Budapest

A tram passes by with a sound like a half-hearted roar from a bored lion; the Danube seethes and swells with the rhythm of a massively erratic heart; a family sit on the steps below me, drinking pink champagne as if toasting the progress of this mighty river. 

Would you like a beer, I ask myself. Yes, comes the reply, as if it from the malevolent dummy that toyed with Anthony Hopkins in Magic, though my inner voice has a little more benevolence. Gellért Hill rises across the river, a big cheese in Buda, and I reach it across the Liberty Bridge, which looks like it was made with a Meccano set. 

I’d been told of a cellar, its name simple: Keg. I found it on Orlay Street, a brick-lined space with a long bar (and yes there were Edison lights) and a digital display of the beers on tap; 33 taps btw. What did I like? Well, I couldn’t resist Mad Scientist’s Liquid Cocaine, which was an energetic DIPA packed with hop synergy and a resiny dry finish (a little bit of Budapest that was forever Portland perhaps?). 

I wondered what the Portman Group would make of the name. 

I also enjoyed the softness and calmness of Fóti Pils (a brewery that Evan Rail wrote about in the last edition of 1001 Beers) and then I stepped out back into the heat and sun of a Budapest June and just around the corner noticed the Hotel Gellért Gyogyszallo, which with its balconies, turrets and towers looked like it had been carved out of the hillside. 

Later on, like many a beer tourist I went to Élesztő, a potent ruin pub in an old yard, with a cracked glass roof, bare brick walls, wooden tables and chairs, a worn concrete floor, a tree growing in its middle and there was yet another glass of Liquid Cocaine. I like this beer.