What Beers to drink on my Caribbean Cruise

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Mirilis

Mirilis

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So I am sailing out Saturday for a 7 day cruise. Stops include St. Marteen, Half Moon Cay, San Jose, and Grand Turk..

Are there any good beers there or any places to find good beer? Im down for cheap drinks too at other places! I have never been on a cruise so I dont know what to expect.

:mug:
 
Good luck finding good beer on a cruise ship. Been on 2 Royal Caribbean cruises and about the best you will get is Becks or Heineken. Hopefully that's changed for you. I lived on Capt. Morgan for 10 days the last time!


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Last couple cruises I went on incl royal Caribbean had a nice selection of beer at one location with a large list of domestic and import beers including IPAs, Belgians, and plenty of yellow fizzy stuff too. This was a British themed pub on the main thoroughfare through the ship on a royal Caribbean cruise.

Other than that, you might be in fizzy yellow beer drinkers paradise! Have occasionally seen sam Adams, NewCastle, SNPA and bass making appearances.


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TrickyDick said:
Last couple cruises I went on incl royal Caribbean had a nice selection of beer at one location with a large list of domestic and import beers including IPAs, Belgians, and plenty of yellow fizzy stuff too. This was a British themed pub on the main thoroughfare through the ship on a royal Caribbean cruise.

Other than that, you might be in fizzy yellow beer drinkers paradise! Have occasionally seen sam Adams, NewCastle, SNPA and bass making appearances.


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Classic avatar haha
 
yeah i would just see what they are serving and go from there..if they only have american/mexican lagers i would drink vodka
 
Get used to drinking cocktails mostly :) The Caribbean is really limited with beer styles. Most stuff you'll find is cerveza lighter styled lagers like Carib, Corona, Amstel Bright, etc. Then you'll have a just a few more traditional pilsner/lager styles like Presidente, Red Stripe, Heineken, etc.

That said, Saint Martin/Sint Maarten is one of my wife and I's favorite places to go. We've been there 9-10 times already. Found it on a cruise and have been flying there direct ever since. There, Hawaii, and Europe (mainly Germany & Venice) are our top favorite places in the world. When you go to Saint Martin on the cruise leave the ship the moment you can in the morning and go to Orient Bay. Just such a great place where you can eat and drink right on the beach, smoke if you want, or even go nude (full on nude there's a separate nudist side at the end of the beach). There are so many great beach bar/restaurants will all kinds of different foods. Just watch out for Waikiki Beach (restaurant). Excellent food, very cool place but their prices are miles above any other restaurant on the beach.

Also, on Saint Martin you can occasionally find some belgian beers on tap such as Hoegaarden and Lefe Blonde, but these days we see less and less of those beers for some reason.

Sorry for the long post :eek:


Rev.
 
Read an article in beeradvocate (?) magazine that I picked up on my trip asheville and it talked about Mexico starting to get into craft beers and that one called day of the dead was making stuff different than all the fizzy yellow stuff.

Oh yeah, Victoria, and Leon are two decent Mexican non corona beers to try if you can find.

TD


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My guess is selection will be pretty grim on the boat and on the land.

You could always bring your own. Check the policy my FIL frequently brings wine on cruises not sure why beer wouldn't be allowed. A keg of homebrew might be pushing it though.
 
What cruise line? If Carnival I can recommend the Red Frog from the Red Frog Rum bar on the boat. It's somewhat crafty (using that term loosely) and ends up being cheaper than BMC on the boat
 
eric19312 said:
You could always bring your own. Check the policy my FIL frequently brings wine on cruises not sure why beer wouldn't be allowed. A keg of homebrew might be pushing it though.
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That would depend on the cruise line. I know most of the major one's do not allow you to bring aboard your own liquor cause they want you to buy theirs. Even when we picked up liquor on the islands upon re-boarding they take it from you and lock it up in cages and give you a retrieval slip. At least that's how it was on Royal Caribbean.


Rev.
 
I drank whatever was local on land on the cruise to the Caribbean. Drinking on the boat is super pricey. There's a national brewery there, I think its called Sands or something like that and they basically make a super light BMC clone.
 
Turk head amber in Grand Turk was the best local beer of the trip. Not anything special just better than a BCM. When you're in Sint Maarten try the guavaberry rum. Its made right on the island and is fantastic. If you like it bring some back as they don't/wont ship it to the states.
 
Check your homebrew sensibility at the door after you cross over the gangway. Even at some of the better bars at night, I don't recall ever seeing anything resembling craft beer on the eastern Caribbean Carnival cruise we took ~ 5 years ago.

That said I have so far resisted becoming a beer snob (its hard, trust me!), so drinking Coronas and Coors Lites suited me just fine. Had a blast going out to bars with people that sat at our dinner table. One guy was a train engineer from OK that was a carbon copy of Larry the Cable Guy. One was an ice cream salesman from down south and looked the bill. And the other was a couple from Michigan, so we had a great cross section of this country.

Just be prepared for your alcohol bill to rival the bill you paid to get on the boat. When we got it, I told the lady this can't be right? Then she showed me the itemized bill...Oh my liver!
 
Carnival now carries a couple of Cigar City beers.

Disney allows you to bring as much beer on board as you can fit in your carry-on luggage. We did a beer tasting and exchange during my recent Bahamian cruise.
 
I enjoyed Balashi brewed in Aruba, I was told used the Heineken recipe because they are part of Holland. I am not a Heineken fan at all, this was different and refreshing.

I also enjoyed Presidente from the Dominican Republic.. This had an sulfur lingering mounth taste that was plesent...

Red strip good beer as well........
All of them lagers however
 
In the caribbean they usaly have a good bit of Guinesse Foreign Stout around which is good. There are also a few local extra stouts in some places. Red Stripe Bold is also pretty good if you can find it.

Try as much aged rum as you can. I really got a good appreciation for it in Barbados.
 
ChemistBrewer said:
In the caribbean they usaly have a good bit of Guinesse Foreign Stout around which is good. There are also a few local extra stouts in some places. Red Stripe Bold is also pretty good if you can find it.

Try as much aged rum as you can. I really got a good appreciation for it in Barbados.
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There is a lot of awesome aged rums. I will not stray anymore then this from the beer question
 
On your first stop buy some hard liquor and sneak it on the boat. Security seems to never care. Worst case scenario is they take it from you until the cruise is over. There you go, cheap drinking and not the watered down mixed drinks they give you on the ship. Like someone said, if the ship has a British pub restaurant go there for beer. As far as the stops, ask around to see what they have that is local and you will probably be surprised. Plenty of lagers and foreign stouts down there.
 
Bensiff said:
On your first stop buy some hard liquor and sneak it on the boat. Security seems to never care. Worst case scenario is they take it from you until the cruise is over. There you go, cheap drinking and not the watered down mixed drinks they give you on the ship. Like someone said, if the ship has a British pub restaurant go there for beer. As far as the stops, ask around to see what they have that is local and you will probably be surprised. Plenty of lagers and foreign stouts down there.
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You can also smuggle the booze on in another bottle - get a large bottle of water, drink that during the day and refill with white rum (or vodka, but you're in the Caribbean, get some cheap and tasty Tortuga!). You can do this with a few iced tea bottles with wood aged liquor (rum, whisky, et cetera).
 
TrickyDick said:
Last couple cruises I went on incl royal Caribbean had a nice selection of beer at one location with a large list of domestic and import beers including IPAs, Belgians, and plenty of yellow fizzy stuff too. This was a British themed pub on the main thoroughfare through the ship on a royal Caribbean cruise.

Other than that, you might be in fizzy yellow beer drinkers paradise! Have occasionally seen sam Adams, NewCastle, SNPA and bass making appearances.


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Click to expand...

Like the hoof and claw or something like that?
I was on that ship a few years back... nice one!
 
We did a Holland America cruise in Canada in July and they had a surprising amount of beer on the boat. The best part is it was a lot of older people so we had pretty close to free reign of the bars!
 
blaster_54738 said:
We did a Holland America cruise in Canada in July and they had a surprising amount of beer on the boat. The best part is it was a lot of older people so we had pretty close to free reign of the bars!
Click to expand...


We did a HA on our honeymoon. You aren't kidding that that is the old people cruise. They all looked at us funny, worried we were going to be loud drunks I think. When they realized we were quiet drunks and didn't bother anyone they all started liking us, by the time we left the ship everyone knew us. Or at least my wife looks good in a formal dress and all the old men enjoyed ogling her and simply learned to associate me :). Anyway it was an awesome cruise, the beer sucked though, glad to hear it has gotten better.
 
Cruises and tropical vacations are the excuse to drink cocktails with umbrellas, cocktails that are bright pink or blue or that have fruits adorning them.

If they have good beer, all the better, but a Mai Tai ain't bad, or a good Rum Punch. Enjoy.
 
Best beer I've had in the Caribbean was Guiness Foreign Extra.

Spent a week in Jamaica - Red Stripe truly sucks. It was 5 years ago and I still haven't had a Red Stripe or any Appleton rum. Jamaica is beautiful, but in a lot of ways it sucks. Food especially sucks.
 
Well I found Old Harbor Brewery in Puerto Rico.. Helles, pale ale, and stoutnarent bad. I didn't care for their Oktoberfest and German pils.
 

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