After a dozen or so hangovers and extra trips to the shop for toilet paper, Polish beer – despite making a favourable first impression for whatever reason – generally leaves one understanding why vodka is so popular in Poland. Walk into any bar in Kraków and you’ll likely find one of the following national brews available: Żywiec, Tyskie, Lech or Okocim; line ‘em up, blindfold yourself and we doubt your palate can tell the difference between them. Locals will argue that since international buyouts (which explains the prevalence of similarly uninspiring foreign brands like Heineken and Carlsberg) the quality of some of these brands has declined, but that’s beside the point. Basically drinking Żywiec and Tyskie gets really boring really fast for anyone with a real affinity for beer. What too often goes unrealised is that similar to the US – which also gets a bad rep for its big market national beers – Poland has many independent regional microbreweries that produce delicious beer. Though almost impossible to find in any shops or bars as recently as a year ago, this trend seems to be happily changing and there are now several bars in Kraków where you can enjoy local brews that don’t taste like filtered horse urine.

In and around the Old Town, Pierwszy Lokal (see Cafes) serves delicious Smocza Głowa (Dragon’s Head) dark and amber ales on draft, while Non Iron offers the same (when available) on top of its exciting assortment of Czech and regional microbrews. Though Kraków does have it’s own microbrewery in CK Browar, the virtue of the beer is entirely undermined by the horrible atmosphere created by the thuggish clientele; true beer connoisseurs will instead make a visit to cosy Katedra, which offers halfway to a hundred bottled Polish microbrews, or newcomer House of Beer which claims to offer three times that many.

In Kazimierz, our favourite place has to be the charming and chirpy Beer Gallery whose 150+beers are a delight and will keep you busy for weeks trying to decide the best. Then there’s Smocza Jama, whose cooler houses a fine selection of hard-to-find ales you can help yourself to and features Fortuna brews on draught. In Kolanko 6 (see cafes) you’ll find Smocza Jama on draft; Szynk similarly offers a dark and amber local draft as well as bottled Kozlak and the Ciechan microbrews you may have had a chance to try in Warsaw. Finally, Marchewka z Groszkiem (see Polish Restaurants) has a respectable line-up of bottled Ukrainian and Polish microbrews, including several flavours of Ciechan.

Unfortunately, national distribution of Polish microbrews is almost non-existent; case in point: you can get the local Piast lager in every bar Wrocław, but you won’t find a single bar or shop in Kraków selling it. Getting your hands on a choice Polish microbrew is nearly impossible without going to one of the places above or directly to the source, however there are a couple exceptions for those who want to sip a brew at home or need a little something for the train ride (hey, isn’t that ‘illegal’?). The Alkohole at ul. Miodowa 21 in Kazimierz (D-6, Mon-Fri 08:00-23:00; Sat, Sun 08:00-24:00) has a decent selection of national and international beers – probably the best you’ll find in any shop in Kraków without trudging out to Alma in Galeria Kazimierz (J-3, see Shopping). Otherwise we recommend you start conditioning yourself as a vodka-drinker. Na zdrowie. Literally.