Académie De La Bière

June 26, 2009
A delightful discovery. Visited on 22nd November 2008. This is a narrow Belgian style café with virtual wall-to-wall wood panelling. Tent accommodation at the front of the pub provides extra drinking and dining space warmed up very comfortably by infrared halogen space heating. Inside the pub is lit mainly by red neon cold cathode strips and a little warm tungsten. A long narrow bar on the right as you enter, and tables which can be shifted to accommodate large groups as well as singles or couples. Beer memorabilia adorns the wall opposite the bar, and luggage racks over the long seating area on the left appear to come from old slam-door-stock Southern Region trains! Friendly, attentive, even humorous staff enabled me to order my beers, mussels and “frites” without a single word of English between us, and NO there were NOT any pictures in the menu! The food was delicious, but do note that choice of dishes is limited to sausages, one or two cuts of pork, mussels in six or seven varieties and one or two other choices. There is a wide choice of beer on tap, mainly Belgian, together with a large selection of bottled beers. The house recommendation “Beer of the Moment” on Saturday was Westmalle “Brune”, 7%, but at over £3 for half a pint, this was not cheap by any standad. Another excellent beer was St Feuillien de Noel Ambree, 8.5%,which was spicy and aromatic, whilst the French blond lager “Ch’Ti” was a dry, fairly hoppy affair. This pub is certainly worth making the effort to find. You need to take the RER “B” Line to Port Royal and walk down Boulevard Port Royal. If you use the Metro, the nearest station is Raspail, and that will involve a long walk. But whichever way you reach this pub you’ll be glad you came.

June 9, 2009
a normal with about 80 beers on me and not eating like the service slow and not good

April 27, 2009
Something like a bistro, but very beer oriented. Something like a Belgian beer bar. Help was lacking due to the huge business, but service was otherwise superb. Beers I had not rated. Food smelled great. RER from Nord was rapide! Highly recommended.

January 23, 2009
Ambiance moyenne Le principal intéret est que l’on peut gouter à plusieurs bières différentes: 100 !Il faut y aller au moins une fois !

March 13, 2008
Selection is about 125. The bar tender was nice, knowledgeable and spoke enough English to speak beer and augment my rusty French. Had some basic stuff with Kwak and EKU 28. Pretty good selection, better than La Gueuze. I sat at the bar and enjoyed myself quite a bit. Will have more than enough beer for most beer geeks. Every beer was served in the proper glassware from that company. Including the wierd test tube type device that Kwak uses (and a small EKU snifter for the Eisbock). Very cool place.

January 27, 2008
Let’s start saying that the selection of beers is very far away from 300. There are indeed good Belgian beers (maybe 100), with the classic Trappistes and the like, really nothing that a good hunter would be surprised about. The selection of French (just in case as me you are interested) is very poor. As entering in the restaurant (poor light, dirty look) I was hit by the smell, indeed they serve a lot of mussels to everybody. Bad note to the service too, as the waiters even if trying to be smiling, don’t now anything about the beers and the food they serve. The food, aaah Paris, why the Americans think that France is a place for good food? it’s still a mistery to me... well, I got a salad almost rotten, with a slice of burnt bread and chevre. And I have never had before a can of sardines served on the plate, anyway I’m not scandalized by the can, but in Spain you get canned sardines that are 3 times better than these, so I don’t understand what it’s all about. And the crème brulée was the kind that I call omelette (in other words they don’t know how to cook it). A disaster, not back anymore!

August 9, 2007
Very nice selection... certainly one of the best beer bar in Paris. You do need to go there if you want to drink the Cantillon Gueuze

July 6, 2007
Sorry but this is my favorite place in paris. the staff is great, the tap is full of winners, and there are tons of bottles. i was in paris for five months and this is far and away the best place i found to drink. don’t go if you are looking to have a wild night in paris. go for relaxing conversation with friend and pints of excellent chouffe, maredsous ambree, westmalle and a host of others. go to read, go to smoke, go to talk to the staff. just go.