Craft Beer in Sofia: My Favourite Bars and a Brewery Taproom

Sofia is a lager city. Sit down on any terrace and the default order is a cold half-litre of Kamenitza or Zagorka at €2 to €3.50. Craft beer lives in a short list of places: two craft bars, one brewery taproom and a shop with more than 100 beers, plus the lager hall where I start. Here's what I order at each, what a round costs and how I get between them.

Craft beer in Sofia at a glance

Bulgarian lager: what Sofia drinks before craft beer

The beer on a typical Sofia menu is pale lager from a handful of big brands, and each brand has a home town. Zagorka comes from Stara Zagora, Kamenitza from Plovdiv and Shumensko from Shumen, while Bolyarka has been brewed in Veliko Tarnovo since 1891. Pirinsko, Ariana, Astika and Burgasko fill the rest of the fridge. Their flagship beers are light, easy lagers, and a cold half-litre of Bulgarian beer is what I drink with grilled meat on a hot afternoon.

Small brewers came late. In 2011 Bulgaria had 13 large corporate breweries and about 3 microbreweries. The craft side has grown since then, with a Sofia brewery pouring its own beer in town and bars that specialise in it, but it's still small enough that I pick a particular bar when I want a craft beer. Everywhere else, the house beer is a lager.

How to order a beer in Sofia

Bulgarian bars sell beer in two sizes. A голяма (golyama, big) is a half-litre, close to a pint, and a малка (malka, small) is about a third of a litre. Add наливна (nalivna) when you want draught from the tap, and toast with наздраве (nazdrave) while you look each person in the eye. Those words and благодаря (blagodarya, thank you) are the Bulgarian phrases I use most at a bar.

The best craft beer bars in Sofia

KANAAL and Tap Local are the two craft beer bars I use. The rest of my favourite bars in Sofia pour lager, rakia, wine and cocktails, and one of them, a wooden beer hall in Zaimov Park, is where I start a craft evening.

KANAAL

KANAAL opened in 2011 at Madrid Boulevard 2, down by the canal east of the centre, and it specialises in craft beer from around the world. The draught list is good, and DJs play regularly, so the room gets louder as the night goes on. It's the bar I send beer-loving friends to before anywhere else. I go early in the evening for a glass at the bar, and later on when I want the music.

Tap Local

Tap Local is the other craft beer bar on my list, and my second stop when one bar isn't enough. I ask which of the beers on tap are Bulgarian, because a Bulgarian craft beer is the one you won't find back in Britain.

Beer House Wooden (Бирария Дървеното)

Beer House Wooden, Birariya Darvenoto in Bulgarian, is a wooden beer hall in Zaimov Park, east of the centre on Yanko Sakazov Boulevard. It pours Kamenitza, serves kebapche (grilled sausages of spiced minced meat) among its Bulgarian dishes and has seats inside and out. I drink the lager here before any craft beer, and Zaimov Park is one of the quieter parks in Sofia for an evening drink.

The brewery taproom in Sofia

Sofia Electric Brewing

Sofia Electric Brewing brews its beer out at ul. Industrialna 11 in Hadzhi Dimitar and pours it in town, at its taproom on ul. Vrabcha 24. That's the street where the Sofia Opera has its main entrance, so the taproom is right in the centre. It opens from 5pm to 1am every day, which makes it my last stop of the night as often as my first.

The tap list changes. When I last checked what's pouring, it ran from July Morning, a 4.4% lager at €3 or €4, through a pale ale, an American IPA and three hazy New England IPAs to a 10% imperial stout. Most beers have two prices on the list, one for each glass size, and the dearest glass was €7.50 for Electric Beer, a 7% double IPA. I start with the lowest strength and work up.

Dogs and children are welcome as long as they don't bother anyone, and the fridge holds cans and bottles of the brewery's beer to take away. On the first Thursday of every month the taproom runs Vitamin B, a quiz night, and that's the one evening I get there early for a seat.

Where to buy craft beer in Sofia

100 Beers

100 Beers is a shop at ul. Yuriy Venelin 1, in the centre, with more than 100 beers from around the world, and it sells online too. It opens from 10am to 10pm on weekdays and 10am to 8pm at weekends, and a 330ml Mikkeller Peach Out costs €2.89. I look through the 100 Beers range on my phone before I go, so I walk in knowing what I want, and it's where I buy bottles to take back to Britain.

For scale, a supermarket sells a half-litre bottle of Bulgarian lager for about €1. Bottles travel less well than most Bulgarian souvenirs, so I wrap each one in a jumper.

How much does a craft beer cost in Sofia?

For a craft bar with no prices online I budget about €4 a beer, the city average for an imported 0.33 litre bottle, and a Bulgarian lager costs about half that in a plain local bar.

I worked the pounds out at £1 = €1.19983, the rate on 2 November 2026. Most craft pours here cost less than a London pint, and the Sofia prices for food are just as kind, with a casual lunch at €8 to €10.

At the bar I round up, and for table service I leave about 10%, the usual rate for tipping in Bulgaria at a sit-down meal.

Getting to Sofia's craft beer bars

The taproom and 100 Beers are in the centre, while KANAAL and Zaimov Park sit to the east of it. Sofia's metro, trams and buses run on one fare, and the simplest ticket for getting around Sofia is the bank card in your wallet. Tap it on the metro barrier or the validator inside a tram or bus and you pay €0.80, with free changes for 30 minutes. Tap again in every vehicle you board, because inspectors check the trams and buses. The metro runs from about 5am to midnight, early enough for the start of an evening.

After midnight I take a taxi. A metered taxi in Sofia from a typical firm costs €1.50 to start and €0.75 a km by day, rising to €1.70 and €0.85 a km between 10pm and 6am, and most rides around the centre come to €4 to €6. Uber doesn't operate in Sofia, and the local apps call licensed, metered cabs from the city's own firms.

My craft beer evening in Sofia

When friends who like beer visit on a Thursday, Friday or Saturday, I start in Zaimov Park around 6pm with a half-litre of Kamenitza at Beer House Wooden, and a plate of kebapche if we're hungry. Anyone who'd rather have a rakia, the grape or plum spirit Bulgarians sip before dinner and the first of the Bulgarian drinks I'd try, walks over to Raketa, a rakia bar on Yanko Sakazov Boulevard beside the park.

Then KANAAL for the craft part of the night: two rounds from the draught list while it's still quiet enough to talk. Anyone who has had enough beer by then goes to one of the cocktail bars in Sofia instead.

Around 10pm we take a taxi into the centre for the last rounds at the Sofia Electric Brewing taproom, which pours until 1am every night. If the group still wants another bar, Tap Local is my other craft option, and the nightlife in Sofia carries on around Vitosha Boulevard well past midnight. On the first Thursday of the month I flip the order and go to the taproom first, for the quiz.

If your trip includes a night in Plovdiv, its Kapana quarter, a few pedestrian blocks of cafes and bars about 10 minutes' walk below the Old Town, is where I'd go for a beer.