Barcelona. The Capital of Catalonia. So good, the greatest frontman in rock, Freddie Mercury, sang about it (don’t forget Montserrat Caballe – how could I?!). THE football team of the noughties. Pep Guardiola. Johann Cruyff. The GOAT – Lionel Messi. Shopping. Architecture by Gaudi – La Segrada Familia. How could you not fall in love with this jewel of a city? Though how the airport ended up being called ‘El Prat’ is beyond me.
And so, it was January 2019 we found ourselves staying just off Las Ramblas in the heart of the city. Phil & I were both born in January (within a week of each other, although he is a year older I hasten to add…) so decided to jointly celebrate with our other halves.
Phil lined up match tickets to see the ‘blaugrana’ and upon landing at said ‘El Prat’ airport we were ‘driven’ in typical Spanish taxi driving style to our hotel (breakneck speed, hanging on for dear life), just off one of the most famous streets in Europe.
On our first foray into the city, and just one block away from our hotel we stumbled across ‘Beer Linale’ where (their website says):
Our beer sommelier carefully selects the best craft beers, the majority European, to create an updated and balanced list of the finest beers, with most styles available among our 30 drinks on tap. Our extensive menu features over 180 of the world’s finest craft beers in the bottle.
‘Beer Sommelier’? Best not use that in Mexborough.
Phil spotted a beer on their extensive list at 8.0% and was straight in. I went for something more sedate but eventually joined him on the 8.05 stuff – and cracking it was too. And soo Beer Linale became the focal point of our night out, with a visit their on each of the 5 nights we were in town – pretty soon, the owners and waitresses were giving us a knowing nod as we entered the bar.
We decided we ought to look further into our 8.0% drink and see if we could import it back to the UK. Investigation quickly revealed the brewery making the delicious drink was ‘Pressure Drop’ – more digging then revealed they were based in Tottenham, London! The drink was also called ‘Pressure Drop’ and it was a Limited Edition so we’ve never seen it again unfortunately!!
However, on the back of that one drink we now own 2 bars and a brewery – so we either need to thank Pressure Drop or chase them out of town!!
