Line ’em up!: Paris Brew Pubs

  Paris is not a beer lover’s paradise. Some time after arriving, after the red wine excitement waxes and wanes, M. or Mme. Beer Lover is faced with these facts: each bar and café seems to have the same three lame and over-priced beers on tap, and in the grocery stores, where the prices are reasonable, the selection remains small and repetitive. Sure, Belgian Leffe is good and frequent, but it can keep one happy only so long. After that…what? I’ve found three options: brewpubs, bars à biéres, and specialty beer shops. I started this article hoping to discover Parisian brewpubs, thinking, hoping that I’d find many. In fact there are only five, four of which are under one umbrella, Frog Pubs. Frog pubs started ten years ago when two business school buddies noticed something: there’s a good market for good beer in Paris. They started with one location, on rue St. Denis, adding three more in Paris as well as in Toulouse, Bordeaux and Lisbon. The premise is simple: fresh British style beer in a British style pub. All the ingredients come from England, and in some cases the plumbing does too. They offer five regular beers, kept flowing by American head brewer Michael Gilmore, with clever names like InSeine and Dark de Triomphe, plus a winter seasonal and other specialties. The beer is excellent, the best in Paris, which is easy to say. For example the stout tastes like a stout should taste; that is to say it has taste. The menu is a small, diverse mix of pub grub. Weekend brunches occur from 12-4pm. Happy hour is 6-8pm. O’Neil is the other brewpub, located just next to St. Sulpice in the sixth. Its brewing vats are front and center as you enter and the general décor is a good mix of French and English. It is part of Les 3 Brasseurs, a company that has other locations in Strasbourg, Lille and Lomme. They offer four beers, simply named La Blonde, La Blanche, L’ambrée and La Brune. For Parisian standards, the beer is good. Let’s compare: if the Frog Pubs’ beer tries to make friends with its strong personality, O’Neil’s beer tries by being as agreeable as possible; there’s something to be said about both methods. To go with the beer they serve a small menu that includes les flammekueches, a dish part crepe, part pizza indigenous to the Alsace region of France. One can get beer to go in five or fifty liter servings, though the latter requires advance notice. They have happy hour, which they call “crazy,” from 4pm until 8pm Monday through Friday, and again from midnight until closing, or 2am, Monday through Thursday. Unfortunately, they’re the only brewpubs. The next option is to search out a place with a creative beer list, or to find a bar a bières. These establishments eschew the three-tap norm, opting for 15-20 beers on tap as well as a large selection of bottles, knowing that variety is the spice of life. There are a good number of these; I’ve listed just a few below. After that, one is left with a beer specialty store (there are two in Paris), or leaving the city for the suburban mega-stores, where the need to fill kilometers of store shelves helps with variety. Cheers! BREWPUBS:Frog Pubs The Frog & Rosbif116, rue St. Denis, 2eMº Etienne Marcel The Frog & Princesse9, rue Princesse, 6e Mº Mabillon The Frog at Bercy Village25, cour St. Emilion, 12e Mº Cour St. Emilion The Frog & British Library114, Ave. de France, 13e Mº Bibliothèque O’Neil20, rue des Canettes, 6e01 46 33 36 66Mº Mabillon BARS À BIÉRES Hall’s68, rue St. Denis, 1eMº Chatelet/Les Halles Le Sous-Bock49, rue St. Honoré, 1eMº Les Halles L’Academie de la Bière88-bis blvd Port Royal, 5eRER Port Royal The Bombardier2, Place du Pantheon, 5eRER Luxembourg, Mº Cardinal Lemoine BEER STORES Bières Spéciales77, rue St. Maur, 11eMº Rue St. MaurOpen Tuesday-Saturday 10-13:00,16-21:00 Bootlegger82, rue de l’Ouest, 14eMº GaiteOpen Tuesday-Saturday 10:30-13:00,16-21:00 After graduating with a degree in Biology, Brian Thayer became a traveler. Starting in London as a security guard, he was most recently found commercial fishing in Alaska. Now he lives in Paris, but doesn’t consider it travel. He is currently at work on a book about his time spent in the Middle-East.