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Rio de Janeiro is a cafe society, where people routinely get out of their homes to meet over a drink.  But this climate is too hot to linger over a hot cup of coffee, and as such the preferred beverage is lager beer, served ice cold.

The importance of the role of beer in Rio is difficult to overstate, as it lubricates peoples’ most common social interactions.  Like Eskimos have multiple words for “ice,” Brazilians have multiple words for beer.  Cerveja is beer that is in a bottle, most often served in large 600ml bottles to be shared. Many places will leave the empty bottles to pile up on the table, to eventually be counted to calculate the bill.

Unpasteurized draft “beer” is not called cerveja, but is known as “Chopp” (pronounced show-pee in Rio).  While anyplace with a refrigerator can serve cerveja, it is a significant commitment of resources to serve chopp, requiring a walk-in refrigerator to store it, and trained personnel to keep the lines clean, and to tap and dispense the beer. Once a keg is finished, nobody can drink any beer for the 10 minutes it takes to change it. Chopp is considered to be a separate product from beer, and if you ask for “cerveja” at a place that only has Chopp, you will simply be told that they don’t have any, as if they are not in any way substitute products. All the effort is well worth it though, because the draft product really is so much better than the bottled.

Its probably fair to say that I enjoy a good beer more than most, but I don’t waste my time with the lousy stuff. I have gone through the trouble of brewing my own beer when living in places where good beer was not readily available, but rarely partake when in places with mediocre beer. So for me, the ready access to well brewed, well served chopp, is amongst the greatest simple pleasures of living here. Only when I lived in Belgium during my University days did I have such excellent beer at my disposal as I have now in Brazil — although the brewing styles of high gravity Belgian ales could not be much more different.

The simple quality of brazilian beer can be a bit difficult to discern at first.  In many other places, like North America, brewers are anything but subtle in trying to demonstrate their beers’ quality and uniqueness from the ordinary by loading them up with overwhelming amounts of hops or alcohol, but generally without the balance that they manage to preserve in the heavy beers of Belgium.  But the charms of Brazilian beer, like the great lager beers of Czech or Germany, are more sophisticated and ethereal.

The beer industry has a long history in Brazil — uninterrupted by the insanity of Prohibition which destroyed the brewing culture in the United States — aided by large numbers of German and Swiss immigrants. The Swiss were one of the first ethnic groups to settle in Rio after Dom João opened the Colony to non-Portuguese, and it was a Swiss who founded Brahma in Rio in the late 1800s to try to re-create a european style beer here.  “Brahma” is said to be an homage to the Englishman Joseph Bramah, who invented the modern apparatus to serve draft beer.  In 1999, Brahma merged with Antarctica to form Ambev, which has now become the global beer juggernaut ABInBev, after subsuming Belgian Interbrew and US Anheuser-Busch to dominate the international beer market.  Those interested in the business of brewing and mergers and acquisitions, or simply how these Brazilian entrepreneur’s managed this, can read about it in the excellent book Dethroning the King. AmBev/InBev/ABInBev is one of the great Brazilian success stories, having created the most dynamic and most dominant brewing company in the history of the world, and its principals are amongst the most important business leaders in the Country.

If you order a chopp at a boteco in Rio, you are extremely likely to receive a AmBev’s Brahma brand, and given the pride most places take in their chopp you are equally likely to get a cold glass from a fresh keg.  But for those looking for the pinnacle of beers in the Americas, Brahma has made available its Padrão Original — chopp of the exacting quality standards available at the Bar Original in São Paulo. Only the best lagers of Bohemia and Bavaria reach these heights, and I know of nothing else in the Americas — and I have spent a lot of time looking — can compare.  Padrão Original is made available only to a very small handful of establishments, which take the time and care necessary to treat and serve the beer properly.  Aside from whatever special standards are followed by AmBev, standards are also set for allowing the beer to settle after delivery, cleaning the draft lines, cooling the product and serving glasses, and most importantly in pouring the beer in two stages, the first consisting of liquid, and the second consisting of three full fingers of creamy “colarinho,” foam, which traps the very light effervescence and fragrance, and gives the chope the consistency of liquid velvet.  In my opinion, this beer can stand with the best lagers of Europe, with an extraordinary mouthfeel, and an easy body as appropriate both for the local climate, and the long hours which are often spent slowly drinking one after the other. You will also notice that chope is served in much smaller portions in Brazil than elsewhere — usually less than 200ml — so that it doesn’t warm up from the ambient heat before being consumed and replaced with a fresh cold glass.

Most of the places where Padrão Original is available are in São Paulo, but a few are in Rio, with two that I am aware of in Zona Sul.  One is Astor, an upscale boteco with a lovely setting on the beach in Ipanema at Av. Vieira Souto, 110, and Pizza Bráz, one of Rio’s better pizzarias, with a location in  Jardim Botânico at Rua Maria Angélica, 129.