Latvian and Estonian beer in Frankfurt: 28 times in six years
It usually happens in the third round.
Someone has worked their way down the dark end of the list. They started somewhere sensible, had another, and now they want to know what happens if they go further. That is the moment the Estonian beer comes out. Not as an opener and not as a second glass, because nothing that strong belongs there. It arrives when somebody has already decided they like this direction and wants to know how far it goes.
A few skip all of that. They walk in knowing the name, find the Põhjala before they have taken their coat off, and order without a single question. Not many, and they make the bartender's evening.
Either way, that beer has been here for nearly six years, and we only recently counted how often.
What six years of menus actually say
Every beer that has gone on at TapHouse since October 2020 sits in the Untappd record: what it was, when it went on, whether it was a keg or a can. Not a memory, a list. So we pulled the Baltic entries out of it.
Twenty-eight listings. Nineteen on tap, nine in bottle or can. Thirteen different beers.
Twenty-three of the twenty-eight are Põhjala, from Tallinn, eighteen of them on tap. The very first row in the whole six-year record, 12 October 2020, the day the log begins, is a Põhjala Öö. The most recent was this May. An Estonian imperial porter has been quietly bookending the entire history of this tap wall, and nobody here had noticed until we looked.
Which also tells you the honest version: it is not always on. Twenty-eight times in six years is roughly one Baltic beer at a time, appearing and running out and coming back. Anyone who tells you their bar permanently stocks Baltic craft beer in Frankfurt is describing a shop, not a tap list.
The rest of the count is thinner and more interesting. Pühaste, also Estonian, has been on once. Ārpus, from Latvia, has appeared four times, and every one of those four was a can. Never a keg. Not in six years.
Until now.
The Latvian keg that took six years to arrive
Tap 20 is currently pouring Ārpus TDH Hand-Selected Riwaka DIPA, 8%. It is the first Ārpus keg this bar has ever had.
The wait was not fashion and not an oversight. Ārpus are one of the most admired hazy IPA breweries in Europe and we have wanted them on a line for years. Two things decide it: whether a keg can be got at all, and what it costs by the time it reaches Frankfurt.
Ādaži, where Ārpus brew, is about 1.286 kilometres from here in a straight line. Beer is heavy, it travels cold, and a small brewery's allocation to Germany is never large. By the time a keg from that corner of the map reaches a Frankfurt cellar it has cost a good deal more than the same volume brewed nearer home, and that lands on the tap list. The Ārpus is the dearest line we pour. It went on anyway, because after four appearances in cans it was time.
So Baltic beer is rare here not because nobody wants it. The distance is real and somebody has to carry it.
The beer named after somewhere it isn't from
There is a fifth can in this story, and it makes the point better than we could.
Camba Brewmaster Edition Nr. 95, Spirit of Tallinn. A Baltic Porter, 8,8%. Camba are our house brewery. They are in Seeon-Seebruck in Bavaria, 363 kilometres from Frankfurt, four times closer than Tallinn. And they have brewed a Baltic porter and named it after the city where Põhjala brew.
A Baltic porter is a strong dark beer from the countries around the Baltic Sea, brewed like a lager rather than an ale. That is why it reads smoother than 8,8% has any right to.
The style is itself a story about distance. Porter was a London beer. Brewers shipped it to the Baltic ports in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and brewed it strong so it would survive the voyage, and in time the breweries around the Baltic began making their own: colder, with lager yeast, stronger still. A London beer became a Baltic one by being sent somewhere.
If that sounds familiar, it should. English brewers were doing the same thing in the other direction at the same time, building a pale ale sturdy enough to reach Madras and Calcutta, and we have been calling it India Pale Ale ever since. Two of the most recognisable beer styles in the world are both named after a destination rather than a brewery, and neither was invented in the place on the label. (We wrote about where the rest of the names come from in what beer names actually mean.)
Stand the Spirit of Tallinn next to the Põhjala Must Kuld and the economics are there in two cans. Same family of beer. One travelled 363 kilometres, the other 1.455.
Left, brewed in Tallinn, about 1.455 kilometres away. Right, brewed 363 kilometres away in Bavaria and named after Tallinn.
What to drink, and the thing nearly everyone gets wrong
Ask about the bitterness, not the letters on the badge.
The advice you will read almost everywhere is that an IPA cuts through a curry. It does the opposite. Bitterness and chilli amplify each other, so a properly bitter beer makes a hot dish read hotter. But bitterness is not the same thing as hops, and “IPA” on a badge tells you very little about it. A West Coast IPA will fight your food. A hazy, brewed for aroma rather than bite, reads soft and almost sweet and behaves far more like a Weizen. The Ārpus is a hazy. It is 8% and it is enormous, but it is not a bitter beer, and it will not set your mouth on fire alongside the kitchen.
The number that tells you is the IBU, and on our live menu it sits right next to the ABV. Look at what it does to the labels: a Camba Pils is 35 IBU, Sierra Nevada's Hazy Little Thing is also 35, and Camba's Chiemsee Black, the darkest beer on the wall, is 17. Ask for the IBU and the three letters stop mattering.
Watch the other rule instead: match intensity to intensity. An 8% double IPA buries anything delicate, and a strong sweet beer tires your palate long before a ninety-minute meal ends. Drink the Ārpus early, or on its own.
Põhjala Must Kuld, 7,8%, is the one that goes with the food. Malt-forward, roasty, low on bitterness, the profile that actually suits heat rather than arguing with it.
Pime Öö at 13,6% and the Cellar Series Coffee Culture at 15,5% are not dinner beers at all. Those belong at the end, and they belong with pudding, which is where this stops being theory. Roasty beer with chocolate and coffee is about as reliable as pairing ever gets, and both our desserts were built for it. The Biramisu is a tiramisu made with dark beer, so you are putting cocoa and coffee next to cocoa and coffee. The Beer Brownie is a house-made beer and chocolate brownie with vanilla ice cream, and a spoonful of that against a mouthful of imperial coffee stout is the single easiest recommendation in this building.
The shelf is not a second tap list
A third of that Baltic count never went near a tap, and every Ārpus before this keg arrived in a can. That is not a consolation prize. It is how a lot of good beer travels.
Some beers are bottle beers on purpose. A Cantillon Classic Gueuze is blended from lambic that spent three years in oak. A Rochefort 10 goes on changing in the bottle for a decade. Nobody hangs those on a line that has to keep moving. Twenty taps rotate; a hundred and thirty bottles and cans can stand still and wait for the right person.
So the shelf carries what the wall cannot. Eighteen sours. Nine Trappist and Belgian beers. Five wheat, five gluten-free, four ciders. A Dark and Stout section of fourteen, where all three Põhjala sit beside a Samuel Smith chocolate stout.
And fourteen alcohol-free, which is the number worth remembering. In six years we have never once had an alcohol-free beer on a tap. If you are driving tonight, the shelf is not the compromise. It is the entire offer.
Same logic when the food arrives. Dark, wheat and Belgian beers are the ones that handle chilli, and on any given evening the wall may not have the one your dish wants. Ask what is on the shelf.
Taking it home
Every bottle and can on the list is available to take away at a reduced price, no minimum and no crate. If you want to run the Tallinn comparison properly, the Estonian porter beside the Bavarian one named after Estonia, that is a better experiment at your own table than at ours.
The tap list changes constantly and the live version is always at menu.taphousefrankfurt.com. When the Ārpus keg blows it will not be replaced by another Latvian one the same week. But something from Tallinn will be back, because in six years it always has been.
FAQ
Which bars in Frankfurt serve Latvian or Baltic beer?
TapHouse Frankfurt, Mendelssohnstraße 51 in the Westend. Beer from Baltic breweries has appeared there 28 times since October 2020: Põhjala from Tallinn, Ārpus from Latvia and Pühaste from Estonia, with 19 of those on tap and 9 in bottle or can. It rotates rather than being permanently stocked, so the live list at menu.taphousefrankfurt.com is the place to check.
Is there Latvian beer on tap in Frankfurt right now?
Yes. Ārpus Brewing Co., from Ādaži in Latvia, is on tap 20 at TapHouse Frankfurt, a TDH Hand-Selected Riwaka DIPA at 8%. It is the first Ārpus keg the bar has had in six years. And if the keg has blown by the time you get there, do not give up: the same beer is on the shelf in 440 ml cans, to drink in or take away.
Why is Baltic beer so hard to find in Germany?
Distance and allocation. Tallinn is roughly 1.455 kilometres from Frankfurt in a straight line and Ādaži about 1.286. Beer is heavy and travels refrigerated, and small Baltic breweries send limited quantities to Germany, so a keg costs considerably more by the time it reaches a Frankfurt cellar than one brewed a few hundred kilometres away.
What is a Baltic porter?
A strong dark beer from the countries around the Baltic Sea, usually fermented with lager yeast. It started as London porter shipped to Baltic ports in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, brewed strong to survive the journey, and was then taken up and rebrewed locally, colder and stronger. Like India Pale Ale, it is named after where the beer was sent rather than where it was made. TapHouse currently has Camba's Spirit of Tallinn, a Baltic Porter at 8,8%, alongside Estonian porters from Põhjala.
Should I order an IPA with Indian food?
It depends on the bitterness, not on the name. Bitterness and chilli amplify each other, so a firmly bitter beer such as a West Coast IPA makes a hot dish taste hotter. A hazy IPA is brewed for aroma rather than bite, reads much softer, and causes no such problem. The question worth asking at the bar is how bitter a beer is, not which three letters are on the badge. With a spicy dish, a malt-forward porter such as Põhjala Must Kuld is the safer answer.
What beer goes with dessert?
Roasty dark beer with chocolate or coffee is one of the most dependable pairings there is. Both TapHouse desserts are made with beer: the Biramisu is a tiramisu built on dark beer, and the Beer Brownie is a house-made beer and chocolate brownie with vanilla ice cream. An imperial porter or coffee stout, such as Põhjala Pime Öö or the Cellar Series Coffee Culture, suits either.
Can I buy the bottles to take away?
Yes. Every bottle and can on the TapHouse list is available to take away at a reduced price, no minimum and no crate, whenever the bar is open.
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