Happy Thanksgiving from Brew York
Hello from Musa de Bica, a brewery satellite tasting room in Lisbon, Portugal, where I’m just here to say “olá” and wish you all a happy Thanksgiving. This year, I’m incredibly thankful to all of you who have subscribed and keep reading and giving feedback since I started this newsletter back in February. It’s been a fun year sharing these stories with you, and now that I’m back to traveling internationally, I can’t wait to tell you more great stories about the breweries I visit around the world while sharing more news about the ones closer to home. Thank you for giving me a space to write and for all the encouragement to continue this project.
As I was writing this, a couple sat at the bar next to me to order beers, and I remembered how much I missed being in a place where people order “EE-pas” and not “I-P-As.” I opted for the Letra F IPA, pictured above, which is thus far the best beer I’ve had in Portugal. It tastes like a NEIPA (pronounced “nay-EE-pa”), but it’s as clean as any West Coast IPA I’ve had.
To make this brief edition of the newsletter useful, I recommend pairing your Thanksgiving dinner with any saison. It’s by far the most food-friendly beer style, in my opinion, so grab one that you like and pour it into that wine glass that’s by your place setting (coming from an Italian family, this elicited a gasp when I steered to beer in lieu of a red wine).
My Thanksgiving will be spent eating copious amounts of seafood and then watching some bad early-evening football (Lions-Bears at 5:30pm local time) at a sports bar whose beer options are, um, limited:
That four Euro Sagres will be by far the most expensive pour I’ve had of what is essentially Portugal’s national pale lager, but what do you expect in a bar that clearly caters to Americans at their ugliest? I try mightily to avoid being an Ugly American when I travel, but my last American holiday overseas was an exception. On the Fourth of July in 2018, as fireworks were set off over Lake Como in Italy, some Texans in a hotel room a few over from mine started singing our national anthem off the balcony, and I loudly and drunkenly joined them. They invited me over and we had Aperol Spritzes together afterwards. Here’s hoping for another memorable experience on this American holiday I’m spending abroad.
I’ll be back with more stories from my trip to Portugal next week. Enjoy your holiday and some good beer.
Saúde,
Chris