Atlas Obscura meets Anthony Bourdain meets a slightly irresponsible brewery road trip.
Everything you need to know about craft beer flights from selection strategy to drinking order. Spoiler: there is a wrong way to do it.
🇺🇸 Weird AmericaThere's a fine line between 'experienced wine taster' and 'wizard having a moment'. Here's how to stay on the right side.
🇺🇸 Weird AmericaOne will judge your choices. The other will share their glass. Here's how to spot the difference.
🇺🇸 Weird AmericaMoldova is what happens when 5,000 years of winemaking meets zero interest in moderation. Expect underground wine cities, unstoppable grandmothers and “just one glass” turning into a full-blown life event. 🍷
🇺🇸 Weird AmericaThere are normal brewery tours. You know the type: “This is how hops work”, “This is our fermentation tank” or “Please enjoy this responsibly sized tasting”. Lovely. Educational. Calm. This tour is not that.
🇺🇸 Weird AmericaThere are normal beer tours. Then there are beer tours where at some point in the evening someone says: “Wait…what was that in the sky?” Welcome to Ale-ien Encounters. Where the beers are real and the explanations are optional.
🇺🇸 Weird AmericaEvery tour begins the same way. Polite smiles, cautious introductions and that unspoken agreement that everyone will behave like reasonable adults. Then the first drinks arrive and within about 45 minutes, the group quietly transforms into something far more interesting. Nno matter where you are, whether it’s deep in a Moldovan wine cellar or hopping between breweries in the US, the same characters always show up. Different faces, same personalities. It’s like the universe is running a very specific casting call.
🍷 Wine AdventuresMost tour companies buy minibuses. I bought a 36-year-old Soviet Lada called Boris. Against all logic, he's become one of the most popular members of the Tipple Tours team. This is the story of how a questionable purchase turned into one of Moldova's most memorable wine adventures.
🇺🇸 Weird AmericaI arrived in America thinking I understood the country. Then I encountered breakfast portions the size of garden furniture, drinks filled with enough ice to preserve mammoths and breweries serving peanut butter stout. Several years later, I'm still confused. And that's exactly why I keep going back.
🇺🇸 Weird AmericaFlorida has world-class breweries, beautiful beaches and enough strange stories to keep newspaper editors employed indefinitely. After exploring the Sunshine State, I've reached one conclusion: Florida isn't a destination. It's a long-running experiment that somehow escaped the laboratory.
🇺🇸 Weird AmericaChristmas in Hawaii is deeply confusing. Santa arrives by surfboard, people spend Christmas Day on the beach and the biggest festive challenge is remembering to reapply sunscreen. After a week in paradise, I began to suspect snow might have been a marketing campaign.
🗿 Soviet & StrangeMost people come to Moldova for the wine. I did too. What I didn't expect were giant Soviet mosaics, abandoned mega-hotels, underground wine cities and a breakaway republic that feels like a time machine. Welcome to Moldova's wonderfully weird side.
🗿 Soviet & StrangeTransnistria has Lenin statues, Soviet mosaics, rope ferries, giant bottle collections and a currency recognised by almost nobody. After years of exploring the region, I've come to one conclusion: it's either Europe's strangest destination or its most entertaining. Possibly both.
🗿 Soviet & StrangeTiraspol has giant Lenin statues, Soviet tanks, excellent brandy and enough Cold War atmosphere to make visitors check the date on their phone. After countless visits, I've realised it's not Europe's strangest capital. It's Europe's most fascinating surprise.
🇺🇸 Weird AmericaSolo travel is about refusing to let a lack of available friends stop you having adventures. After years running tours, I've discovered that the people who arrive knowing nobody often leave with the best stories, the biggest smiles and several new drinking buddies.
🍺 Beer AdventuresI've eaten in excellent restaurants around the world but some of my most memorable meals happened at Georgian kitchen tables. The food was incredible, the wine never stopped flowing and every grandmother seemed personally offended by the idea that I might already be full.
🇺🇸 Weird AmericaCraft beer tourists will happily fly across a continent for a brewery recommendation, explore industrial estates in search of hidden taprooms and follow local advice into places that don't appear in guidebooks. As it turns out, these are exactly the sort of people you want on an adventure.
🗿 Soviet & StrangeI've tasted wine beside volcanoes, inside underground cities and in countries that most travellers couldn't locate on a map. After twenty-five years in the wine trade, I've discovered that the world's weirdest wine regions often produce the best stories, and occasionally the best wine too.
🇺🇸 Weird AmericaI've enjoyed craft beer in churches, beside giant roadside attractions and in buildings that looked one planning dispute away from demolition. After years exploring America's brewery scene, I've discovered one simple truth: the stranger the location, the better the story.
🍺 Beer AdventuresAfter years running boozy tours, I've noticed a pattern. Guests arrive stressed, glued to their phones and talking about work. A few days later they're laughing with strangers in vineyards and breweries wondering why they don't do this more often. Coincidence? Possibly. Wine and beer certainly isn't hurting.
🗿 Soviet & StrangeMost people visit North Korea for the history, politics or sheer curiosity. I went because I wanted to know what people were drinking. What followed involved local beer, unexpected meals and the realisation that even the world's most secretive country can surprise a wine merchant.
🍺 Beer AdventuresI went to China expecting beer, baijiu and the occasional unusual drink. Instead, I found snake wine, mystery dishes, fascinating local traditions and several moments where curiosity clearly overruled common sense. As travel strategies go, it worked surprisingly well.
🍷 Wine AdventuresMost wine tastings take place in vineyards, cellars or hotels. Mine took place inside the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone after a day exploring abandoned cities and one of history's most famous disaster sites. Looking back, it remains the most unusual venue I've ever used and one of the best stories I've ever brought home.
🇺🇸 Weird AmericaI flew 3,500 miles to Siberia to discover local booze and see the world's largest Lenin head. By the end of the day I'd visited Buddhist monasteries, met a remarkably well-preserved 99-year-old monk, received news that COVID was shutting borders and escaped on a six-hour flight fuelled mainly by warm water and mild panic.
🇺🇸 Weird AmericaTipple Tours is known for wine tastings, brewery visits and discovering local drinks in unusual places. So how did we end up organising treks up Africa's highest mountain where alcohol was almost entirely absent? Thanks to Andre, Aloyce and an incredible local team, our guests conquered Kilimanjaro, discovered spectacular scenery and learned that sometimes the best travel stories don't come from the bottle. Although, judging by the celebrations afterwards, a cold drink at the end certainly didn't hurt.
🇺🇸 Weird AmericaSome of America's best bars look abandoned, suspicious or one strong gust of wind away from retirement. Inside, however, you'll find cold beer, unforgettable characters and enough stories to fill a library. After years exploring the USA, I've discovered that the best bar is usually the one you weren't planning to visit.
🍺 Beer AdventuresArmed with just a few words of Mandarin, I travelled across China using a communication strategy based largely on train noises, airplane impressions and farmyard animals. Somehow it worked. Whether I was ordering chicken, finding transport or buying supplies, the less dignity I retained, the more successful the conversation became.
🇺🇸 Weird AmericaI boarded a Moscow train convinced everyone hated me. The passengers looked stern, the atmosphere was silent and one grandmother appeared personally offended by my existence. Then I opened a bottle of vodka. Within an hour the carriage had transformed into a travelling dinner party complete with stories, snacks and several new friends.
🍺 Beer AdventuresMost pub crawls involve a few streets and a sensible journey home. Ours involved eight countries, four continents, 25,000 miles and a growing inability to remember what day it was. It started with a pint in Heathrow Terminal 2 and somehow ended with seven slightly confused travellers standing in New York wondering how any of this had happened.
🍺 Beer AdventuresSaudi Arabia was one of the strangest places I've ever visited. I found the world's largest café with almost no customers, a giant bottle-opener skyscraper containing an Anne Summers shop, mystery buffet meat, endless royal portraits and enough Diet Pepsi to concern medical professionals. Somehow, the lack of alcohol ended up being the least unusual part of the trip.
🍺 Beer AdventuresI flew from Britain to Brazil for just three days at Christmas, spent most of Copacabana Beach trying to hold my stomach in, accidentally joined a volleyball game despite not playing since childhood and discovered that Brazilian beer is served at temperatures usually reserved for organ transplants. It may not have been sensible but it was unforgettable
🇺🇸 Weird AmericaMy second around-the-world adventure included Russian sparkling wine in Baku, a surprise Oktoberfest pub in Dubai, chow mein mountains in Nepal, heat exhaustion on a Singapore sightseeing bus, a mysterious Seoul hotel, advanced bowing lessons in Tokyo, suspicious airline staff in Los Angeles and frozen champagne somewhere over the Atlantic. In other words, a perfectly normal holiday.
🗿 Soviet & StrangeI've never really understood football. Wherever I travel, somebody eventually asks who I support, and the look on their face when I answer "KFC" is always priceless. While millions spend their weekends watching grown men kick a ball into a net and occasionally fall over clutching a leg like a four-year-old denied an ice cream, I've assembled my own dream team featuring Big Daddy Bucket in goal, Gravy in midfield and Onion Ring running enthusiastically in circles. The world would be a very boring place if we all loved exactly the same thing.
🇺🇸 Weird AmericaWhat started as a trip to explore Cambodia's history quickly turned into a misadventure involving stolen trainers, a stranger hugging me by mistake, a tuk tuk driver called Bob and a roadside duck embryo that looked like it belonged in a science-fiction film. Along the way I visited the Killing Fields, drank beer overlooking the Mekong and discovered that finding replacement size 10 shoes in Phnom Penh is surprisingly difficult.
Reading about weird places is good. Actually going there is better.
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