Spanish beer is really two different purchases, and most of the disappointment visitors feel comes from expecting one and being handed the other. At a bar, the default is a small glass of pale lager poured from a tap and finished while it is still cold, usually alongside something the whole table is sharing. Away from the taps, in bottle shops and the better supermarket aisles, there is a much smaller craft scene making hoppy pale ales and fruit-driven saison-style bottles that have almost nothing in common with the caña you had with lunch, and knowing which of those two you are after is what lets you order well.
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What To Order On Your First Evening
- Start with two small glasses of different lager brands rather than one large beer, since the caña is sized to be finished before it warms.
- Name the glass you want, because a tubo, a tercio and a quinto are the same lager in different sizes and the choice depends on the table.
- Save the curiosity for the craft bottles, since the big lager brands are built for consistency rather than for character.
- Find these beers in British Columbia by asking an independent bottle shop to source a specific name, because the shelf stock is rarely there.
What You Are Ordering When You Ask For A Beer
A caña is the standard unit of Spanish beer drinking: a small glass of lager, a couple of hundred millilitres at most, poured to be drunk standing up. Ask for a tubo and the same beer arrives in a tall glass that will last longer, and at a table where everyone wants their own drink you will be handed a tercio, a third-of-a-litre bottle, or a quinto, which is the smaller bottle of the same beer for anyone who would rather have two different ones over the meal. A jarra is the opposite idea, a large shared jug of lager close to a litre, ordered so the group is not calling the barman back every few minutes.
The reason the small glass dominates is temperature rather than thrift. Lager loses what little definition it has as soon as it warms in the glass and starts to taste only of alcohol, the room is often hot, and a caña is sized so that the beer is finished before that happens. That is also why the bottle arrives sweating from the fridge and why nobody thinks twice about ordering a second small one instead of a large one: the whole system is built around the beer still being cold when you take the last sip.
The Lager Names You Will Be Handed
Most beer drunk in Spain is lager from a handful of large breweries, and the brands are regional in a way that surprises people used to a national shelf. Estrella Galicia comes from A Coruña in the northwest and is the name associated with Galicia. Estrella Damm is Barcelona's lager, Mahou is what you are most likely to be poured in Madrid, Cruzcampo belongs to Seville, Ambar is the Zaragoza brewery, and San Miguel turns up everywhere as well. If you are working through the country, these are the bottles that arrive when you do not specify, and they are dry, lightly hopped and clean.
None of them are trying to be interesting, which is a different thing from being badly made. Holding a pale lager stable, cold and carbonated through a hot summer and a long distribution chain is a real technical job, and the reason the big names taste the same in every town is that the breweries are chasing consistency rather than flavour. Once you stop hoping a caña will do something it was never built to do, it becomes a very good accompaniment to fried food, and you can save the curiosity for the bottles below.
Three Craft Bottles Worth Knowing By Name
The craft side is small enough that a short list is genuinely useful, and these three are the bottles most worth recognizing. Two of the three come from the green north rather than the coast you fly into, which is worth knowing if you are trying to work out where to look.
- Cervezas Dougall's is a brewery in Cantabria on the northern coast, and La Mala Vida is its best-known bottling.
- Naparbier works in Navarra, and its Crimson Bird is a fruit saison of around 6.1 percent brewed with raspberries or strawberries. It is a saison rather than an IPA whatever the colour suggests, and the difference matters if you are reaching for hops and getting fruit instead.
- Garage Beer Co started in Barcelona in 2015 and cans a wide, hop-forward range, of which Soup is the New England style pale ale most people begin with.
If you want to drink one of these at home, ask an independent bottle shop that already orders unusual imports to put one in for you, and expect the price to reflect the freight rather than the rarity. In Spain itself, the way to drink them is a bar with a rotating set of craft taps rather than the restaurant round the corner from your hotel, since the bottled stuff moves through the places that bother to keep it cold.
Eating With Spanish Beer
Spanish food and beer work together for the same reasons they work anywhere else: carbonation scrubs fat off the tongue, salt makes bitterness taste cleaner, and a dry finish keeps a rich dish from coating the palate. What follows is the local answer, which is almost always cold lager, and a craft answer for the evening you would rather drink something with a personality.
| Dish | Where you eat it | Local answer | Craft answer |
|---|---|---|---|
| Patatas bravas | Madrid, and every town | A caña, because the potatoes are oily and the sauce is hot | Garage Beer Soup, whose soft bitterness cuts through the alioli |
| Pulpo a feira | Galicia | Estrella Galicia, poured beside the pimentón | A pale ale with enough body to survive the smoked paprika |
| Pintxos | Basque Country | A jarra shared down the length of the bar | Naparbier Crimson Bird with the sweeter skewers |
| Fabada asturiana | Asturias | The coldest lager the bar has | Dougall's La Mala Vida, if you want Cantabria with the north's heaviest bean stew |
| Salmorejo | Andalusia | A quinto, small enough to stay cold | A saison, whose peppery yeast note does not fight the tomato |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Spanish beer only lager?
By volume, yes, and on the shelf, no. Lager is close to everything poured in an ordinary bar, which is why the beer you are handed without asking is nearly always a lager brand. The craft breweries work in hoppy pale ales, fruit-driven saison-style bottles and a wide middle ground that rarely reaches the taps at a hotel, so the honest answer is that Spain drinks lager and makes a great deal more than it drinks.
Do I get a free tapa with my drink?
Sometimes, and it is worth going in expecting nothing. In parts of the country a small plate still arrives with your first drink, while in Madrid or Barcelona the habit has thinned out enough that the food on the counter is frequently something you order and pay for. If a plate does appear without being asked for, treat it as a courtesy and order another drink before deciding you are entitled to the next one.
Why does the same lager taste better in Spain than at home?
Mostly because of the glass and the speed. A caña is poured into a small, very cold glass from a line that is used constantly, so the beer is fresh in the line, cold in the glass and finished before it warms, which is a better set of conditions than a warm glass and a tap line that has been sitting since closing time.
Can I find these bottles in British Columbia?
Occasionally, and mostly by asking. The practical approach is to name a specific bottle to a shop that already orders unusual imports and let them source it, rather than hoping to find one sitting in a case, and to expect to pay for the freight that brought it. If you are going to Spain, bring back the bottles you could not find here, because that is how most people's cellar collection of them began.
Start With The Small Glass And Work Out From There
The most useful thing you can do on the first evening is order two cañas of different lager brands rather than one large beer, drink them with whatever the bar is putting on the counter, and decide which one you actually preferred. Once you can tell Estrella Galicia from Estrella Damm across a small glass, the craft bottles become a much easier sell, because you are no longer comparing them against a vague idea of Spanish beer but against a specific one you have already chosen.
