As John Travolta once almost sang – Greece is the word. It’s also the next country on @BlackHaddock’s list (are you sure you don’t want to take it back now Jeremy? I really wouldn’t object!).
So, Greece; the inventors of (Western) civilization, democracy (for everyone who wasn’t too mad, poor, foreign or female) and the Olympic games. Despite only being the 95th largest country, it has the 11th longest coastline due to the huge number of islands (Wiki says between 1,200 and 6,000 islands, depending on your definition of an island). Both the islands and the mainland are home to more crumbling old things than the Eastbourne seafront. The Acropolis/Parthenon is obviously the best known attraction, but really wherever you go you’ll stumble across forgotten ruins between the olive groves and beaches.
Unfortunately, with a few exceptions, the brewing industry has not yet reached the high standards set by the scenery and archaeology – retsina and ouzo being far more popular locally. There are currently 110 breweries, but no cideries, meaderies or sakeries.
The top raters of Greek beers are @rouhlas, @gunnar, and @fugitive. @rouhlas and @fugitive are also the highest raters from Greece, and are both still rating on here. It’ll take you just 52 ratings of Greek beer to join them in the top 50.
The top Greek beers on Ratebeer are:
1
Seven Island Hazelnut Moctezuma
Seven Island Brewery
2
Satyr Brews Menace IPA
Satyr Brews
3
Seven Island Moctezuma
Seven Island Brewery
So… over to you for your tales of having a Hellas of a good time whilst drinking lukewarm Mythos on a Greek beach…
I like the way you’ve embraced the ideology of the Stat Attack, so it’s all yours (for at least another month). We can Beermail each other and maybe do a week about?
I love visiting the Greek Isles, Margie and I tend to pick small, back street apartments (usually very cheap) on different islands for a couple of weeks every two years or so. Just checked, haven’t been to a Greek island since 2017.
The only island we’ve visited twice is Corfu, we returned because of a Beer Festival I read about. It was a laugh, but not a beer fest like any other I’ve been too, before or since.
I’ve managed to rate 60 different Greek beer beers (from 16 breweries), which puts me @38th on the Leader Board for the country, sadly the average score is 2.86; mostly because of the Pale Lagers that dominate in most bars and supermarkets.
Seven Island’s big old stouts unsurprisingly dominate the top ten. A trade with @rouhlas a number of years ago saw me introduced to the main craft players of the time, plus a few from @blackhaddock.
Have visited twice. The first time I was driving through Bulgaria en route to Turkey and realised there was a small road off the highway that called into the top tip of Greece and allowed us to cross into Turkey from there. So purely for the purposes of ticking off another country, we tried to do that but unfortunately the small and basic Greece-Turkey border was closed, so we had to drive back round to the huge, insanely busy Bulgaria-Turkey crossing instead.
Second time was with a band playing Thesaloniki, final date of the tour mid Dec. My partner flew over and we took our time driving home. No time to relax on beaches with average lager unfortunately, but we are looking at a Greek island break in the future.
My first visit to Greece was back in 81, spent 2 weeks in Corfu on an Interrail ticket with 3 friends, short stop in Athens before heading home via former Yugoslavia.
Since I have visited Greece almost every year, and 10 years ago bought a small apartment on Crete, so most of my 473 ratings is probably done since then. 110 active breweries, with 12 of them is located on Crete, there has been a big rise in breweries, but also style wise, there is lots of exciting small breweries to explore
I have also done beer trips to Athens and Thessaloniki, lots of great places for good beer, I have rated 52 places and on top is The Hoppy Pub in Thessaloniki and The Local Pub in Athens.
Good beer shops with shipping in Greece are GreekBeerShop.gr and Beer24
been twice but 2003 and 2004 so no craft really. had a whopping 7 beers there, and more recently had a mere 15 ‘Greek’ beers, though most are 7 Islands and actually brewed elsewhere
nearly went in 2020 but good old covid scuppered that… will get there again eventually
Only 10 rates thus far. I haven’t visited but I do love Greek food and that is where I picked up rates.
My NYC apartment had a delicious high end Greek Restaurant around the corner, they focused more on wine and spirits but managed some Mythos there.
Moving to florida my neighborhood had fast casual chain called The Great Greek which had beers from Zeos and got few rates.
Now my new work in Boston has greek lunch spot in same building and they have few brews from Santorini I’ve had Yellow Donkey, Crazy Donkey and still need to try Red Donkey.
Just three ratings of Greek beer for me and I suspect most of them were from restaurants in Italy during beach holidays. However the stand-out was Seven Island Moctezuma Maple & Pecan in a can which I rated 3.8 in Dec 2020 so I am assuming it was a lock-down purchase. Greece is probably top of my list of countries I want to visit, although its variety produces paralysis over where to begin. Probably islands rather than mainland and probably other cities before Athens. And for someone as pale as me (it was a mistake to leave the cave, frankly), it will not be a summer visit. Hopefully by the time I have made up my mind the beer scene in Hellas will be even better than it is today.
Well, as someone that shy’s away from mass tourism, and one who thinks nordic summers are way too hot, Greece havent been in the focus of my attention, but I reckon I will come around to visit some of the beautiful places sooner or later
I have visited on only three occasions, once to Athens for work and twice to Thessaloniki.
All of this was when the craft beer scene in Greece were in is infancy. Nevertheless my glaring review of Craft Black Lager was picked up by the owners of the (now closed?) brewpub: The gastronomy of beer - Food - athinorama umami
Currently Greece is my 51st most rated country with a lowly 43 ratings and an average of 2.78.
As such is in of the top candidates for me to bring my country h-index up to 50, so I am actively searching for new Greek beers (but not to the point that I am going to start paying for ticking pastry stouts or flavoured sours - I am not that desperate a ticker )
No Greek rates for me yet. I’ve been to Greece twice in my pre-RB days though.
The first time was whilst inter-railing; we didn’t think much of Athens, and instead got a boat out to camp on some of the islands as a holiday from the “hard work” of inter-railing. Had warm, unpleasant Mythos on the beach on Paros. Ios was bizarrely full of Swedes and Swedish flags & had the best iced coffees I’ve ever tasted. Naxos was hot and dusty but with lots of interesting archaeological sites. Santorini was beautiful but far too touristy.
The second time my wife had a work trip to Athens & somehow managed to get her company not just to pay for me to go as well, but also to pay for us to stay on for an extra few days after her meetings had finished. It hit 45 degrees in Athens, we could see the smoke from forest fires around the city and the government declared a state of emergency, We drank warm, unpleasant Mythos on a rooftop bar whilst seeing youths torching cars below, and eventually escaped to the island of Poros for a severe dose of sunburn.
I think my common experience from the two trips were that Athens is unpleasant (with the exception of the Parthenon/Acropolis); the islands are stunning, Mythos is horrible and the food is superb. I really, really like Greek food!
It’s just the one Greek rate for me on RB, a lager beer enjoyed in the British sunshine! I’ve been to Greece a few times - never the mainland, but several of the islands (Zakynthos, Crete, Corfu), the most recent trip was to Mykonos in 2019 where in addition to seeing the windmills and enjoying Alfa, Fix & Mythos by the pool, also managed to sample 5 beers from a local craft brewery which were on offer at a cafe-bar by our hotel - alas no tasting notes, othwerwise I could have justified entering them on RB as historic rates, schoolboy error.
I’m so far behind these Stat Attacks its untrue. Like many a Brit I’ve only really sampled Mythos to be honest but I have the country tick at least. I remember going on family holidays to Crete and Kos in my teens and being allowed to enjoy the odd ouzo. Looking back it felt like a really scenic and chilled environment but again that may have been the ouzo. Would like to take my family to one of the islands someday when kids are a bit older (twins are only 5). One for the future.
I’ve been to Greece twice, in 1994 on a lads holiday to Corfu. A stunning & surprisingly green island. And more recently 8 years ago with my wife, flying into Santorini, then catching the ferry to Naxos & Athens. Beers highlights were far between back then but when they came along you sure enjoyed them… such as hiking out a few miles to Santorini Brewing Co & been welcomed with complimentary beers, finding a small cafe in a Naxos village after a decent hike that had Septem beers & visiting Beertime while in Athens.
Wow, I am behind with these! I went to Greece as a young man in 1995, had a great time but haven’t had he chance to go back. So all my rated Greek beers were had here in England.
I’m only got 14 which ain’t great but it’s relatively hard to pick up Greek beer here I find. Maltby & Greek do a few cans & bottles such as Voreia and Septem - they have an online and physical shop but also had a small stand in Bermondsey market when I was last there - and you can pick up the very good (but very expensive) Seven Island in some of the better online craft shops.
My top beers are pretty high, so Greece scores well as a country overall:
None rated over 3. The only one that warrants a story being when I asked someone to bring me back something from Greece they brought me a Mythos… which was available locally
My Rating
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