Brasserie Le Berbère

by local standards this place is excellent, but by word standards it’s pretty mediocre. not sure I’d bother again even if I went back to Tunisia (unless I got gen there were some new beers of course!)

While on a non-beer holiday in Tunisia several years ago, was surprised and pleased to find a brewpub in the nearby town - I guess a testament to the many German tourists that visit. three German style beers were offered - dunkel, helles & weizen (sometimes not all three were available). Brewkit visible towards the front of the building and was obviously in regular use, with seating dotted around inside and a small amount outside. Toilet facilities weren’t great but better than several other places in the town. The helles was a pretty standard lager-style (not my particular bag but it seemed competent enough); dunkel and hefeweizen in particular were good and kept us coming back here every night of our holiday. Worth basing yourself in Hammamet if on holiday in the country, rather than one of the other resorts, as I don’t believe they bottle their beer so visiting the brewpub is the only source.

As Gazza wrote, it was quit easy to find, taking a taxi from Yasmine-Hammamet took about 30 minutes or so and cost us about 8 Tunisian Dinar. The interior was ok, very German inspired with wood all over the place. The brewpub was quite smoked filled which was somewhat unpleasant. The staff was not very knowledgably about beer in general. They only had two beers on tab, unfortunately. The beer was below average, with some strange butter like notes. Pictures can be found here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/grovlam/sets/72157606922021177/

It’s a huge place next to the medina walls on Place des Martyrs with large illuminated signs on the roof depicting a beer glass or blazing out the pub’s name for all within miles to see. The brewing kit was obvious even from the street being situated in the front window and it looked like it was more than just show – the control panel was blinking away and the kit looked used. The beers were below average on our visit, but far better than you’d expect from a brewpub in a muslim country! If you’re in the tourist ghetto of Hammammet, you may as well scoop ’em in.