Beer in Serbia and Montenegro

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|- |style="font-size: 80%; padding: 0 5px 0 5px;" style="border-top:1px solid;"| |- |align=right style="font-size: 80%; padding: 0 5px 0 5px;"|edit |} Serbia and Montenegro's beer (Serbian language: пиво/pivo) isn't really well-known or famous outside of its national borders. This is mostly because Serbia and Montenegro breweries only target the domestic market.

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Visual presentation

Beer for home consumption is mostly sold in half-litre glass bottles (if buyer doesn't have empty ones he can usually pay a deposit, which is returned after returning the bottle to the retailer), while 0.33L bottles are rarer.

Cans are less common even if canned beer could be of slightly better quality.

Recently, most breweries began packing their product in plastic Q-pack bottles of 1.5, 2 or even 2.5 litres. This beer is cheaper though equal in quality.

It's worth noting that unlike in countries like Canada or certain states of the USA where beer is sold only in specialty beer and liquor stores, beer can be purchased in regular supermarkets and grocery stores all across Serbia and Montenegro.

In bars and restaurants beer is either served in 0.33 or 0.5L bottles, or poured (točeno).

Light beer dominates in Serbia-Montenegro. Due to significantly lower consumption, dark beer is not as commonly present (almost every larger brewery produces it in small quantities, making it harder to find on the market). Some breweries also produce kvass.

Beer in glass bottles costs around 45 dinars (0.5 euros) per litre while in plastic it could go as low as 35 dinars (0.4 euros) per litre. Beer in pubs costs around 150 dinars (1.7 euros) per litre. In addition to various domestic brands, majority of bars serve the usual foreign fare of Heineken, Beck's, Carlsberg, Tuborg, etc.

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Availability and Market Presence

In recent years, Serbia has seen a boom in beer-related advertising. Catchy slogans, large bilboards and polished TV spots featuring local celebrities or folksy characters are present at every turn. It's highly improbable more than 10 minutes will pass on any Serbian TV station without a beer commercial. Similarly in print media, page-long ads constantly remind readers about joys of beer.

While some believe in-your-face presence of brands like Lav, Jelen, MB, Weifert, and Atlas actually produces a reverse effect, marketing experts point to significant increase in beer consuption among Serbs as proof that this kind of advertising works. Serbia's total annual beer consuption in 2004 was 5.8 million hectolitres, which translates to 50 litres per capita.[1]

Breweries producing these brands also sponsor large outdoor concerts, sports and entertainment events that further raise their public profile.

Brewery MB is most probably spending the most money on advertising.

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Quality

Which brew is the best, and indeed which brews are good or bad is, of course, a disputed subject.

In a February 2004 online poll[2] conducted by the largest Serbian search engine Krstarica.com, 5304 visitors have voted on what is the best domestic beer. The winner was Jelen with 30% of the votes, followed by MB with 26%, and Nikšićko with 16% while all other brews received 7% or less votes. Of these, Jelen is the best and has richer taste and especially smell than MB but causes significantly worse hangover; while Nikšićko is a class of its own, being about 50% more expensive than other brews.

It is important to know a phenomenon caused by competition between breweries, most notably between the breweries of Apatin and Belgrade. When one brewery starts making beer of higher quality, more and more people start buying it; because of high demand the brewery begins hyperproduction of beer, and as a result of this its quality drops; meanwhile the other brewery, having low sales, improves the quality in order to attract customers; people switch back to it and the circle starts again.

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Breweries and brews

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In Serbia











  • Peć: Biere e Peja (operating in facilities of Pećka pivara)






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In Montenegro

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Beer festivals

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Dani piva

Dani Piva (days of beer) (www.zip.co.yu/dani_piva.asp) is a beer festival in Zrenjanin, started in 1985, organised by the Zrenjanin brewery Zrenjaninska industrija piva.


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Belgrade Beer Fest

Started in 2003, Belgrade Beer Fest (www.belgradebeerfest.com), is held annually over 3-4 days at the foot of Belgrade's Kalemegdan fortress as a showcase event for various beer producers. In addition to domestic and foreign brews at affordable prices, the festival features live music performances each evening. It has quickly grown in size and popularity. In 2004, it attracted over 75,000 foreign visitors to Belgrade[13] and in 2005 it was the second most visited festival in Serbia and Montenegro with 300,000 visitors.[14] It's profile will no doubt be further raised by the fact that on December 31, 2005 British daily The Independent named it as one of the worldwide events to visit in 2006.[15]

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External links

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