OnTap Magazine

I magine you've found a wondrous magnifying glass enabling you to transcend miles and take a peek at beer culture in any part of the world. Would it be quite similar to your country? Would it be wildly different? What peculiarities would it have? Let me be your magnifying glass to the Ukrainian beer scene. In terms of craft — alternative, new- wave, call it as you wish — beer, the Ukrainian scene is quite young, but pretty ambitious, just like its South African counterpart. Collider, the very first brewery to use the word "craft" in its description, was founded in 2012. It was a nomadic venture, utilising a brewing kit in a small restaurant brewery in Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine. The primary wave came in 2015 with the opening of the first big players – now well established as some of the largest in the Ukraine. Pravda Beer Theater, FDB, Varvar Brew, K&F, White Rabbit, Tsypa – they covered a wide berth of business models, from production brewery to brewpub setup to contract project. And then the beer started trickling, not powerfully enough to create a river, but definitely a steady spring. Until a few years later that is, when a change in legislation eliminated the notion of "low alcohol drink" and put beer into the "alcohol" category, together with wine and spirits. RED TAPE WRANGLING Obtaining a disproportionately expensive yearly license for off-premise sales became an impossible feat for smaller breweries and for about a year and a half it was a weird case of Schrödinger beer: there was beer, there was no beer if you know what I mean. By a miracle – and the hard work of parties involved – there was some improvement and a special license for smaller breweries (producing less than 3000 hectolitres per year) was introduced. Nonetheless, high excise tax (the same rate for all breweries, no matter the production size), a huge amount UKRAINIAN BREWERIES TO SEEK OUT Ten Men For hazies and smoothie-style beers Rebrew Great IPAs and fledging barrel aging programme Varvar Brew For their experimental range and mixed- fermentation stuff Underwood For their line of low-alcohol offerings Hoppy Hog For dessert- inspired beers OddBrew Grab a beer by the sea in coastal Odesa Volta Contract brewery serving all things contemporary of safety paperwork, the obligation to have a laboratory on-site and the complicated process of applying for a brewing license haven’t helped the growth. But the newly founded Association of Small & Independent Breweries is pushing hard for a change and lobbying for new laws, which will make things easier for smaller businesses, so we are hopeful. Another hardship to overcome is a lack of beer knowledge. Until 2017 there was not a single book available on beer in Ukrainian, and while internet access is quite good across the country, most beer information being written in English makes it hardly useful. Brewers do what they can to evangelise about beer through their social media – doing meet-the-brewer events, talking to people Brewers work hard, but they party hard too. (Photo: Oksana Verbovetska) A post-workout beer? Why not. (Photo: Paul Liniewicz) Until 2017 there was not a single book available on beer in Ukrainian ontapmag.co.za | Spring 2021 | 41