Beer in St Petersburg 

Beer in St Petersburg - by Mark Enderby.
 
I recently spent a long weekend in St Petersburg with some non-beery friends. Hence this is not an exhaustive survey but, hopefully will provide some useful pointers especially since information on the web is difficult to come by and the recent What's Brewing article came up with only one brewpub.

As a popular tourist city, international brands are readily available. Local beer tends to be from the nationals like Baltica and are nothing to write home about. Other beer readily available comes from Finland and Germany and there is generally something wor h drinking. The stand-out local brewery is Stefan Rizan. I didn't come across this on draught but it was readily available from kiosks and supermarkets for consumption on the street [as preferred by the locals] or back at the hotel. A wide variety of beers are produced in 33cl and 50cl for about 35p including a Marzen [4.4], Golden [5.6], Porter [4.3], Admiral [4.4], Peter [4.8]. All were excellent. The brewery has a web site with full details of the beers.

There is one brewpub in the centre of town - Tinkoff on ulitsa Plekhanova just off Nevsky Prospekt. This is a typical large modern brewpub with a wide food menu [including fresh pizzas and a sushi bar]. The beer menu consists of german style beers in dark, light, wheat and filtered or unfiltered varieties. One special is available - on this occasion a rather pleasant smoked beer. I also tried t e unfiltered dark and dark wheat - bot very pleasant. There is a web site giving further details. The Tinkoff is part of a growing chain of Russian brewpubs and they have also recently opened a brewey in the outskirts of the city which produces bottled beers for the off-trade. There is a wider variety - including a lemon beer. However, I didn't try any but prices are steep at 60p for 33cl.

A trawl through the in-flight magazine on the flight over revealed two other brewpubs.There is a Paulaner brewpub in the Pulkovskaya Hotel at ploshchad Pobedy on the way to the airport. The other is a Bavarian brewpub called Karl & Frierich at 15 Yuzhnaya Doroga on Krestovsky Island. However, I was not able to check these out.