OnTap Magazine

40 | Spring 2025 | ontapmag.co.za WORLD OF BEER charming capital of Kyrgyzstan, the beer scene is surprisingly more developed than in the more cosmopolitan Almaty. Brewster’s Bar serves beer from Raccoon Brewing Co., and is very popular with expats working at NGOs. Here more American style beers, with heavily hopped Pale Ales and IPAs, dominate the menu, alongside sour beers flavoured with local fruit. The beer was amongst the best I tried in Central Asia and the welcoming basement bar is a great spot to while away a few hours, away from the intense heat of the steppe. A short walk away, Save the Ales, is a female owned and operated brewery with a bar in a leafy courtyard. There are always 2 beers on tap, and the IPA is excellent. Here you see an unusual phenomenon, where instead of pouring pints directly from the tap, the beer is filled into a counter-pressured bottle and then decanted into glasses. This allows the bars to sell take away beers, and you can buy a litre to take to the table and pour yourself. Some bars with extensive beer menus rely on this dispense method, such as Bishkek Beer Company, where some 30 beers are on tap at any given moment. Pouring several pints from plastic bottles takes a really long time, and unfortunately line cleaning regimes do not seem to be taken very seriously in the region, so by the time your beer eventually arrives it could be a touch warm and slightly flat. Another amusing thing you see all over Kyrgyzstan is locally brewed beer, very clearly trying to pass itself off as premium brands. Buff Beer, brewed by Abdysh- Ata who also make the leading brand Zhivoe, is a clear play on the Budweiser label. You also see pastiches of Corona, Carlsberg, and other western brands all over, many of them of dubious origin. I was fortunate enough to be welcomed by a group of locals to their yurt, where they were drinking enough vodka to floor an elephant. Kyrgyz people pride themselves on the welcoming of strangers, and turning them very quickly into friends. As we sat and drank the