Lima, Peru Throws Its First Craft Beer Festival

To be honest, it all started in the hopes of getting free beer…

When I heard about the first-ever Festival de Cerveza Artisanal in Lima, and thought, wow finally I will meet some people that will actually want to talk serious beer with me! I’d been living in Lima for almost a year – and hadn’t yet found much of a reason to write about the beer here – so I was excited that they’d invited me down to cover this debut event. 

The Vibe 

At ACB, we talk about the vibe of beer and beer events a lot. And the vibe at this festival was unlike anything I’d experienced before – maybe due to the fact that everything was in Spanish. It was filled with brewers and beer lovers – people who respect the art and want to see the craft beer scene grow in their community because they love it. Thousands of miles away from the states, I immediately felt at home. Beer lovers united!

This festival was a true mashup of cultures, ingredients, and brewing styles. I met brewers from Australia, Germany, France, the US, and of course, Peru. They brewed with hops from North America, Argentina, and Chile – and used waters as different as Lima’s taps are to the purified mountain water of the Andes. And they all made beer here in Peru.

It dawned on me as I roamed the event grounds that this beer festival was clearly no joke. I realized, shit, this is the real deal – Peru has given birth to its own craft beer movement and the world needs to know about it!

The Vision

There were 16 breweries in attendance, all part of the newly created “Cervercerias Artesanales del Peru” a new organization formed to spread the “culture” of Peruvian craft beer. Brewers came in from all over Peru. Lima was not the only well-represented city – brewers came in from far-flung places such as Arequipa, Tacna, Cusco, Huaraz, and the Sacred Valley – all there to support the art.

The Beer

The festival took place in Barranco, a Lima neighborhood famous for its hippies and hipsters. It was a beautiful spring day – with a warm coastal breeze rolling in from the Pacific – and I began to drink!

One of the coolest parts of the festival was how many brewers tapped into something that Peru is famous for – its culinary scene. They brewed chocolate stouts using the famous cocoa of Cusco, pilners made with chicha de jara (a traditional Inca beverage), and quinoa beer brewed using that unique South American grain.

While I would love to list all the beers, I’ll leave you with some highlights instead. First up, we tried Nuevo Mundo Cerveceria, located in Lima, but run by an international staff of Europeans. This brewery immediately blew me away with its lineup of five year-round beers, plus three special beers brewed just for the festival. All were super Belgium-style and very rich. I left with happy taste buds after trying eight beers, and also a tad tipsy.

After that solid first note, the next highlight was 7vidas, the first-ever craft brewery in Peru, and one very much respected by their fellow brewers. They were serving a beer that was being filtered on-site with a mix of fruits, giving it a super unique flavor that you would not find anywhere else.

The Zenith brewery was in from Cusco, a spectacular city that sits at 11,000 ft. in a mountain valley in southeastern Peru. The highlight here was a Christmas beer – Zenith Navidad Ale – that was an enormous hit and was gone by the second day. It was rich with nutmeg and chocolate flavors – the kind of beer you’d want to drink by a fire (although it’s still summer here in in Peru…).

One stand-out was Cerveceria del Valle. Recently opened by a head brewer who came directly from Eugene, Oregon, the beer here was just killer. I mean, they brought in an experienced brew-dude from the US, and gave him fresh Peruvian ingredients – what more can one ask for? I especially enjoyed their Pilsner con Jora, a crisp lager that was brewed using ingredients that can be traced back to the Incas. They also served up an American-Style IPA that was light, fresh, and delicious.

The Lima stars Barbarian were also in attendance. The fun attitude of this brewery could be felt throughout the festival, fully embodying love of the art and the lifestyle. And they have beer to back up the ‘tude!

The turnout was far larger than expected. Everyone was super excited about the explosion of craft beer in Peru, and most of all, excited by the buzz they were getting while sampling some pretty world-class beer.