My wife and I are planning to go to Paris. Any good beer around Paris? I know France is wine country but thought I would ask anyway.
My experience is 21 years out of date. I ended up drinking the wine, very cheap. The first night I was drinking Belgian beer, very expensive.
Much has changed, I’m sure. Let me know what it is like now.
That’s my experience as well. French beers aren’t so great but lots of Belgians available so drink those. My favorite daily drinker there was Grimbergen.
The French beer scene has changed dramatically in the last 5-10 years, they’ve seen one of the biggest growths in breweries anywhere in the world. It’s 3-4 years now since I’ve spent prolonged time in France so I’m hopelessly out of date, but I know enough that there are some interesting things happening in Paris albeit more on the food/beer front in bars and restaurants even if most of the interesting beer comes from the French hinterlands.
I’d guess you’d need to poke around online but there’s certainly a fair bit out there in English if you dig for it.
I can’t speak to developments in the last 10 years, but having lived in France and visited there subsequently, I have to agree with hopfenundmalz that wine is a better value than beer. Good Belgian beers through Inbev and the other conglomerate and some good French beers are widely available. You might be able to find some Biere de Garde that is very hard to get your hands on in the US especially in good shape. There may be some ciders to look for; just a thought - I’ve never looked for them in Paris. “Brasserie” means brewery in French, but usually brasserie describes a type of bar-restaurant.
If you like mussels, there are plenty of places that serve moules-frites (mussels and fries) with Belgian beer; it’s a classic food-beer pairing so you should try that.
Yes, I do. I’ll definitely have to try that.
It sounds like I’ll save the beer for rest of the trip when we are in Belgium and Germany. Thanks for all the advice!
I ate moules frite as many times as possible in Belgium!
I suspect there are beer places in Paris, but I just checked the menu and then decided if it would be beer or wine. I mostly lived on snails and charcuterie while in Paris. Those were some of the least expensive dishes.