Prohibicja

With hindsight, even the sign should have told us to give this place a swerve: beer & whiskey Are the kind of people in Poland who drink good whiskey in bars the same kind of people who drink craft beer? I’d have thought not, so is a bar likely to serve good whisky and craft beer or bad whiskey and bad beer? 

Not everything about Prohibition was bad
But Prohibicja is listed on ontap.pl as having a dozen taps, and is located literally next door to Kontynuacja, so we thought ‘Why not’. Walking in it felt like somewhere that wants to be a fashionable cocktail bar but with a crowd that are about a decade younger than you’d find in a fashionable cocktail bar. The menu was even stranger, mine said they had Zywiec on tap and the range of Zywiec’s ‘ale’ drinks in bottles. Personally I think I’d rather drink fermented tramp’s piss than Zywiec, but I do understand that some people do like the stuff; I just didn’t think that those people went to multi-tap bars. Fortunately the Mrs’ menu had a bit of black tape stuck over the offending items. Perhaps the owner here noticed that the place next door is permanently packed and so decided to install a dozen taps? It’s a theory that was very much confirmed by a second visit. 
Why go to the expense of printing new menus when you have black tape to hand?
The first pick from what was a very middle-of-the-road offering of beers was a Czech macro(-ish) lager: Holba. It was decent enough, a reasonable balance of flavours, perhaps a little bit too much apple that would have been better somewhere else, perhaps in a pint of cider, but drinkable enough. The problem was that compared to the pils we’d just had next door, it was more than a bit boring. I’ll happily have another one, which is always the acid test with beer, but it’s probably best if you start your evening on Holba and then move on to other things rather than doing it the other way round, unless you want to be distinctly uninspired.

And ‘distinctly uninspired’ is the most charitable thing that can be said about the other one we sipped: West Coast IPA from Browar Zamkowy Cieszyn. Despite the name and the website proclaiming the brewery to be a “small brewery” in Cieszyn, this place is just another arm of Grupa Zywiec, yuck. Admittedly, this beer is infinitely better than anything with the dreaded Z-word on the bottle, but it’s still pretty bland and fairly watery, certainly not what you think of when you think of west coast IPA. It can’t even hold a candle to a decent Polish west coast IPA such as Modern Drinking. 

A Zywiec 'craft beer' and a Holba
Next was a beer I wanted to like and another I’d been told I would love. Melonowe is a fruit beer from Bytów Browar Kaszubski and Bytów is where I first drank Polish beer, as it’s the first place I lived in Poland. Given how enjoyable Oddaj Moje 100 Melonów! from Piwne Podziemie was last month, I had high hopes for it but those hopes were very swiftly dashed. There was a little melon on the nose, but it was almost completely overwhelmed by honeyish sweetness. The flavour was far far too sweet, with a tiny suggestion of bitterness coming at the end of what was a mercifully short finish. A couple of sips were more than enough. 
Melonowe: looks better than it tastes
The other pint was Panakeja from Browar Olimp, an IPA with Earl Grey tea. The aroma had the citrus notes you’d expect from IPA and also lots of Earl Grey tea, but it was a bit too perfumed. The flavour was completely overwhelmed by Bergamot, really not pleasant. The finish was even worse dry and with a vast amount of tannin. If you don’t like beer and you love Earl Grey with lots of Bergamot, you might like this, my companion certainly did, but I really didn’t. 
A pint of tea would be far preferable to a pint of Panakeja
Unsure what to make of Prohibicja, we went back the next day so I could have a couple more samples and a second look and somebody else could try to drain the keg of Panakeja. It wasn’t the wisest of decisions. For one thing we raised the average age by about 15 years. For another the Simcoe session IPA by Doctor Brew was rancid. Normally it’s a cracking drop, bags of citrus on the nose and refreshing flavours, but this was nothing but butter on the nose, butter on the mouth and butter on the finish. I’d had one the previous day in 4 Hops, so it can’t have been a bad batch, much more likely that serving real beer is a bit more challenging than selling swill such as Zywiec. 
A strong contender for the 'worst kept beer of the year' award
The Doctor Brew Enigma IPA isn’t a beer that I’d had before but it’s hard to believe it’s supposed to taste like bile. The first sip made me gag and after the second sip I wouldn’t have swallowed any more if you paid me. It had only been put on that day too. 

Another vile offering
If you’re in Wrocław and Kontynuacja is absolutely packed to the rafter, I highly recommend you don’t bother coming here. 

Zywiec APA straight out of a bottle would have been better
Prohibicja
You really do not want the address

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