craftbeer-europe.com

Why it exists

The domain came first. In mid-October 2026, halfway through a morning run, I wondered whether craftbeer-europe.com was still free. It had no business being free in 2026. It was, and two hours later it was mine. The product came after that, which is the wrong order, and I’d do it again.

The brief was short: something that starts fast, doesn’t need months of building, and makes some noise while a proper plan takes shape. Writing about what I already do, which is drinking beer in places most people walk past, met all three.

The more serious reason is the breweries. Conversations in Burgas and with craft beer people in the Algarve kept coming back to the same thing: the Algarve, Bulgaria and the Costa Blanca are where Germany, the UK and Norway were years ago, before stubborn work built a market willing to pay for a decent pint. Independent brewers here need new audiences and ideas for getting through the lean years, and almost nobody is writing about them.

So it’s a journal, not a rating site: I go, I drink, I report back.

What’s inside

• Pubs — taprooms and bars, the places you can walk into on a Tuesday.
• Festivals — reports from the day itself, rather than the press release from the month before.
• Gatherings — bottle shares, rooftops and kitchen tables. The part of the scene that has no front door.
• A map and a list of places, so every bar the journal mentions can be found again without rereading the story it was in.
• Three regions so far — the Algarve, the Costa Blanca and Burgas — which happen to be where I would be anyway. A sample of one drinker, and it shows.
• Five languages: English, Portuguese, Spanish, Bulgarian and German, because the people pouring the beer deserve to read what was said about it.
• A page for venues, for the ones who would rather tell me they exist than wait for me to wander in.

Who it’s for

Independent breweries first: the ones making something worth the walk, with no budget to tell anyone and a market that is still learning to pay for it. Then the people who land somewhere for a few weeks and want to know where the good beer is before the locals have had a chance to like them.

Where it stands

Live since October 2026, and honestly early: a handful of entries, written in the order I got to them. It grows at the speed of my liver, which is a business plan with a natural ceiling.