The Quest for the Holy Grain - Best Beer Bars
Brazil

 

 

 

 


Cuca Bier -
Cervejas do Mundo
CLN 309 Bloco A
Loja 34 - Asa Norte
70755510 Brasília, Brazil

 

Wednesday night was the monthly meeting night of about 40-50 international ex-pats who gather to talk to one another, no doubt about what a stultifying city Brasilia is.
This month the meeting is at Cuca Bier.
Cuca Bier has a nice long
L-shaped outdoor deck that is wide enough for a table with chairs on either side and a walkway to scoot by in.
Table after table was brought together to accommodate this crowd.
It was not clear that the building adjacent to the deck was part of the bar.
At the far end of this deck was a small serving area. There was a cold box where you could select beers most of which were German and I spent the evening with Franziskaner Hefeweissen in a frosted glass.

I sat at a crowded table wondering how the universe could be so cruel when a goddess wearing painted on silver jeans with a see through black lace top sat across from me.
I do not recall a thing she said but it was the best bar in all of Brasilia, maybe in the world.
I won't be going back.

According to Yelp, Cervejas do Mundo is permanently closed. You had better check for yourself...we don't want to write off the best bar in the world to soon.

 

 

 

Beer Selection - Jack's Pub
Via S1, 3266
Brasília, DF, Brazil
+55 61 3575-6466

On my first trip to Brazil, long ago, I recall standing next to a native at the baggage claim. The only English he spoke was to say...
“Goddam third world. Nothing works.”
That describes Jack's Pub to a T.
I found it on Google Earth before I left for Brasilia and it was actually in our hotel complex. A beer bar...the only beer bar one could walk to.
There was nothing else within kms of our hotel.
The place looked promising.
Jack's may be one of the best beer bars in Brasilia, a very low hurdle to leap.
First, the bad news.
It is closed on weekends.
Those 1960s Communists really knew how to plan a city.
Jack's has signs in the windows advertising draft beers that are enticing, but none of them are available.
A chalk board near the small walk-up serving bar lists the current three taps, but it does not tell you that one of them is out and the other is way too foamy for the Way Fizzy it sold along with Chimay Blue.
So forget the draft beers.
Let's look around.

The building is L-shaped, narrow and short before it branches off to the right in a minimal extension of the bar.
High tables with two slat chairs line the left wall.
South American flags are suspended haphazardly from the ceiling to the walls at their junction.
Low tables with four slat chairs are scattered around the bar.
In the stub of the L sits a tacky couch that looks like a car seat and several kegs, probably the empties for the beers advertised at the window.

The good beer news is they advertise 100 different bottles and they deliver!
Half of them are warm the other half are in three cold boxes on the right wall as you enter.
They have a nice selection of
Colorado Beers (Brasilian) and their other local beers tend not to be the swill found in convenience stores.
The closest Colorado came to lighting one up for me was an Imperial IPA with an acidic aftertaste.
Okay, so local beers may not work. Fortunately, Jack's offers a decent selection of good German beers and some nice Belgians as well.
But there is a catch...it is going to cost you.
Some bottled beers went for the equivalent of $30.
With Churchill's as an alternative we resigned ourselves to $10 beers.
The Red Hot Chili Peppers played the entire length of our first stay,
Metallica was the soundtrack for a second drop-by.
The Commies have perfected the beer bar.
First - do not open on weekends.
Second - be out of the beers that you feature.
Third charge $100 for six beers.
Good deal comrade.

The girl with the dragon tattoo ended up tending bar here and the best thing about Jack's is she found the right glass for every beer.
The small plates were generous and made a meal.
We recommend Brasilia if you would like to stop drinking and Jack's if you want to stop drinking because the beers are over priced.

 

 

 

Churchill Lounge Bar
SHS Quadra 6 Conjunto A - Bloco D
Hotel Meliá Brasil 21 Lote 01 - Asa Sul
DF, 70316-901, Brazil

Cue the music, “Gimme ticket for an airplane…” Brasilia here I come.
Brasilia may have been a Communist dream city but it is a beer lover's vision of hell.
Built in the shape of an airplane during the 1960s, its open space fuselage bounded by wide boulevards are more effective in dividing the city than the Berlin Wall ever hoped to be.
All the hotels are in one place, all the industry is in another, all the housing in another and so it goes. This is not a livable city by any modern definition.
That, sadly, brings us to Churchill Lounge Bar... the Brasil 21 Melia Hotel's bar.
Think of an SNL set designed to mock hotel bars, double that and you have Churchill's.
Everything about it says 1980s hook up bar. No, not a hookah bar - a hookup bar.
But there are no people here hooking up either.
Find Melia's web page and the bar is not listed among the amenities. That, at least, is honest.

So let's cut to the beer.
No taps, eight bottles and Heineken was the best choice.
For exotic I had Therezopolis Gold.
It comes in a 600 ml bottle and they bring it in an ice filled champagne stand.
Our waiter, I believe, was related to that other waiter at the Overlook Hotel, and seemed surprised that we would want another.
This bar is so sad it made me want to drink myself stupid, but I was not stupid enough to do that at Chruchill Lounge Bar.