Week twelve sees us in Poland, all 120,726 Square Miles of it. 14 UNESCO World Heritage Sites and 38 Million people live there. 560 Breweries are on our database, @danlo will fill you in on the Cider and Mead details later (I hope). We have split Poland into 16 Regions, so Stat chasers can have some fun with those, who wouldn’t want a beer from a Region called Holy Cross?
Beautiful cities and a diverse countryside sums up the place nicely, the beer scene has also exploded in recent years. Most Brits know the cans available in all the Eastern European shops that have popped up over here (Tyskie, Warka, Lech, etc, etc.), however there is now a huge choice of styles and breweries to explore; not just pale Lagers and the occasional Porter.
On RateBeer we have plenty of Polish raters, as can be seen by the top raters list. Sadly the well known trader and all round good egg Manslow (Marian Slowik) is no longer with us.
I’ve never made it to Poland, have 16 rates primarily from an eBrowarium online order of Polish ciders & meads before Brexit happened plus some Polish beers found in local East European shops. My highest rated is a mead Apis Dwójniak Kurpiowski at 4.1.
In terms of Cideries, there are 37 active, with Cydr Chyliczki having the most listed with 38. And there are 16 active meaderies in Poland, with Spóldzielnia Pszczelarska Apis having the most listed also at 38.
The top 5 raters for Polish Ciders and Cideries are:
Only 7 rates for me but from 6 regions so that’s a plus. There was a high rated polish restaurant here in Boston I found. that had very good looking pierogis and a bunch of cheap polish lagers to help my region ticking but they closed due to pandemic and rumor is not reopening. So never got to try.
I’ve only been to Poland on a day trip from Berlin, in 2012 maybe; took the train to Frankfurt an der Oder and walked across the bridge into Slubice. It’s a typical border town, selling cheap petrol, cheap fags, cheap booze and cheap women to their richer German neighbours. My little party of four wanted to try some traditional Pierogi so we popped into a likely looking restaurant and did, they were bloody awful. Poland will get it’s second chance one day, Kraków most likely being the place we’ll visit.
My actual Polish beer total is fairly good (in my opinion); 125 rates from 15 of the 16 regions, only missing Holy Cross. Eastern European shops in Lincolnshire (Boston) and Shropshire (Telford and area) have helped me rate so many, plus of course my time using Beer 52. One or two beers have been very good and interesting, but even more have been very poor, my average score is below 3, so not good.
I’ve spent a fair bit of time in Poland, perhaps unsurprising given my family tree but actually coincidental – my paternal grandfather moved back there before I was born, and although he visited us a few times before his passing in the late 80s it is to my eternal regret that we never made the trip over to visit him - different world back then, though also different in that it would have cost a fortune for four of us to go, no Wizzair £8 flights back then!
I first visited, briefly, in 2003, came in by train from Kosice to Krakow, across to Wroclaw, and down to Czech Republic. Remember having a whole chicken (well I hadn’t eaten all day) and chips with a litre of ‘beer’ for about £2. I visited properly early 2005 and from then on made regular visits, the most recent being last week. I’ve seen first-hand as the beer scene has gone from almost nothing but pissy lagers and awful ‘mocne piwo’ designed to get you drunk as fast as possible but tasting of sugar and paint stripper (the one decent beer was Zywiec Porter, if you could find it), to a handful of brewpubs making fairly trad German-ish styles and the odd microbrewery beer if you knew where to find them, to the scene they have now with hundreds of breweries and some of the most interesting beers in Europe.
Stats-wise, I’ve only rated a couple of here, but got 261 on my spreadsheet and 736 on U*****d - if I’d realised how close I was I’d have made the effort to have 3 more last week - annoyingly I would have had a few for NYE in Katowice but all the bars were either closed or ticket-only
I’ve enjoyed my trips to Poland … first few visits were in 2005 and 2006 before any kind of craft beer boom.
First trip was Krakow in March 2005 … Pope JP II is from within 30 or so miles of Krakow and was on his death bed during this trip so we were praying (not in the biblical sense) he wouldn’t cark it whilst we we there as I reckon the whole country might have shut down! As it was Wiki tells me he soldiered on until April 2nd.
Recall drinking in a low level / cellar type brew pub (probs the only one back then).
After a visit to Gdansk in '06 it took a few years till I returned … 2017 IIRC Warsaw beer festival inside Legia Warsaw football stadium which was a good blast.
Came back again in 2019 taking in Poznan and Warsaw again.
Big craft scene there now as you all realise … some good, some bad, quite a lot in the whelming 3.3 / 3.4 range but ticks a plenty.
There’s a small chain of pubs in Warsaw that really do tick a tickers box.
Pipaw is the name … 2 bars last I knew and seems to be an outlet for Bazylisek brewery (usually 20 or so of theirs on tap from 50 taps). They sell 0.05l pours of any beer / any strength for 1ZL (18p on todays market) and one of the bars is open 24 / 7 … all night ticking … hell yeah !
Some of the Polish ‘whales’ that make RB top 50 are good, some are very limited edition runs … perhaps at a beer festival as a one off … I also feel that a lot of local raters over hype and score such beers and I’ve had some riding at 4.4 scores that were 3.7/8 for me.
Like a trip to Poland … my 9th highest rated country with 543 rates.
Still need the Holy Cross region to complete the 16 … not that I’m making any effort on the new age regions on here.
Favourite Polish memory though has to be huddled around an iphone on a beer patio watching England win the T50 world cup in July '19 … we were going mental … locals struggling to work out what was going on as cricket not a thing there!
Poland is my fifth highest country as far as numbers are concerned, thanks mainly to Beer52, with 14 rates - and covering 7 of the 16 regions. I’ve never been there, but heard many tales of stag weekends to Krakow which sounded both fabulous and horrific in equal measure - suffice to say I don’t think craft beer was on their radar! Ihave a couple of cans of Polish rocket fuel in the fridge, sourced from a local foodstore, but I’m not anticipating they will be high scoring - my highest scoring Polish beer so far was Nepomucen CRAZY LINES #01, and the majority of my rates are 3.3. or above so I must quite like them; lowest scoring was my one and only Kvass, I am not a fan!
ah good old Piwpaw, great if you value quantity over quality…! IMO of course. But the Bazylisek beers are mostly mediocre and the trouble with having 100 lines (as one branch has) is that turnover can be sloooooooooow. Obviously keg doesn’t have a few days shelf life like cask, but some beers were on for literally months. One branch has now been sold and now runs as Brewski, still 50ish lines, not sure if still doing the 1zl thimbles. Next door to it is Hopito, superb bar with excellent pizza
Forgot to mention beer fests - only done a couple, as there’s loads to go at in bars. Really enjoyed Beer Geek Madness in Wroclaw, all-in ticket for about £30, most recent one I got to focussed on dark and sour so I was in my element. Held in an old brewery too, bit of a labyrinth, great atmosphere. I’ve also been to a few iterations of FunkyFest in Warszawa, run by Funky Fluid brewery and featuring the best of Polish plus some good imports (mostly US)
To quote from my own review of Piwpaw Parkingowa …
“And as per the other PiwPaw the beers are pretty average with a good % from their tied brewer Bazysleck … expect 2.8 to 3.2 scores or be disappointed … a 3.4 or higher will be a highlight !”
I’ve only been to Poland once on a daytrip back in the 90’s. A bitterly cold day in January in Szczecin in NW Poland, it was snowing. I didn’t drink any beer at all and I swerved the food because it looked awful. I’ve rated 7 Polish beers and actually had one today (Funky Fluid Winter Cake) in Brewdog Shepherds Bush, London. Keen to visit Krakow when travelling becomes normal again.
I’ve got 32 rates for Poland, from 10 of the 16 Polish regions (but, alas, not the elusive Holy Cross) at an average rate of 3.15. There are some good ones in there brought down by some macro crap: my most-rated brewery is Kompania Piwowarska with 5 beers, and it’s my third lowest rated brewery of all. The top ones are pretty good indeed although all short of a score of 4:
I took a trip to Lithuania and Poland in 2015, back when I had the disposable income to take international trips and there was no such thing as COVID. I didn’t get to that many places, only 8 (4 in Warsaw and 4 in Białystok) so I missed a lot of the better beer places in Poland. The standout places were:
Multibrowar doesn’t have such good reviews from other Ratebeerians but I thought the selection was decent and the food was excellent if basic (or maybe because it was basic). My stats can certainly be improved upon, but I had a great time & got some points on the board so to speak.
Not much from me. 22 ratings from 8 of 16 regions, no places not having visited myself.
Top rating by far is Apis Półtorak Jadwiga. A few other gems, several shared by Radek a Canadian rater originally from Poland.
I have had Jadwiga several times but no formal rates(very hard to beat, but kinda hard to find now stateside). On the low end, I have my worst rated cider at a robust 1.1 tally, plus a typo. Such a sucker for "natural product"s.
Unsurprisingly baltic porters and dark beers in general feature heavily, Poland being particularly adept at such beers in my opinion. Notice also there’s an alcohol-free beer in there at 4.3! Despite visiting Poland all my rates come from the UK and Euro swap trades
Polish beer tends to have a reputation in the UK for ubiquitous 5% canned lager but anyone who’s delved deeper knows Poland has being pushing the boundaries of craft for years now. I just wish I could have access to more.
Been to Polska numerous times. When I first started touring I used to hear scare stories from bus drivers and touring crew about the border - bands being ordered off in the middle of the night in their underwear in sub-zero conditions while border guards with big guns search the bus. This could be shortened by a simple bribe, but after Poland joined the EU in 2004 this stopped overnight.
EU money can also be seen in the shiny new motorways criss-crossing the country, shortening previous journey times by half.
Other memories:
watching Faith no More in the glorious sun at a festival in Gdynia. Or was it Gdansk?
driving to Hel and back, near Gdansk
seeing the huge Jesus statue in Świebodzin, west Poland (it really is huge!)
getting a tour of Auschwitz
visiting the Holy Cross church in Warsaw and standing in reverence at the spot where Chopin’s heart is buried while my friends went to Hooters across the road
Wish I had more interesting memories, but it’s all a bit of a blur to be honest.
Never been to Poland… Even though here in Germany we have quite a strong polish community with their own supermarkets (sometimes - attention! - polish-russian shops), only the mass-market Lagers are easy to get. So the best offer, which is not so hard to find, is still the gorgeous Żywiec Porter!
Have been many times to Poland, and the beer scene has changed dramatically from my first visit to the Polish countryside in 1994 until present. In later days I have made one dedicated beer trip to Warsaw and several work related trips to Łódź.
It is my 14th most rated country with 536 ratings, average 2.85.
The region with the fewest ticks is Opole with 3.
The relatively low average is largely due to a high number of commercial lager and mocne from multinational brewers. There is a whole lot of high quality craft brewers as well as a bunch of interesting regional breweries.
It is very even at the top of the list of my ratings:
Just 8 beers sampled from 4 regions and not a single Baltic Porter among them. I seem to have largely stumbled upon Polish imperial stouts in my travels and that may explain why my average rating is high. Business took me to Lodz, a city whose spelling is unrelated to its name, and which has a world famous film school where the great Polish film directors trained. My main recollection is an evening meal at a Jewish restaurant which given the tragic history of the area was unexpected. No beer was offered.
Krakow is on my “must-see” list. But in the meantime I will see if I can find some porters in the Polish stores here.
My Rating
