Midday at a Kőszeg, Hungary beer garden in 1987. Just think: no intrusive trivia games, corn hole or karaoke.
Spoiler: I found the Bak, and yes, it was dark.
During the transitional era that preceded our international craft brewing revival, beer hunting was comprehensively different than it is today. In the absence of immediate access to information via today’s ubiquitous mobile phones, an appreciable degree of winging it was a customary default mechanism.
Not that reference materials didn’t exist. There was an ample supply of beer books, but a car would have been needed to tote one’s non-digital library; those of us traveling more lightly with a backpack or similarly scaled-back, dirty-clothes-hauling mechanism found ourselves confined to pocket guide books (like Michael Jackson’s) ― the smaller the better.
(As an aside, who wanted to drive, anyway? For me, the whole point of beer hunting in Europe is to drink my findings as I please,...Read more
