Drinking Craft Like A Local At Zagreb’s X Bar

The American beers I had brought to Croatia were weighing my suitcase down. I had to get rid of them. The Oracle had recently visited the Czech Republic and had several beers to share. We arranged a beer tasting at a local craft beer place named X Bar.

X Bar Zagreb is not for downtown tourists. However, if you want to experience a cozy neighborhood bar with craft beer, drink here. To reach the neighborhood of Tresnejska, you take a 20-minute trip on Tram #13 for seven stops to Tresnejvacki Trg, located in front of a Konzum supermarket. About 100 meters away from the road there’s a rundown dive bar which looks like it only serves cheap commercial beer.

But when you approach the terrace, you see a chalkboard displays six Croatian craft taps and twenty Croatian bottles. In addition to rotating Croatian beers, there is a wide selection of craft beers from Europe. Like a good neighborhood bar, the staff welcomes new visitors like old friends, and remembers you.

Komsija = Neighbor

When I entered, a group of beer geeks shouted at me from a table in X Bar’s outdoor garden. In addition to The Oracle, I knew several of the other geeks from previous beer festivals in Croatia and Serbia. The owner of X Bar, a jovial guy named Crni, was participating in the tasting too. But he told us to sit discreetly at a table in a corner of the garden so as not to attract customers who would think our unusual tasting beers were on his regular menu. My American brews and The Oracle’s Czech beers would draw attention.

Yet we also had a few Croatian gems.

Some Croatian Craft Beer Surprises

One of the guys brought two beers from his friend’s home brewery, Ground State Brewery. They produce Abyssal Voyage, an Irish-style Export Stout, and Ancient Sentinel, a classic American Stout. Both were dry and full of dark chocolate, leathery flavor. Here’s hoping they will become more than a homebrewer in the future.

The highlight of the night was a hit of something still rare in The Balkans: barleywine. Croatia’s large Medvedgrad Brewery mainly sells its basic flagship beers, but they also produce small batch special beers. The one at this tasting was the Svetog Martina, a rum barrel-aged barleywine from 2019. Rum is my liquor of choice, and this beer, with its heavy, sugary raisin and rum flavor burned me in the right way.

The artwork on the bottle is particularly interesting: an artistic rendering of Saint Martin. It was designed by Matt Hollingsworth. In Croatia, he’s an American expat known for starting the country’s first homebrew competition in 2012. But he’s more well-known outside Croatia as a comic book color artist who’s worked with Marvel, DC and other major publishers.

An important rule for surviving beer tastings is have, what they call in Croatia, a “working beer.” This is an easy drinking brew you can sip between the hard-hitting big beers. We needed it since, during the tasting, we went through around 20 different brews from the USA, Czech Republic, Estonia, and Croatia. On that evening, I worked with pints of Croatia’s Primarius Ringispil Session IPA.

Another important rule for beer tasting is to protect your sobriety with heavy Balkan food. A greasy cheese or meat burek pastry, or a round of plump cevapi sausage will fight the alcohol. We ordered “fast food” from a neighborhood Banja Luka Bosnian cevapcici shop.

The little hole-in-the-wall shop’s food fit well with the hole-in-the-wall craft beer pub. It’s only my first night here, and I already feel like a local.