Blogging about beer in Budapest

This is a blog about my ongoing research into the availability of quality beer in Hungary. The “Budapest” in the title is there partly on its alliterative merit, and partly because that is where most of this practical, hands-on research has been carried out. This is not the first blog about beer in Hungary. It might be the first one in English, though.I await the first comment to set me straight on that score, and plenty of others.
I am not an expert on beer, nor do I drink it every day. I do like a nice beer though, and after living in Hungary for 3 years or so, at some point about a year ago I began to search for decent brews and bars. If I lived in a country with a richer beer culture, and a greater range of beer to choose from, I would probably have never started looking, or blogging about it. Necessity is the mother of invention, and lack of choice is the mother of this beer tracking hobby which I somehow seemd to have picked up.
Now, it is not not difficult to find beer in Budapest, or anywhere else in Hungary for that matter.  Budapest is full of bars, restaurants and (sort of) pubs - in fact it is fun trying to feel the nuances in the various names and social status of drinking and eating places in Hungarian: kocsma, söröző, borozó, kisvendéglő, pub, bar, presszó, eszpressó, sörház, or the celebrated romkocsma and romkert type places (trendy, alternative bars in derelict old buildings.) With all that variety, though  there is a marked lack of choice when it comes to beer. I don’t have any statistics to hand, but I’d guess that at least 98% of places serving drinks in Hungary serve beers from of one of the big three breweries, all of which are totally or mostly owned by the usual multinational beer corporations. I have only anecdotal evidence and supposition to explain why this is the case - the big breweries provide fridges, tables, ashtrays, pumps and (so I am told) pay each bar that opens a substantial sum of money to serve their beer exclusively. The same old tactics which have served them well elsewhere - and in Hungary, no-one seemed too bothered. Nobody claimed that Hungary had great beer - this is a wine producing country, and as at least one Hungarian has told me: “beer is beer.” Well, that was clearly wrong.
Fortunately, after a bit of searching on the web, in Hungarian, I found that the stiuation wasn’t quite as bad as it seemed on the surface. There are Hungarians with a taste for good beer, and there are Hungarians making and serving good beer. You just have to know where to look. Several good blogs written in Hungarian directed me to most of my Budapest beer discoveries. Some others I stumbled upon myself - (not literally) - I hope I can share some of this hoppy happinesss and malty  mysteries with the non-Hungarian speaking imbibers of liquid bread - as one Hungarian beer blog is called: http://folyekonykenyer.blog.hu/ And I too can try to be an amateur hop researcher (another blog name): http://komlo.blog.hu/, but that’s all for now, before I get beery-weary: http://serteperte.blog.hu/.