Warming myself at midnight by an open-air firepit over which half a cow was being slowly and expertly roasted, while 50 or so slightly drunk South American brewers sang a word-perfect rendition of Bohemian Rhapsody loudly and enthusiastically was not a direction I ever expected my beer writing career to take. Still, every opportunity for new experiences needs to be seized.

I was in Asunción, capital of Paraguay, at the invitation of Francisco “Chichito” Montanaro, president of Acervapy, the Asociacion de Cerveceros Artesanales y Caseros de Paraguay, or Paraguayan craft and home brewers’ association. Montanaro is also production manager for the Sacramento Brewing Company, which started in Asunción in 2017, and, more relevantly here, the organiser of the Copa Guarani de Cervezas, or Guarani Beer Cup, named for the indigenous people of Paraguay, whose language is spoken by 90 per cent of the country’s population.

The Copa Guarani de Cervezas brings in large numbers of entries from all over Latin America, and a few outsiders as well, and its judging categories generally match those found around the world, from Denver to Hong Kong. One unique section, however, is ”Paraguayan beer”, designed to try to settle on a specifically Paraguayan style of brew, one that reflects, in some way, Paraguayan tastes, ingredients and sensibilities. Can you invent a national beer style? I’m going to ignore that question, and say merely that I think it’s an excellent endeavour to try to do so.

There are only four hard-and-fast rules for beers entered into the Paraguayan Beer category in the competition. Each beer must be

● Medium golden-amber in colour (up to 15 SRM)
● Medium to light in body
● High in drinkability
● High in refreshment

The rules for the category state that ”Any of the styles in the BJCP Style Guide 2021 that meet the attributes mentioned above (colour, body) may be submitted as a base beer, specifying the base style and the ingredient or process that makes it a potential Paraguayan style of beer.”

The use of such Paraguayan ingredients as, eg, cassava starch, local herbs, yerba mate (the plant native to Paraguay, a member of the holly family, whose leaves are used to make mate, a widely drunk beverage rich in caffeine), Paraguayan hops, and so on is “at the brewer’s complete discretion”. In the case of cassava starch, the total proportion used in the recipe and the technique used in the mash (infusion, decoction, ramps, cold mash, and so on) “must be specified”. Brewers must also list the special ingredients and processes used when registering the beer for the competition.

Sacramento Brewing won the gold medal in the Paraguayan beer category in 2023’s Copa Guarani with its Churro Pantano, a 4.7 per cent abv variation on Churro Campana golden ale. Pantano literally means ”swamp”, and is Paraguayan slang for terere (cold-infused mate) or hot mate made with a large quantity of herbs in, “since the water turns an awful brown colour but it’s pretty healthy!”, according to Montanero.

 The beer contains 20 per cent of cassava flour in the mash, and herbs including peppermint (menta’i in Spanish) and lemon verbena, known locally as cedron Paraguay, botanical name Aloysia citrodora, a shrub native to much of South America that grows up to 10 feet/three metres high. The main aroma ingredients in lemon verbena are citral, nerol and geraniol, all oils also available from hops, via the oxidation of myrcene, one of the essential oils found in large quantities in New World hops in particular.

I was capitan de mesa (table captain) for the judging of the medal winners in the Paraguayan Beer category, and this year we only gave Churro Pantano a silver medal: my tasting notes suggest it was served too warm, and would probably have benefitted from being judged when it was very cold, which would have dialled back the mintiness.

It was beaten to the gold by another Asunción-based brewery, Cerveceria Singular, with its Ida y Vuelta (“There and Back”) golden ale, brewed, again, with 15 per cent cassava flour, lemon verbena, and also West Indian lemon grass (cedron kapi’i in Spanish, or at least Paraguayan Spanish), and rind of apepu, a type of bitter orange grown in Paraguay and used to make jam, added in the whirlpool. The herbs and peel give an attractive complexity to a dry beer with just a touch of sweetness in the background, making it, according to my notes, “a ’sitting on the veranda as the sun goes down’ beer“.

The bronze medal went to another Asuncion brewer, Herken 1885. The brewery is run by the Stanley brothers, Augusto and Ernesto, descendants of the man who opened the first brewery in Paraguay, in 1885, Pedro Herken. (Even in 1903 there were still only two breweries in the country.) Their 4.7 per cent abv Paraguayan Ale is, again, made with a proportion of cassava starch, plus apepu peel, cedron kapi’i and cedron Paraguay, which last looks to have become pretty much the defining ingredient of the putative Paraguayan beer style: six out of the eight beers we judged in the category contained lemon verbena.

I didn’t just judge the Paraguayan category, of course: I had everything from imperial stouts to fruit sours flung at me, as is normal at a four-day beer judging. I was particularly amused, as the only Briton there, to be judging the British bitter category: South American brewers are extremely enthusiastic, and in very many cases – most cases – hugely professional and very successful in what they produce. Most of the “British bitters”, however, tasted like beers made by people who had read about the style but never actually drunk it. Still, I doubt many British brewers could make a decent Catarina Sour …

I was disappointed not to get a chance to do any tourism while in Paraguay, but I did get to some great parties: Latin American brewers know how to have fun. As we bounced on our way from hotel to party venue through the cobbled backstreets of Asunción in a coach filled with Paraguayans, Colombians, Argentines, Brazilians, Chileans, Mexicans and the like, all singing along cheerfully to South American pop music, I tried to imagine this happening at a beer judging in Britain … no, sorry.

The first night’s entertainment was at the Herken 1885 brewery, with a show that culminated in a group of ladies performing the Danza de la Botella, the Paraguayan Bottle Dance, where the lead dancer, with the aid of a man with a step-ladder, ends up dancing with a stack of ten bottles on her head. THAT I’d love to see at the Great British Beer Festival … I was also introduced to a popular Latin American snack, worms – to be exact, the larvae of a type of flour beetle, which are used as petfood, but also sold in packets like crisps for consumption by humans …

A couple of oddities about travelling to Paraguay: much of the local vegetation is familiar because it’s found in Britain as houseplants, while in Paraguay it grows in gardens. I also found it difficult to get my head around the local currency: the Paraguayan guarani is approximately 10,000 to the pound. That means a 2,000-guarani note is worth around 20p, and a cup of coffee and a bun is 50,000 guarani. You can’t actually get guarani in the UK, so I took half a million guarani out of a hole-in-the-wall machine in Asunción to cover everyday expenses: that’s £49.55.

Many, many thanks to Francisco for inviting me, it was huge fun, I learnt a lot, many thanks to all the many warm and welcoming people I either met for the first time or renewed acquaintance with, many thanks to the many great brewers whose beers I enjoyed, hope to meet up with you all again some time soon.