From St. Vitus Down To Tito Square: Rijeka’s Craft Beer Bars

From St. Vitus Down To Tito Square: Rijeka’s Craft Beer Bars

After relaxing on Sablicevo Beach, I spent the day visiting Rijeka’s craft beer bars.  If you stay in the center, it’s easy to visit all of them in one day.

• Cukaricafe
• Goblet Beer Store Rijeka
• Bard Celtic Cafe
• Nemo Pub

First, I started the afternoon at Cukaricafe.  Unfortunately, practically all their taps were out.  They said there hadn’t been enough tourists to justify replacing the taps regularly.  Why does that matter?  I settled with a typical Czech pilsner, Bernard, then headed to Bard Celtic Café.

Second, I trekked to Bard Celtic Café.  It sits in the shadow of one of Rijeka’s landmarks, the Saint Vitus Cathedral.  Their owner works there almost every day, and he knows his taps and bottles well.  They were well-stocked with Nova Runda, Garden Brewery and some other Croatian breweries, like Primarious.  I started with my first can of Nova Runda in Croatia.  It was a new brew that year, their chocolaty Hoppy Ninja Black IPA.

That week, I visited Bard several times, which ended in long nights talking with locals and the occasional tourist.  But finally, one trip to Bard ended early, at 7pm, so I could walk down the street to Rijeka’s Goblet Beer Shop. I had delayed a visit there, to enjoy it better in the company of friends.

Rijekan Homebrews At Goblet Beer Shop

Brk Lee Brewery is a homebrewery ran by a friend, Boko, I met at a previous Balkan craft beer festival.  He arranged for us to meet at Goblet Beer Shop.  He had some of his own beers to share with me, and I had brought him a can of Narrow Gauge’s Up Down Right Left Start Triple IPA from St. Louis (gamers get it.)

Goblet Beer Store has one location in Rijeka and another in Zagreb.  Their Zagreb shop requires a long tram ride from the center to the Danube River and is best combined with a trip to the neighborhood X Bar.  But in Rijeka Goblet is in the heart of the city, just a short 100-meter roll down the hill from Bard Celtic Café.

Boko was standing in front of Goblet at one of the two tables set up.  Since Goblet is principally a beer shop, guests normally make brief pick-up orders, so there’s not many places for sitting down.  We crowded around one table, then started knocking back the Brk Lee Brewery brews.  We stayed there for an hour past their closing at 8pm, but we had the owner’s approval.  He was drinking with us.

Rijeka’s Closing Hours

When I travel abroad, I never expect people to know of my average Midwest city of St. Louis.  Often though, beer geeks know St. Louis because of our exceptional craft breweries like Perennial, Narrow Gauge and Side Project.  Goblet’s owner showed me his selection of beers from the USA.  He pointed at a dark bottle with a red, orange and yellow design I knew well: Perennial Artisan Ales’ Abraxas.

The Abraxas was from 2019; no surprise that there was none exported in 2020.

After we finished the bottle, Boko looked frustrated, “We’ll have to go to Nemo Pub now.  It’s the only place open late that has anything crafty.  Welcome to the still Covid times.”  Nemo Pub has good music, decent beer and a pretty location right by the little river that is Rijeka’s namesake.  But most importantly it’s open late.

Later that night, I thought I would go home.  But Tito Square sits between Nemo Pub and the street back to my AirBnb.  I almost ignored the massive crowds of people gathered in the square.  Then I heard the distorted three chord guitar strains of punk rock and the epic precise guitar solos of heavy metal coming from people’s small speakers in the square.

The music called me.  Time to rock’n’roll and get destroyed tonight.  And I did.  Possibly permanently.