Macedonian Beer: Skopsko and Zlaten Dab in a Land of Wine and Rakija
One day in Skopje we spent the whole time with our eyes on the sky: storm after storm piled up over the city in the heat, and we kept dashing between shelters. That evening, three cans from the supermarket stood on the table in our room - silver Skopsko Smooth, green Zlaten Dab and orange Zlaten Dab Amber - and that was pretty much the entire Macedonian beer market in one place.
In practice, Macedonian beer means two brands: Skopsko (Macedonian: Скопско) from the capital and Zlaten Dab (Златен даб) from Prilep, pale lagers at around 4.5% ABV that show up on the table in Macedonian cuisine more often than wine or rakija. Skopsko alone holds roughly two thirds of the market, so when someone in Macedonia says "beer," they usually mean this one.
What Skopsko Means and Who Owns It Today
Even a tourist without a dictionary can translate both names: Skopsko simply means "of Skopje," and zlaten dab means golden oak. Only the names are transparent, though - the owners much less so. Pivara Skopje, which brews Skopsko, has been 96.5% owned by Heineken and Coca-Cola HBC since 2011 - both groups bought their first stakes back in the nineties - and the same site today bottles both Coca-Cola and pear gazoza. It's the same story across the Balkans: Heineken also brews for Greece and Serbia, and one of the few exceptions is Albania's Birra Tirana, which has stayed in private hands.
Czech Engineers in Skopje, Three Brothers in Prilep
The first beer was brewed in Skopje in August 1924 to a Czech recipe - and the company that brewed it had been founded two years earlier by Czechs: engineer Viktor Cajz and banker Karel Husnik bought a plot of land by the railway in 1922 and put three million dinars into the venture, a sum that grew to nine million by the time production started. Macedonian sources spell both names differently, and I couldn't find a Czech source for them, so I'm going with the story the way Skopje tells it. The brewery itself still claims it brews to the same recipe and brings its barley from Czechia; Bulgaria's Šumensko has a similar birth certificate, having been co-founded forty years earlier by a Czech brewmaster. Prilep got its brewery the same year, 1924, but from the three Grdanov brothers, who had previously traded in shoes; the Zlaten Dab brand, under which their beer is known across the country today, is actually three quarters of a century younger than the company.
Does Beer or Rakija Come Out on Top?
The world knows North Macedonia through Tikveš wine and rakija, so I expected beer to come in a distant second. The statistics say the opposite: beer is the country's number one alcoholic drink - according to WHO data cited by the Macedonian press, it makes up half of all alcohol consumed, wine two fifths and spirits the rest. Yet it leads in a country that drinks little: 5.7 liters of pure alcohol per head a year is under half the Serbian or Montenegrin average, and while the Macedonian statistics office counts 12.5 liters of beer per adult a year, the Czech brewing association counts 126 liters per head - the metrics don't line up exactly, but the order of magnitude does. Rakija has its moment before the meal, with meze; wine goes with the food; beer turns up with skara, meaning grilled meat - at least everywhere I sat down to eat.
I drank Skopsko on tap in Skopje at the inn Gostilnica Nadžak (see Where to Eat in Skopje), where we ate most often - with grilled liver and šarska pleskavica. It was cold, light, and gone in the heat before I could properly judge it. A third of a liter cost 140 MKD (2.30 EUR), a draft half-liter 180 MKD (3 EUR). A can of Skopsko Smooth from the supermarket, the one from the stormy evening, came to 47 MKD (0.80 EUR).
Beer simply comes out on top in Macedonia - in a country that drinks little, and with a recipe the Czechs brought along to boot.
