Boak and Bailey's Beer Blog - Good Beer in Marseille Pt 1: La Plaine

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Marseille is a rough-edged*city where the default thirst-quencher is rosé wine but, with the gentrification of previously dodgy areas, there has come the beginnings of a beer scene.

Though we generally like to find places to eat and drink organically in the course of exploring, this time we did check Ratebeer’s local listings before we went, which told us there was a brewery with the whiff of ‘craft’ about it, along with a couple of specialist bars and bottle shops.
First, we sought out the brewery tap of Brasserie de la Plaine in the hip Cours Julien/La Plaine district where students, hippies, street drinkers and the bourgeois hang out in and around overlapping cafes, bars and public spaces, surrounded by graffiti, poodle crap and parked scooters. If you visited Hoxton in the 1990s, or Bristol about ten years ago, you’ll get the idea — not yet posh, exactly, but the grot is beginning to look a bit like window dressing.
The Bar de la Plaine (57 Place Jean Jaurès) is a tiny space on a corner where two draught beers and a selection of seasonal bottles are dispensed. We found a crowd of locals, many with children in tow, engaged in post-work debriefing as they knocked back small glasses of beer*and scooped chunks from a liquid-ripe wheel of blue cheese on the counter.
http://i1.wp.com/boakandbailey.com/w...size=400%2C400Blanche, left, and Blonde.We didn’t expect much so were pleasantly surprised to find that neither of the draught beers was downright dirty — there was no unplanned sourness, and no floating grit between the teeth. Blanche (wheat beer, 6% ABV, €3 for a generous 250ml measure) was light-bodied to the point of wateriness, like lemon barley water. A heavy hand with the orange peel gave it most of its character. Though it didn’t reward concentrated pondering, as a refresher on a hot evening, it was quite welcome, and probably almost on a par with Hoegaarden.
Blonde*(5%,*€3 for 250ml) was a*golden ale rather than lager, and clearer than the photo above makes it look. Served almost freezing cold, it seemed at first bland, gruel-like and yeasty but, as it warmed, it became more likeable with loaf-crust maltiness and a whisper of savoury-herbal hops. It’s not a complex beer but we’d certainly choose it over Heineken, if not over such commonly available Belgian beers such as La Chouffe.
We didn’t try the bottled beers — no-one else was drinking*them*either — but on our visit the range*included an amber beer and one infused (we think) with essence of violets. An IPA advertised on the menu, and which we were keen to taste, was not available, being the seasonal special for October.
This is a solid contemporary community brewery making decent draught beer just about as adventurous as (we suspect) the local market will tolerate, for now. If we lived in Marseille, we we would certainly aim to make regulars of ourselves.
Good Beer in Marseille Pt 1: La Plaine from Boak & Bailey's Beer Blog - Over-thinking beer, pubs and the meaning of craft since 2007


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