Domus is an ‘artesanal’ beer from Cerveza Regia, Toledo. It’s bottle-conditioned, top fermented and available in various trendy bars in its home city. The marketing and packaging are fabulous, just screaming quality.
Unfortunately, the beer itself is a lot like one of our less successful homebrews: too fizzy, too thin and a little grassy. As it warms up, the toasted flavours come through a bit and it’s nice to have something with veritable hops, but unfortunately they have a way to go before we’d choose this over a glass of bland but pleasant fizzy Spanish lager.
Is it a step forward that something like this even exists in Spain? Our fear is that if someone does stray from a fizzy lager to try this they will simply be put off craft beers and ales forever.
It doesn’t help that the bar staff have no idea how to handle it, shaking up the yeast and expecting us to drink it from the bottle which is (of course) the cool thing to do with ‘premium’ beers in Spain.
3 replies on “Craft-brewed beer from Toledo”
There is no point to making beer if it’s no good in my opinion. As you say if it’s shite then people will be put off.
I have to agree with Tandleman. I don’t think it’s a step forward if “artisanal” beers exist so long as you have to put quotes around it. What matters isn’t really whether the beer is craft beer or not, but whether it’s any good. So I guess this is only good news in the sense that it suggests that someone else might pick up the idea of craft beer and brew something better.
“they have a way to go before we’d choose this over a glass of bland but pleasant fizzy Spanish lager.”
That says so much about the beer! A none of it is good.
It would be such a big problem for the brewery if that thing was said by someone who only drinks those fizzy, bland, extra cold lagers and finds this beer just too much for him/her to handle. But when someone with a rather more experienced palate and/or more demanding tastes says they would rather buy a glass of San Miguel (which will sure be considerable cheaper), there is something the brewery is doing very wrong.
Lars,
“artesanal” (and not artisanal) si between brackets because is a Spanish word. Either way, Artesanal, Artisanal or Craft is already a very vague term to begin with.