craft beer Kaliningrad - Expat in Kaliningrad, Russia

Craft, Imported and Specialty Beers: Evening in Bruges

Mick Hart’s difficult job of reviewing craft, imported and specialty beers in Kaliningrad

15 December 2025 – Evening in Bruges beer

Would you trust a man with a clip-on black beard, wearing a dark bowler hat with a cherry stuck on top? Oh, you would. Well, actually, I did too, or else I wouldn’t have sampled this beer with him as its trademark.

Do you know, I’ve drunk some strange-named beers in my time, including Watney’s Party Seven, beer products which end in the word ‘Best’, when clearly they aren’t, or if they are, God help us, and a nice little number which you couldn’t take home to the vicar called Bollock Twanger, but I’ve got to hand it to the Belarus brewery, Lidskoe Pivo, beer names don’t come more Gregory Peck or Cary Grant than an Evening in Bruges. It sounds a lot better than a wet weekend in Scunthorpe.

Although I had a friend at school who went by the nickname ‘Cherry’, on account of his having a larger and more bulbous nose than the American actor Karl Malden, I am never going to Bruges in the evening or at any other time of the day if men with bigger ones than mine – beards – are going to run around looking fruity with cherries in their bowler hats. It’s bad enough in the UK, come every election, when imbeciles wear Labour rosettes and on no-pride days when the streets are infested with scantily clad, suspect, rainbow-flag wearers with extremely tight or no pants. They might not be any relation to the Bee Gees; thus, their pants may not enable them to sing those very high notes, but they’re typically in the same club as those who change their avatars when they are told to do so.

“We know you are there! Come out from behind that nose with your trousers up!” That’s the sort of thing we would cry at Cherry when we were at school. Yes, we actually were at school sometimes! Not often, but it occasionally happened. Who was that who said it shows?

Beer review links:

[Butauty] [Kanapinis (light)] [Kanapinis (dark)]
[Keptinis Farmhouse][Bistrampolio] [387 Osobaya Varka][Double Mother T.]
[Tapkoc Belgian Blond Ale]

I didn’t shout any such thing at this cherry-flavoured bottle of beer, not because I am more mature than I was when I obviously wasn’t, or could be accused of growing up, but because I was sitting there on my Jack Jones, sat there in the attic, not forgetting Ginger the cat, but he considers me stark-raving human anyway, whilst anywhere else I might have succumbed, it did not seem appropriate, so what you could say, if you cared to, is that I deferred to my better judgement. Hah! You didn’t know I had one of those, did you!

I am not one – no, indeed, I am not – who generally, or whilst being any other rank, goes bananas over fruit beers. To paraphrase that in beer-speak, I am not an additives or adjunct man. But, occasionally, when I’m less myself than usual, pretending, for example, that I’m the famous Simon Templar, I steal across the threshold of caution to acquaint myself with something that could even be outrageously new, although adventures of this nature are by virtue of discretion mainly confined in my later years to beer.

So, Cherry he was; and cherry it is.

An Evening in Bruges beer. Cherry flavoured. Reviewed by Mick Hart.

Rather pleased with myself that someone else had bought this beer for me, so I didn’t have to pay for it, I nevertheless took off the top in a less than cavalier fashion, and moving my nostrils gingerly (Sorry, Ginger, ‘meow’), as though they had become instruments for taking out a bomb fuse, I lowered them rather gently in order to sample the scent within. And, you’ll never guess what it smelt of – it smelt this beer of cherries!

Evening in Bruges Beer: what’s it like?

I don’t believe that I am violating any brewery secrets by revealing that the reason why an Evening in Armston, sorry, I meant to say Evening in Bruges, releases a cherry bouquet is because it contains real cherry juice, which is good, because it would be a poor look-out and no mistake if a bottled beer with a man on its label holding a cherry in his John Steed bowler was found to be full of apple pips.

Was it strong? Was Charles Atlas? He must be. He’s flying around in space at the moment pretending to be an alien spacecraft disguised as a boring comet?

Back here on planet Earth (where we are all so glad to be), let out like the genie from its bottle, the cherry aroma lingered, and the flavour was strong enough to make me say involuntarily, “This beer I am drinking tastes of cherries.” And who could argue with that!

The cherry taste is flavoursome but also rather sweet.

It isn’t tart, for if it was, it would then be cherry tart. And it wasn’t, and it isn’t.

Evening in Bruges Beer: what’s it like?

I am not entirely sure whether the grain dilutes the cherry or vice versa, but one or the other waves the white flag and surrenders to the one that doesn’t. I suppose I’m trying to say, using a cack-handed beer-connoisseur impressive and smug type of lingo, that the two components are balanced, or I simply could be saying, purely on a subconscious level, that the taste of an Evening in Bruges is like playing a game of baseball with one or two bases missing.

My defining take on this beer is that it is a pleasant enough novelty brew with an eye-arresting label, but that it has neither the taste nor alcohol strength to firmly polish your cherries or blow them off the tree. However, with a strength of 4.4%, it should not give you the pip, or should you be the pernickety type, please feel free to change that remark to it should not get you stoned; that’s quite enough for me – 4.4%, I mean. However, there are those who move in more lordly circles than the ones I casually spin in, who hold fast to the conviction that if fruit juice is to be added to hops, then the end-resulting beverage is in need of greater strength and density.

Shrug! Shrug! And lastly, Pofik!

It could be worse, I suppose. I would rather an Evening in Bruges, cherry or no cherry, than losing it in Bedford’s Brewpoint drinking pints of Charlie at six or seven quid a pop. In fact, if you don’t mind me saying so, sir, I believe that if push came to shove, I would rather drink a pint of pop than Charlie’s!………

Life may never be a bowl of cherries, but it can be what you make it: all you need is an Evening in Bruges.

😊BOX TICKER’S CORNER
Name of Beer: Evening in Bruges
Brewer: Lidskoe Pivo (Lidskoe Beer)
Where it is brewed: Belarus
Bottle capacity: 0.5 litre
Strength: 4.4%
Price: 130 roubles (£1.20)
Appearance: Dark with a reddish hue
Aroma: Cherry
Taste: Cherry
Fizz amplitude: 3%
Label/Marketing: A man with a large cherry in his hat
Would you buy it again? Never say never

Beer rating

Beer glass review scale for Mick Hart's reviews of Kaliningrad beers

The brewer’s website has this to say about Evening in Bruges:
It is the first beer in the Kalekciya Maistra product line, which has been available since 2014. It is a dark beer with a subtle cherry hue and distinctive flavour. The beer has a nice smooth taste with rich cherry tones complemented by a caramel sweetness and a slight hop bitterness.
Website: https://lidskae.by/en/

Wot other’s say [Comments on an Evening in Bruges beer from the internet, unedited]
🤔🤔There aren’t many people out there saying much about this beer at present, possibly because it is still waiting to be discovered, sampled and reviewed, but this is what Mr Artificial Intelligence has to say:
😉It’s a dark beer from Lidskoe, likely styled to taste good in a Belgian-themed setting, rather than being authentically Belgian. [Comment: So, presumably, according to Arseofficial Intelligence, you must only drink it after a vist from the Belgian film-set designers.]

A competition for those too young to know much: who are these people?:
*Gregory Peck
*Cary Grant
*Karl Malden
*Ginger the cat
*The Bees Knees (clue: tight pants)
*John Steed
*Charles Atlas
*Charlie Wells
and what about Arthur J. Pye?*******

👉Name the films and TV programmes in which they starred and their favourite beer.

👌First prize for the correct answer, an Evening in Hemington

Mick Hart’s totally biased review of bottled beers in Kaliningrad (or how to live without British real ale!)

Introduction

Published: 30 June 2020 ~ Variety of Beer in Kaliningrad

Everybody knows that vodka is Russia’s national tipple, but it may come as surprise to learn that the second favourite is beer. From personal observation, I would say that here in Kaliningrad young people tend to favour beer over vodka, which would explain why the variety and availability of different beer types and brands have mushroomed in pace with the numerous new bars, restaurants and hotels that have opened in recent years.

Previous article: Preface (Mick Hart’s totally biased review of bottled beers in Kaliningrad (or how to live without British real ale!)

Gone are the days when if you felt like a beer you either went to the billiard hall or stopped off for a jar and a chat with friends at the side of the road. The little yellow two-wheeled tankers that provided this service have since been pensioned off, as far as beer is concerned, but can still be seen today now dispensing another traditional Russian drink of the non-alcoholic variety known as Kvass.

The increase in on-licensed premises since I first came to Kaliningrad in 2000 is nothing short of phenomenal and, coronavirus willing, may it continue to be that way. To service this industry there is not just a greater variety of Russian-brewed beer but also many international imports, both mainstream brands and interesting lesser known products, offering plenty of scope for exploration.

The craft beer bar has also made its debut in Kaliningrad. I believe there are five such outlets, the most popular and well-known being the Yeltsin Bar. These fairly small, but magnificently well-stocked beer bars, are reminiscent of the UK’s micro- or pop-up pubs but offer a substantially greater quantity and variety of beers at any one time sourced from around the world and purveyed on a rotational basis.

Variety of Beer in Kaliningrad

The brewed-on-the premises concept is also well established, with brew bars producing their own house brands and proudly displaying their brewing equipment for all to see on the premises. A good, large and exciting example of this would be the Pivovar Restaurant Brewery just off Victory Square in the centre of Kaliningrad, where the rows upon rows of deep copper brewing kettles and those mounted monolithically behind the bar are nothing short of magnificent

British ales are obtainable in Kaliningrad, such as Fuller’s ESB and various IPA varieties, most conspicuously in the Sir Francis Drake English-style pub, the first of such bars in Kaliningrad, which was certainly functioning when I first came here in the year 2000. But, as might be expected, the British ales that are served here are the keg export equivalent of their real-ale counterparts. But hey! ~ you did not travel all this way to drink a pint of Charlie Wells, did you?

Bottled British-brewed craft ales are also no stranger to Kaliningrad. You can expect to find both mainstream and more exotic brands in Kaliningrad’s specialist beer shops, and some supermarkets, both small and large, often stock a surprisingly diverse range of British beers.

Imported beer is, not very strangely, more expensive to buy than home-grown varieties, whether bought for consumption in restaurants or bars or as an off-sale from specialist beer shops. The typical price of half a litre of British beer in the Sir Francis Drake, for example, would set you back 250 to 360 rubles, which is between £2.90 and £4.18, whereas a half litre of Russian beer in one of the Britannica bars (a chain of British-themed ale houses along the lines of Wetherspoons) will leave your pocket a lot less stressed at around 130 rubles (£1.51).

Naturally, beer purchased from supermarkets can be obtained at more economical prices. My favourite Kaliningrad bottle beer, Ostmark (strong), which weighs in at a not inconsiderable 6.7% alcohol by volume ~ rather too strong for my normal preference of 4.5% max, but with more taste than most lager beers ~ costs between 160 rubles and 136 rubles for a 1.35 litre bottle, the price differentiation can be explained by the presence of two small supermarkets close to where we live, one of which is cheaper. In the cheaper supermarket, special offers occur on a daily basis, and I have seen good quality beers in 1.35 litre bottles going for less than a quid. Incidentally, this same supermarket does a good discounted range of quality vodkas as well, from around £2.80 for a 75cl bottle.

Another must for the beer connoisseur and further testimony to the take-up of beer in Kaliningrad specifically and Russia overall are the well-patronised specialist beer-dispensing shops. These establishments offer a wide selection of Russian and imported speciality beers on tap, which once purchased are conveniently decanted into screw-topped 2-litre plastic bottles.

Surprisingly, given its relatively small size, one of our local supermarkets incorporates an outlet of this nature. It stocks around 10 different beers on tap as well as some bottled varieties. The beer is good, both in terms of variety and quality, and is also competitively priced, making this venue a particular favourite of my brothers when he visited us last summer.

Variety of Beer in Kaliningrad

In Russia, beers tend to be grouped into categories determined by their hue: light, red and dark. In restaurants or bars, you will also often be asked whether you want a particular beer to be filtered or unfiltered. Simply translated this means that you have a choice between cosmetic surgery or beer in its natural state.

As the articles which follow deal exclusively with beers that I have been buying at random from our local supermarkets in 1.35l bottles, the light, dark, filtered and unfiltered taxonomy is only relevant insofar as appearance is concerned, and you can only really determine this once the bottle is open and the contents have been poured.

These beers may not be the crème de la crème in the sense that they are supermarket bought, not purchased from craft-beer outlets, but they do have something very important going for them: they have helped to sustain me through the isolating process, and during social distancing have become a much appreciated part of my personal New Normal in the wake of closed bars whilst the dreaded spectre of Coro continues to stalk the land.

😏 Feature image: Mick & Olga Hart enjoying a beer on the terrace at the palatial Residence of the Kings, Kaliningrad, in the pre-coronavirus summer of 2019