Craft Beer Weekly – A World-Class Craft Beer Pub That Many Dublin Pubs Can Learn From

You might have noticed that there hasn’t been a “Craft Beer Weekly” post for a while. That’s because I’ve been doing extremely important research in Barcelona. It was a very hard life soaking up the sun on the beach and visiting all the great craft beer pubs this fantastic city has to offer. Barcelona is one of my favourite places in the world. It’s also one of the biggest tourist destinations in Europe, so I’m sure that many Lovin Dublin readers will end up there at some stage or have already been.

I’m only back a couple of days, so this post will be short and sweet, but there is one craft beer pub in Barcelona I need to tell you about without further ado. It’s only been open about a year and I was really excited to give it a try as it hadn’t opened yet when I was in Barcelona last summer. People have been raving about it ever since its opening day, because it has lifted Barcelona to a new level as a craft beer destination. This bar is world class, up there with places in cities such as San Francisco and New York, which are decades ahead of anything we have here. All hail BierCaB.

BierCaB boasts a beautifully designed interior and has 30 taps, as well as a huge selection of beers in bottles. One of the owners is originally from Belgium, which means they offer a great variety of Belgian beers on tap and in bottles, combined with many top international brews and some fantastic local offerings from Catalonia.

Not only is it a brilliant place for beers, it also serves unreal food and gives beer pairing suggestions for each item on the menu. The food is prepared to perfection in their open kitchen at the back of the pub. Their beef of choice is Wagyu beef, which is also used in their fantastic burgers. My favourite dish I tried was Wagyu beef with hop chimichurri! Seriously one of the best things I’ve ever eaten. This food is on a different level to what we are used to in craft beer pubs here. I would even recommend this place as a restaurant, such is the quality of the fare they serve up. Check out their patatas bravas, they're unlike any you will find anywhere else. Little pieces of heaven with the perfect amount of two delicious sauces carefully piped onto each one. And the value for money? Unbelieveable.

Another really amazing thing is their digital beer menu behind the bar. By some wonderful way of magic, it updates automatically as soon as a keg is changed and shows the price for a half pint and pint of each beer, as well as the style and the brewery it comes from. Not only that, it updates BierCaB’s Twitter whenever a new beer comes on, also mentioning which one it replaces. As if that wasn’t enough, it even shows people’s check-ins to the bar on Twitter and Foursquare, and, most importantly, Untappd. It was so much fun seeing your own posts up on the board!

The technology is made by Digital Pour, who are based in Portland (what a surprise!). There is a huge gap in the market for something like this here in Dublin, and apparently it’s very easy to install and maintain. I really hope that some pubs here will look into getting this in. It’s a fantastic marketing tool and so enjoyable for customers, as well as convenient for staff as they don’t have to post beer updates to social media manually.

Whatever you do, do not miss BierCaB on your next visit to Barcelona. It’s your chance to see a world-class craft beer pub, drink fantastic beers, and have some outstanding food. Salut!