Maybe not the first beer that I had on the islands but the first experience worth mentioning was on Sao Jorge during our hike to the tiny remote village of Fajã da Caldeira Santo Cristo.
We did the hike in the pouring rain and we're soaked when we arrived at the only small restaurant on the faja.
We were cold but it was too late in the day to drink coffee so I had a cold beer and she had a glass of wine. We drank those with pastel de natas, which were a good pairing. Instead of a hot drink to warm us up we had some high calorie pastries.
The beer I had was called Sagras and was a standard Portuguese lager. Its was a golden color, had a balanced flavor, and a standard 5% Abv. It was an all around good beer after the hour long hike. The size was tiny though containing only 250ml or 25cl of beer. This location was the most remote spot on the entire island and could only be accessed by an ATV. The beer was brought in by 4 wheelers from the neighboring towns so I'm sure that its more economical to bring in many small bottles than less larger ones.
All in all, this was the coldest and most remote beer that I had on the the trip.
The last beer experience was on the island of Faial at the popular Cafe Sport bar.
The inside was rustic and sporty, with hundreds of flags decorating the walls and ceiling.
This was one the those situations where we didn't know if we were supposed to order the drinks ourselves at the bar or wait at the table for a server to come by. We waited for what seemed like an awkward amount of time at the table while servers walked past us and then I decided to just get up and order the drinks myself.
While standing there waiting for the bar tender I saw that they had a Munich Dunkel on tap so, hoping that the bar tender speaks English, I said "I"ll have a Munich Dunkel," pointing to the tap just a few feet away, "and a Somersby," which is what my wife wanted. The bar tender sort of nodded his head and then continued puttering around with other orders. A minute or two later, now standing about 10 feet away from me in front of a fridge in the other room, the bar tender whistles for my attention, opens the door and pulls out 2 mini Superbock beers. He holds them up and nods his head like "this is what you wanted right?" I shake my head and hand, "no, no, a Munich Dunkel," and point at the tap again "and a Somersby." He nods and walks over and begins pouring a Munich Dunkel and sets it off the side. He grabs another glass and starts pouring a second Munich Dunkel and sets that down too. Then he walks away and starts doing something else. In my head I'm like, "okay shit. What's happening here?" Knowing that I don't have enough cash in my pocket for 3 drinks I run back over to my wife and ask for more cash. "What's taking so long?" She asks, and "why do you need 16 Euro for two drinks?" I respond, "I think something is screwed up, I'm not sure, this is just in case." I head back over and the bartender eventually comes back and pours a Somersby and then hands me the two pints of Dunkel and the cider. Of course what I should have done was told the bartender that I only ordered one Dunkel, but being a tourist in another country, I didn't want to rock the boat and tell the guy that he made a mistake and the second beer he poured is going to be wasted. Instead I paid for all three of the drinks and walked back to the table to a surprised look on my wife face.
I told her what happened but I don't think that she believed me that I didn't order two pints on purpose.
We actually had a dinner reservation that night in just under an hour so I basically had to chug the two beers to finish them in time to make it over to the sushi restaurant. Luckily the beer was quite good. I'm not going to lie, after drinking two pints in under an hour I had a pretty big buzz on when we walked out of the pub. It was a good experience overall and it gave my wife a story to put on Instagram and to tell others at the dinner table so really, it worked out for her in the end as well.
