Live from Tenerife - The journey to Tacoa brewery and restaurant

Quality beer is not simply a want that one adds to a wish list alongside trivial things like a television, computer, or jewelry, but a basic necessity of life similar to the need for food, shelter, and clothing that when unfulfilled, leads to desperation and a sense doubt about life and the moralities of humankind. Luckily, Tacoa brewery and restaurant, one of Tenerife’s only – perhaps the only – brew pubs has been able to fulfill this need, and hence restore my confidence in life and faith in humankind.

On board a rather stiffly-suspended Ford Focus, our journey to Tacoa begins from Las Americas, one of Tenerife’s southern beach and resort towns. The journey then extends through the windy roads leading to the summit of Teide – the Island’s infamous volcanic mountain that today is reminiscent of a Martian-like landscape. I’ll let the pictures below do the talking.

Descending from Teide brings us to Puerto de la Cruz, Tenerife’s main fishing village and a rather large town for the standards here. With another 15 minutes of driving, we come to the town of El Sauzal and finally Tacoa. Yes, it was an adventurous journey through alien worlds on board a vessel that jarred with every small surface irregularity. But our thirst for fine quality craft beer made any challenge seem like a walk in the proverbial park. And the prospects of exploring new beers made it all the more adventurous.

Tacoa is a small brew pub with an excellent selection of food, consisting of a mixture of traditional German and Spanish cuisine, along with a selection of five beer varieties – Clara, Cobre, Negra, Trigo, and Light, just enough to quench our thirst and hunger. Since Tacoa was out of the Light, we were only able to sample the first four, which were by far the most important ones. In a later blog post, I will write a bit more about each beer. Suffice it to say here that all four were absolutely wonderful. But the Trigo, an incredibly candy-like hefeweizen, and the Negra, a bock with an abundance of dark fruit notes, were by themselves enough to justify the long drive from Las Americas to El Sauzal, via Teide.  

Also in a later post from home, I’ll say a bit more about the pub. Again, it’s worth mentioning that at the pub, you can put a deposit on one-liter sized swing top bottles and then have them filled. This of course was part of our plan. However, it did not quite work out that way, as the pub only managed to conjure up one rubber seal for the swing top caps. So, we filled the only legitimate glass bottle with the Negra, and after some hesitation and questions about the effects from the plastic, we decided to use empty 1.5 liter water jugs for the remaining three varieties (see picture below). A day later, I can say that the water jugs worked well, although the one containing the Clara did leak a bit of air and liquid.

At this point, we only have a few days left on our trip, but lots of beer to drink. With my confidence in life and faith in humankind now regained, I’m looking forward to writing more extensive reviews on Tacoa’s brews, and a bit more about the brew pub. Until then, bottoms up!