The Bangalore Craft Crawl 2025: A Citywide Toast to Local Lager
- Umang Nair
- Oct 25, 2025
- 5 min read
Every city has its rituals. In Bangalore, one of them is gathering around a pint of fresh, carefully brewed beer. Over the years, this city has grown into India's craft beer capital - not just because of the number of breweries, but because of the stories each glass tells.
And this September, those stories converged into one big adventure:
The Bangalore Craft Crawl 2025.
Now that the crawl's over, the city feels a little different. Maybe it's just the hangover of good memories - or maybe it's the realization that we just witnessed one of the most collective expressions of brewing creativity this city's ever seen.
What Made This Crawl Different
The Bangalore Craft Crawl wasn't just another beer event. It was a 30-day celebration of brewing, exploration, and conversation - a citywide toast to what happens when twenty breweries come together with one shared idea: to reinterpret lager through a local lens.
The brief was deceptively simple - brew a Local Lager using Indian grains. But the results? Anything but simple.
On paper, lager is clean, crisp, and familiar. But as each brewery leaned into local grains, the style began to twist and evolve - millet, rice, and even idlis found their way into glasses across town. Suddenly, the world's most drinkable style began to sound like Bangalore - earthy, bright, experimental, and full of heart.
Twenty Breweries, Twenty Interpretations
If you did the crawl, you know what I mean when I say no two lagers tasted alike.
Mannheim Craft Brewery - Jackfruit Idli Lager
South India's breakfast meets beer - crisp, golden, and softly sweet with the warmth of steamed jackfruit idlis.
Geometry Brewery & Kitchen - Oodalu Cool
Light-bodied and rustic, this barnyard millet lager from Dharwad drinks clean and earthy - an ode to Indian farmland.
Brau Galie - Sridevi Biryani Lager
A bold, aromatic lager brewed with aged Basmati and biryani spices — rich, surprising, and unapologetically local.
The Brew Factory - Hindustan Lager
Foxtail millet and Basmati rice come together for a floral, balanced lager that bridges tradition and modern craft.
Peepai Kitchen & Brewery - Makhana Gold Lager
Crafted with fox nuts and flattened rice, this golden lager is smooth, nutty, and gently toasty - tradition with swagger.
Artisanal Bier Village - Kurnool Fields
A heritage-grain lager from Andhra's rice bowl - clean, lightly aromatic, and herbal-citrusy with a crisp snap.
Red Rhino Craft Brewery + Inspired Kitchen - Pale Lager with Rice & Ragi
Smooth, dry, and quietly complex - rice brings the crispness, ragi brings the soul.
Geist Brewing Co - Pop Fiction
Popped rice turns this easy-drinking lager into pure nostalgia - light, toasty, and unmistakably homegrown.
Seven Rivers Brewing Co - Ragi Lager
A golden pour with floral bitterness and ragi's earthy depth - local tradition in perfect balance.
La Casa Brewery + Kitchen - Forbidden Dark Lager
Brewed with royal black rice(Karuppu Kavuni) from Tamil Nadu - earthy, bittersweet, and nutty in every sip.
The Pump House - Ragi Lager
A crisp, golden lager grounded by roasted ragi - nutty, floral, and unmistakably Karnataka.
Toit - Banger Lager
A Bohemian-style ragi lager - clean, balanced, and built for long, easy sessions.
The Biere Club - (Ragi Lager)
Classic craftsmanship meets local grain - bright, bready, and full of Bangalore charm.
Biergarten - Koji Jawar Pilsner
Half jowar, half koji magic - floral, citrusy, and softly funky, a pilsner with personality.
Gladia Brewery - Chitranna Rice Lager
Bright and tangy with lemon leaf and Sona Masoori - a zesty, sunny take on a rice lager.
Highbrew Brewery - GobindoBhog Rice Lager
A buttery, aromatic rice lager inspired by Bengali kitchens - comforting and graceful in equal measure.
Golden Circle Brewery - Poha Pilsner
Crisp, golden, and no-nonsense - flattened rice lends a silky body and subtle sweetness.
Prime Golf Brewing & Golfing - Multigrain Lager
A symphony of grains - variety of millet, sorghum, rice - coming together in a smooth, rustic, and refreshingly dry finish.
46 Ounces - Kitsune Lager
Japanese precision meets Indian heirloom red rice poha brings crispness and grace.
Longboat Brewery - Jasmine Rice Lager
Light, floral, and gracefully fragrant - a Thai-inspired lager that glides across the palate.
Each beer wasn't just a recipe. It was a perspective - an experiment in identity, an argument for why "local" isn't just a label, but a flavor.
The Passport, The Pints, and The People
The Crawl ran on something beautifully old-school: a passport.
You'd grab one at any brewery, order the Local Lager, get your stamp, and move to the next. By the end of the month, some passports looked like weathered travel diaries - smudged stamps, beer stains, and the occasional doodle from a late-night table conversation.
But the real fun wasn't in the stamps. It was in the stories.
People met strangers who became crawl buddies. Brewers met drinkers who'd never tried their beers before. Conversations started with flavor notes and ended somewhere between yeast strains and city traffic. It was messy, lively, and full of that unfiltered joy that good beer always brings.
What We Learned Along the Way
The Crawl reminded us that Bangalore's brewing community is alive. Collaborative, curious, and unafraid to experiment.
It also showed us what "local" could mean in beer - not as a marketing word, but as an approach.
Millet isn't just a substitute for barley; it brings new textures and aromas. Rice doesn't dilute a beer; it refines it. And ingredients like koji or jackfruit don't break tradition - they stretch it.
The result was a map of Bangalore's brewing imagination. Twenty lagers, twenty philosophies, one shared love for what's possible.
Beyond the Beer
Was it perfect? Of course not.
There were days the crawl felt like a marathon. Some breweries ran out of stock early, some days ended with unexpected detours. But that's what made it real.
The Crawl wasn't built to be polished. It was built to be alive.
And it worked because of everyone who showed up - the brewers who brewed, the bartenders who poured, the drinkers who stamped, and the city that cheered them on.
Cheers to What Comes Next
Now that it's over, it's hard not to wonder what's next. Maybe the Crawl becomes an annual ritual. Maybe it evolves - a different theme each year, or new cities joining in. But what it's already proven is this: Bangalore's beer scene doesn't just exist - it collaborates, experiments, and inspires.
As I look at my passport - twenty stamps deep, corners slightly damp from spilled beer - it feels like more than a souvenir. It's a record of what happens when a city raises a glass together.
Because this wasn't just about beer. It was about belonging.
Cheers to the Crawl, to Local Lager, and to a city that keeps brewing stories worth chasing.
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