese (something that is quite common in Spain). The bar focuses on getting the right cheese every time they change the beer menu.
After some time it’s time to leave the craft beer bar and stop taking beer photos like a young hipster. So I went with some locals to a more common local bar in the nightlife of Madrid.
And always at the end I notice this Irish pub ‘Erte’ near my hotel. With a lot of Belgium beers this is a good place to end. It is a very fun place with social people. As I’m drinking a Duvel I get into a chat with a brewer. It’s the head brewer of Another Planet Brewing. Just to share with you a small line of the chat I recorded a shout-out with the brewer. I am definitely looking forward to review one of his beers in the future.
Small shout-out:
(Bad quality, just recorded outside with a phone)
