Craft beers at the Yeltsin Kaliningrad - Expat in Kaliningrad, Russia

Basically one of the best beer bars in Kaliningrad

28 December 2023 ~ Yeltsin Bar: The Best Craft Beers in Kaliningrad

There’s an awful lot written about Kaliningrad’s number one specialist craft ale bar, Yeltsin, named after Russia’s first post-Cold War president. Most of it is good; and much of it correct.

The essential ingredients of Yeltsin’s success are a wide range of tap and craft bottled beers from around the world, no frills food and a basic, industrialised look and atmosphere. With its juke box, table football and predominantly young clientele, it is the closest thing in Kaliningrad to a UK student bar that you would not expect to find in any Russian city ~ except, perhaps, Kaliningrad.

Yeltsin Bar

The Yeltsin sits at the end of a big solid block of a building on a fairly busy road junction about five minutes walk from Victory Square, Kaliningrad’s city centre.

You’ll wonder what it is when you first see it, as the name Yeltsin is all there is, cut solidly into a bronzed metal sheet attached to the outer wall. It is an effective sign prompting further investigation and one which pre-empts the Yeltsin design and ethos.

To get to the Yeltsin, one must leave the pavement and descend by a flight of concrete steps. A small beer garden, or more accurately beer courtyard, with a gravelled surface and some rudimentary seating precedes the entrance, and preceding communism, and to a limited extent surviving it, is a fine example of the Russian tradition of wall carpeting, albeit on Yeltsin’s outside wall as opposed to the usual practice, which is to hang the carpet on an interior wall for insulation and decoration.

This wall feature, as quirky as it is, pans into virtual insignificance in comparison to the voluminous blackboard, which, stretching from head height to the point where wall meets ceiling, contains an inventory of beers that ranks as truly awesome.

Beer rotation is ongoing, and with each outgoing and incoming beer, the board requires amendment. Up and down the step ladder demands good co-ordination and an admirable head for heights. One can only suppose that the bar staff either refrain from imbibing or have undergone rigorous training in the art of balanced consumption or balance whilst consuming.

Board-Chalker wanted; must have a good head for heights and proven expertise in the techniques, mechanics and dynamics of staying on a stepladder.

The Yeltsin Bar in Kaliningrad

As I wrote in a former post, the Yeltsin is an honest to goodness no frills bar. It is not ‘back to basic’, it is basic. No carpets (apart from the one outside) and no deluxe or chintzy wallpaper. It’s got hard seats, high stools, plain tables, industrial-style hanging ceiling lamps, a 1970’s style football game, a good old-fashioned juke box and an awful lot of atmosphere. It is not a soft-seat comfort place. It’s a place to hang out and drink beer. In fact, it is simply just a great place, with an easy-drinking atmosphere. What more could one possibly want?

Mick Hart Juke Box Yeltsin Bar Kaliningrad

Well, now, the proprietors of the Yeltsin obviously anticipated your answer to that question, and the answer they came up with was the more you want is street cred. And how they have achieved that is to turn the antechamber leading to the toilets and the toilets themselves into municipal halls of graffiti. The result to more conservative-leanings may be a trifle downtown urban for positive acclamation, but for me personally it seals the envelope on the Yeltsin statement of beer and basic.

The thing about the Yeltsin is that it’s a good thing, where less than more really works and where all the additional quirky bits feed into the central premise, which is that young and laid-back beer drinkers only need a glass for their beer, a table on which to place their glasses and stools on which to park their arses, anything else is superfluous.

In the Yeltsin’s case this superfluous anything just might be the huge wall-sized TV screen, which on my most recent visit to the bar was showing a fixed, that is stationery, video-camera image of a busy traffic underpass somewhere in Bangkok (How thrillingly arty fart is that!).

I cast a glance across it and then returned to the beer.