The Beers - Lyon, France

On a recent trip to France, we stayed in Lyon which has the second largest metropolitan population in France.  It is also a cradle of chefs of culinary excellence and is known as the capital of French gastronomy.  But Lyon also offers a number of good little beer pubs.  After a long overnight flight from the U.S., a TGV ride from Paris to Lyon, and freshening up at our hotel, our group decided to take a walk on an unseasonably warm day before dinner.  One of my colleagues had a destination in mind for us to go to in Vieux Lyon, the old section of Lyon.  The name alone piqued his interest and when we walked up to the front of the place, I immediately fell in love with this place simply called The Beers.  

Now, it was somewhat ironic that my colleague, Ian - who doesn't really drink beer all that much - thought that this would be a good place to check out.  But the name "The Beers" was so great that he felt we all had to go there.  It was a 15 minute walk from our hotel across the Saône River to The Beers, located on Place Saint-Paul, a small back street in Old Lyon.  (see map)  

The Beers was not a large place, the downstairs area consisted of a few tables and a small bar that you couldn't belly up to.  There was some outdoor seating out front and there appeared to be another drinking area upstairs.  We found a table toward the front of the place for our group and started to look over the beer list.

On the wall, they had a listing of beers that they had on tap.  Many of the beers were available in centiliters - 25 cl is a bit over 8 ounces, 50 cl is basically a large pint (nearly 17 ounces), and - of course - a liter of beer is, well, a liter (or about 34 ounces).  They had 10 beers on tap, many of them Belgian-style beers that I wasn't familiar with.  I'm usually not big on Belgian beers, but I decided to go outside of my comfort zone and give them a try. 

They had a number of beers in bottles including some familiar beers from the USA from breweries such as Brooklyn, Flying Dog, and Anchor.  I contemplated getting an Anchor Steam for a moment, then remembered that I was in France and I can get an Anchor Steam at any time in the U.S. 

I thought about getting the Campus Gold they had on tap from the Brouwerij Huyghe, makers of the somewhat famous Delirium Tremens pale white beer.  But I ended up getting an IPA they had on the menu.  This Belgian IPA had an interesting taste.  It wasn't like a British or American-brewed IPA as it had a sort of fruity taste to it and it wasn't as hoppy or bitter as I normally like in a good IPA.  I wasn't certain that I cared for it all that much.   

My colleague Ian, who I have seen drink a beer once or twice in the nearly 14 years I've known him (he's a premium rum and Coke kind of guy), got the Noir de Dottignies, a stout Belgian beer with an ABV (alcohol by volume) of 9%.  He said it was very smooth and full-bodied. 

My colleague Francois, who is a beer connoisseur without being a pretentious asshole about it, picked the Moinette Blonde, a beer from the DuPont brewery in Belgium.  Francois - who is also an excellent home brewer - is very familiar with Belgium beers. (He was going to take a couple three days at the end of our trip to France to go meet some friends in Belgium and drink more beer.)  He offered me a sip of his beer to try and I thought it was interesting.  Interesting enough that when I was finished with my IPA, I ordered the Moinette Blonde for my second beer.

Our boss' wife had suddenly and tragically passed away while they were on vacation in New Zealand a few days before and her funeral just happened to be on the previous day.  None of us could attend since we already had our tickets booked for France weeks in advance and our boss didn't want us to .  She was an integral part of our company and we joked that she knew where all the bodies were buried because she had all the answers each time we had a question regarding invoices, shipments, procedures and other day-to-day items.  We had our own memorial service for her over a number of beers and snacks that The Beers provided to us.  It was a sad, yet cathartic time for us to remember a lady who we relied upon for so many things over the years. 

We each had a couple of beers as we didn't want to get too boozed up since we were all sort of on fumes from our trip across the Atlantic to get to France.  Plus we had dinner reservations for 7 p.m. and we thought we'd better head back toward our hotel to get ready.  The Beers was a great little pub with a great selection of beers.  As my colleague Ian said in a Trip Advisor entry on The Beers, "For a bunch of jet-lagged Americans, this was heaven."  

And it was...

Comments

[Jon]

Dear Road Tips,

I would like the list of each beer's ABV, please?

Thanks!!!!
A Big Fan!