Chile  

Scooping to Easter Island - Part 3

By Mark Enderby.

While I don’t tend to travel on dedicated beer trips, no "normals" holiday is complete without seeking out new beers and breweries. This year’s holiday started in Brazil and passed through Argentina and Chile before ending up on Easter Island. Some prior research on the web pulled out some brewpubs in Argentina but not much else, so armed with this information we headed off into the unknown ….

This is part 3 of Mark's adventures - Click to see Part 1 (Brazil) or Part 2 (Argentina).

Time was passing and we now had to head over the Andes to Chile. My researches had produced nothing and I had thought that Bariloche would be the last decent beer of the trip. A bottle of Kuntsman Pale Ale was found to actually be an amber so no hops there then ! In general Chilean beers were found to be slightly better – presumably due to the German influence. However, when we got to Santiago, I spotted a brewpub in the Lonely Planet guide – not the first place I would look. The HBH Brewery in the eastern suburb of Nunoa (Irarrazaval 3176) was an attempt at a German Hofbrauhaus style brewpub. Two beers were available – an unfiltered Premium and a dark Rubia Negra. The former was only available in 1 litre or 2 litre jugs and the latter in half the quantities. In the event we arrived in happy hour, when you appeared to get twice what you asked for. Both beers were pleasant but our visit was cut short by a city-wide power cut which meant we had to try and find our way back before it got too dark.

Our final 4 days were to be spent on Easter Island. Surely an enterprising local would have set up a brewpub to serve the 4000 inhabitants of this lonely island ? However, fantasy dashed, I soon discovered the usual crap in the island’s shops and bars. However, while the chiller cabinets in the islands sole supermarket held the usual fayre, further searching revealed a single, dusty, corked bottle nestling close by equally dusty Greenall’s gin bottles. This turned out to be a 75cl bottle of Raftsman Ale from Quebec of all places. This is made with whisky malt and comes in a bottle with a wired cork. It had a champagne effervescence which resulted in a pleasant turbid hoppy drink.

In 15 mins, I’d drunk the remotest place on earth out of decent beer ! Maybe they’ll order another bottle now?