Timișoara is Romania’s third city and from certain angles looks and feels as if it belongs further west – with flat whites, avocado toast, and very convincing craft beer.
We were only there for a few nights and so this post is only a record of what we saw and thought. It’s certainly not comprehensive – not least because we only had time to taste beer from two of its six or so breweries.
Our primary beer-related mission in Timișoara was to investigate the local historic brewery, Timișoreana. Founded in 1718, it brewed through the forming of empires and nations, through wars, and through decades of communism.
Now, it’s owned by Asahi, via its Eastern Europe arm Ursus.
We didn’t have high hopes for the beer, if we’re honest. We’ve never heard anyone say “You simply must try this delicious lager from Romania…” And the packaged variety that turns up in UK corner shops looks rather like a supermarket own-brand budget brew.
But, guess what? We were impressed.
Admittedly, we drank it at brewery taps, both in town and on site at the brewery, where you might expect it to be well cared for.
We also drank premiumised versions, one of which is served unfiltered and hazy, and the other of which, La Tanc, is unpasteurised.
We found the former pleasingly rounded and almost complex, with the suspended yeast adding body, and softening the edges.
La Tanc was clean, sharp, and just bitter enough to feel on a par with, say, Budvar.
Both benefited from freshness and from the care with which they were served. And at the beer hall on site at the brewery, on a weekday afternoon, they seemed slightly less fresh, and so less exciting.
It’s worth noting, too, that these are beers which sing when drunk alongside salty bar food. Without wanting to get into beer and food pairing talk, salt delivered in the form of, say, pickled gherkins, has a way of jolting, resetting, or jump starting the palate. And that helps beers like these land.
The brewery itself is an impressive complex beyond the city’s ring roads. We arrived for our lunchtime session during what we guess was shift change, as a stream of weary looking workers poured from a side door in high-visibility jackets, carrying bags that clinked.
Underfills from the reject bin? Or a continuation of the tradition that brewery workers get a daily allowance? Our impression is that Romania clings to the old ways.
Bereta Brewing Co
The Bereta Brewing Co is at the other end of the scale from Timișoreana.
We visited its craft beer bar in the city centre and felt as if we’d been transported back to Bristol, or London, or Amsterdam, or any part of Craftonia you care to mention.
There were street art inspired decorations and slogans everywhere – in English, of course. The other customers included both Americans (“Ah, man, this is what it’s all about!”) and hipsterish locals with bike clips and beards.
Among the 15 or so beers on offer on the blackboard were several from Spain and, perhaps surprisingly (or do we mean inevitably?) Lightbulb from Verdant in the UK.
Our focus was on Bereta’s own beers, though. Most were billed as “heavily-hopped IPA”, with one lager, and one strong pastry stout.
We disagreed over the lager, Social Drink, at 4%. Ray dismissed it, more or less, as like dodgy homebrew. Jess, who drank most of it, found it pleasing, if more like a golden ale. Its carbonation was fairly low and it certainly had some fruitiness you don’t expect in ‘proper’ lager.
The two IPAs we tried, Juicebag (6%) and Is This Real Life? (6.2%) were good executions of the modern hazy style. They’d both fit into the lineup in a British craft beer bar with ease – and, in fact, might stand out as particularly impressive. But perhaps that’s our preference for bitterness speaking.
Finally, there was Circles, a strong cinnamon and coconut stout at 11%, served in a 200ml brandy glass. It suggested that the brewers involved have done their research and calibrated their efforts against international examples of the pastry stout style. We enjoyed it a lot, but very slowly.
The chat at the counter, in a mix of English and Romanian, was exactly as you might expect:
“What do you have in the way of an IPA? Have you got anything more sessionable? What’s the normalest beer you’ve got for my mate? He’s not much of a craft beer guy…”
Postscript: Timișoara beer in Sibiu
Thinking we’d had our shot at Timișoara beer, we were pleased to find, two stops further on in our travels, a craft beer bar stocked with beer from Timișoara breweries.
Sibiu is a prosperous, tidy city with even more avocado toast and more hipster coffee shops.
Flow is a coffee shop by day and a craft beer bar by night. Among the 12 beers on offer on our visit were nine from Timișoara’s OneTwo.
These were similarly accomplished and convincing, covering a range of styles from New England IPA to ‘heavily fruited sour’. The beer that grabbed us most, however, was a Gose based on a Romanian national dish.
We got a warning from the barman: “Are you sure? Would you like a taste?”
As we said on BlueSky, about 10% of the time this means you’re going to have one of the best or most interesting beers you’ve ever encountered. And so it proved to be in this instance.
You might not think a beer with no foam, that tastes strongly of red bell peppers, could possibly be enjoyable. Well, readers, we were first flummoxed, then amused, then charmed, then ordered a second round.
If you never go to those outer limits, you never have your mind blown.
5 replies on “Old Beer, New Beer: Impressions of Timișoara”
“Timișoara is Romania’s third city and from certain angles looks and feels as if it belongs further west”
It was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire until the end of the First World War, and largely retained that identity in the interwar years, as Patrick Leigh Fermor, who passed through that area on his walk from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople, describes in his book Between the Woods and the Water. It only really became a Romanian city under Communist rule after the Second World War.
We’ve got both Patrick Leigh Fermor and our 1905 Baedeker guide to Austria-Hungary with us on the trip. Austria-Hungary is kind of the theme, insofar as there is one, shaping our route.
Per Eoghan Walsh’s post about a street food place in Brussels the other week, it appears the accepted academic term is “Global Brooklyn” (although I’d argue for Global Dalston ;))
My partner and her family are Romanian and they have me hooked on Timișoreana! Quite a few Eastern European Lagers in the off license these days but would argue this is one of the best
I went to Romania a lot in the immediately postcommunist 1990s, and have gone for work every few years since. At first my mission, as I saw it, was simply to drink dark beer, any dark beer, because they were being swept away by the tide of global lager giants. We won that battle, but I confess I haven’t really moved on to sampling the modern craft beers. They make pretty good wine too, of course.