 year that a local entrepreneur, Takis Kapetanéas, has opened a craft brewery on the edge of the small fishing village of Agios Nikolaos, in the Western Mani, just five minutes down the road from the seaside village of Stoupa, where we always stay.
Greece now has 45 breweries, up from 35 two years ago, 13 in 2009 and a mere five at the start of the century. Most are still tiny, however (indeed, the Mani Brewery, despite being one of the newest is the second-largest “craft” beer brewery in the country), some have struggled and closed, such as the Messinian brewery, near Kalamata, opened in 2009, which made beer under the similar-sounding Neda brand, but which closed a couple of years or so back; and beer remains down the list of priorities for Greek drinkers: for comparison, the country is said to have some 500 different brands of ouzo, and 3,500 wines.
The brewery’s founder, Takis (short for Panagiotis) is in his early 40s and proudly Maniot born and bred: the “-éas” at the end of his family name is the universal ending for surnames in the Messinian Mani, and the brand name of his beers Nema, is a Maniot dialect word meaning “gesture” or “nod”, while the brewery logo features the tower houses found in almost every Maniot village, where, in the past, families would retreat to defend themselves against their enemies – generally rival families from the same village.
Takis, who worked in the property business before he became a full-time brewery
owner, says he “fell in love” with beer on his travels abroad, and became
a “long-time” home brewer, always with the ambition to open his own
brewery. The brews currently being made at the Mani Brewery, a 16 IBU 4.6 per
cent abv blonde ale and a 20 IBU, 4.6 per cent abv summer ale, are
“pragmatic” beers, Takis says: not the beers he would like to make
which would be well-hopped IPAs and stouts, but the ones he knows will sell in
the Greek market, where 99.5 per cent of the beer on sale is pale euro-lager.
The blonde is
an excellent, refreshing, unfiltered, unpasteurised easy-drinking top-fermented
ale, best served well-chilled: citrussy, slightly sweet, made with the local spring water, treated as necessary
(Mani tap water is unfit for drinking, containing four times more fluoride than
EU recommendations, but the springs in the region provide nicely lime-hard brewing
liquor), Magnum hops, Greek pils malt from the Vergina brewery in Thessaly and
a touch of Vienna and carapils,. It’s a great beach or poolside beer. The
summer ale, paler, slightly bitterer, slightly hoppier, is a little more
complex, and a fine companion for the generally unfussy, excellent-value Greek food,
all made from local ingredients, found in the many family-run restaurants in Ag
Nik and its larger neighbours, Stoupa and Kardamili, where you can still dine
very well for under €14 a head, including drink.
Takis and John
Malcolm, an expat Scot in his 60s and another long-term home brewer who met Takis
through their mutual interest in making beer, and who is now one of two assistants
at the three-man brewery, offered a sample of the blonde ale that had been
souped up post-fermentation with masses of extra Citra hops, a beer closer to
the sorts they would like to educate local drinkers into appreciating. It was
tremendous: the pale malts giving an almost transparent underpinning, like clear
glass struts, to a beautifully sculpted structure of lemons, limes and mangoes
whirled together in a frothy, scented, just-bitter-enough delight.
The brewery itself, which opened in June last year just off the main road south from Stoupa, between the mountains and the sea, after a short period where Nema beers were being made by the Sparta brewery, on the other side of the Taygetus mountains that divide the Mani peninsula, is housed in a building that started as an olive oil factory, spent some time as a marble works and was later a disco, which has to be, surely, one of the most varied careers of any brewery premises on the planet. Today it holds shiny Chinese-made stainless steel brewing kit: 1,200-litre brew length, mash tun, c