Food Tours · Tour

Seven Portuguese Craft Beers and a Francesinha to Survive Them

Porto is known abroad for a fortified wine and known at home for beer, and this three-and-a-half-hour walk works the second half of that. Seven Portuguese craft beers across four venues, three food tastings, twelve people at most. The operator is firm that it is not a pub crawl, and the structure bears that out: you eat at every stop. It starts at a hidden bar on Rua da Alegria whose name means secrecy, with the pairing every Portuguese drinker knows and no visitor expects: beer and tremoços, brined lupin beans you squeeze out of their skins and eat by the handful. The Bolhão market comes next, which is a strange stop on a beer tour until you are standing in it, and there is local craft beer to drink among the produce. At a brewpub on Rua da Picaria you drink what is brewed on the premises and eat the francesinha, the layered sandwich of steak, sausage and ham under melted cheese and a beer-and-tomato sauce that Porto argues about and outsiders describe as a heart attack on a plate. The last stop is the first craft beer bar that opened in Porto and the second in Portugal, for a flight of two more, with the people who started it. The beers run from stout through IPA and pale ale to sour, all locally produced, and the guide explains the brewing behind them with access to a working brewery. English only. The company has been doing this since 2013 and has been named Porto's best food tour by Lonely Planet, The Guardian and the New York Times. Vegetarian, no pork, no meat, no nuts, dairy intolerance, no seafood and shellfish allergy can all be handled, though overlapping restrictions narrow the options. Not recommended for pregnant travellers.