Monday, March 08, 2010

Peruvian Beers


Being vegetarian, I deprive myself of many of the culinary delights of the countries I visit, meaning, for example, that I missed out on roasted guinea pig in Peru. I do my best to compensate for this failure by trying every beer (and other new alcoholic drinks, come to that) I come across. To that end, I can report that I managed twenty brewed-in-Peru cervezas in my six months in the country, which ended Sunday.

The A-Z list is:


Anpay*
APU cerveza de coca
Arequipeña*
Barena
Club*
Cristal*
Cusqueña blonde*, malt, red, wheat
Franca*
Perkas*
Pilsen Callao*
Pilsen Polar
Quara
Real McCoy`s Amber Ale dark and light
San Juan
Trujillo*
Zenda*


The asterixed majority are same-samey bubbly lagers, the best of which may have been Club, the worst Perkas. Barena and San Juan were similar but had a Red-Stripe tang to them, a positive in my book. Cusqueña´s malt was too sweet for many but I found it and the targeted-at-women Quara to my liking, though Pilsen´s black beer, 



called Polar for some obscure reason, was my favourite. The coca-leaf beer is something to try yet not savour, though I would steer clear of Cusqueña´s “limited edition” red beer, if it is being marketed when you are in the country.

1 comment:

Cynthia McMurry said...

I've now made 2 successful batches of homebrew under my sink in Cusco (an amber ale and a malta) - if you hurry back down you can add 2 more to your list!