In the UK, and around the world, cask conditioned beer is seen as a British phenomenon and yet, there are pubs around the world like The Notre Dame, near Buenos Aires that offer cask beer, In this three-part series David Jesudason investigates the type of customer who drinks in these pubs. Are they locals or British people who live abroad? What kind of experiences are they looking for? Are they wanting to recreate a slice of home or is it because of a genuine love of British beer? David looks into the practicalities of serving British beer abroad and whether the beer and the pub experience can be considered as ‘good’ as it is in the UK.
“I’m a big fan of cask ale. It’s fresh for three days and compares well to Lambic beer – it’s very historic and the best way to drink beer.”
Alberto Eyherabide is speaking to me from Luján in Argentina and is keen to use this Zoom call to demonstrate that, despite being over 7,000-odd miles away, we are very close when it comes to the way we think of beer. He runs a basement bar called Notre Dame in the city which is located near Buenos Aires; it specialises in cask and despite the hot weather Eyherabide has turned this small establishment into a beacon for real ale by encouraging curious customers to become enthusiasts.
So much so that now people travel from all around to sample his hand-pulled beer and you can easily see why because his enthusiasm for all things cask really shows no boundaries. This is a man on a mission to upend how Argentinians drink beer and view Britain in a romantic light despite previous animosities between the two countries.
And it all started in the Olde Mitre ten years ago. The historic London pub – as Des de Moor rightly points out in London’s Best Beer Pubs and Bars was built in 1546 but remodelled a lot since with a 1930s Tudor pastiche remaining – is where it all began for Eyherabide after he had one sip of London Pride.
“I discovered cask ale,” he says. “Because I love the culture of the UK.”
But it wasn’t easy for him to set up a cask ale ‘pub’ in Argentina. First, Eyherabide sought out information from CAMRA on how a cask cellar would work in theory and obtained a book published by this organisation, which he then had to translate himself into Spanish. He then bombarded CAMRA volunteers with emails hoping for practical tips on how to get himself up and running in a hot country with no history of cask beer. He also had to work with breweries that weren’t producing cask ale as no one else was dispensing it in the country.
But Eyherabide didn’t give up and he found an organisation in the US that could offer similar help to CAMRA – NERAX, which organises the longest-running real ale festival in the US, as well as providing the practical hands-on training he craved. They invited him to the festival in New England and then encouraged him to take a cellar managing course in Boston, Massachusetts.
David Jesudason
David Jesudason
David Jesudason
Become a CAMRA member today for unlimited free access plus many other membership benefits. Find out more
