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Beer in Serbia

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Template:Serbia and Montenegro topics Serbia and Montenegro's beer (Serbian language: пиво/pivo) isn't really well-known or famous outside of its national borders, regardless of its quality. This is mostly because Serbia-Montenegro breweries' only target the domestic market.

Appearance

Beer for home consumption is mostly sold in half-litre bottles (if you manage to bring in empty bottles while buying new ones you will pay a lower price). Cans are less common even if canned beer could be of slightly better quality. It's worth noting that unlike in countries like Canada or United States where beer is sold only in specialty beer and liqour stores, you can purchase beer in regular supermarkets and grocery stores all accross Serbia-Montenegro.

Recently, most breweries began packing their product in plastic Q-pack bottles of 1.5 or even two litres. This beer is cheaper though equal in quality.

In bars and restaurants beer is served in 0.33L bottles.

Most beer that is produced is light beer. Dark beer is more rare (almost every larger brewery produces dark beer but in such small quantities that it is hard to find it). Some breweries also produce kvass or a similar drink.

Beer in glass bottles costs around 45 dinars (0.69 euros) per litre while in plastic it could go as low as 35 dinars (0.54 euros) per litre. Beer in pubs costs around 100 dinars (1.54 euros) per litre. In addition to various domestic brands, majority of bars serve the usual foreign fare such as Heineken, Beck's, Carlsberg, Tuborg, etc.

Availability and Market Presence

In recent years, Serbia has seen a boom in beer-related advertising. Catchy slogans, large bilboards and polished TV spots featuring local celebrities or folksy characters lurk at every turn. It's highly improbable that more than 10 minutes will pass on any Serbian TV station without a beer commercial. Similarly in print media, page-long ads remind readers of joys of beer.

While some believe in-your-face presence of brands like Lav, Jelen, MB, Weifert, and Atlas actually produces a reverse effect, marketing experts point to significant increase in beer consuption among Serbs as proof that this kind of advertising works.

Breweries making these brands also sponsor large outdoor concerts, sports and entertainment events that further raise their public profile.

Quality

Which brew is the best, and indeed which brews are good or bad is, of course, a disputed subject.

In a February 2004 online poll[1] conducted by the largest Serbian search engine Krstarica.com, 5304 visitors have voted on what is the best domestic beer. The winner was Jelen with 30% of the votes, followed by MB with 26%, and Nikšićko with 16% while all other brews received 7% or less votes. Of these, Jelen is the best and has richer taste and especially smell than MB but causes significantly worse hangover; while Nikšićko is a class of its own, being about 50% more expensive than other brews.

It is important to know a phenomenon caused by competition between breweries, most notably between the breweries of Apatin and Belgrade. When one brewery starts making beer of higher quality, more and more people start buying it; because of high demand the brewery begins hyperproduction of beer, and as a result of this its quality drops; meanwhile the other brewery, having low sales, improves the quality in order to attract customers; people switch back to it and the circle starts again.

Breweries and brews

In Serbia

    • Peć: Biere e Peja (operating in facilities of Pećka pivara)


In Montenegro

Beer festivals

Dani piva

Dani Piva (days of beer) (www.zip.co.yu/dani_piva.asp) is a beer festival in Zrenjanin, started in 1985, organised by the Zrenjanin brewery Zrenjaninska industrija piva.


Belgrade Beer Fest

Started in 2003, Belgrade Beer Fest (www.belgradebeerfest.com), is held annually over 3-4 days at the foot of Belgrade's Kalemegdan fortress. In addition to domestic and foreign brews at affordable prices, the festival features live music performances each evening.

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