It’s called Bah! Craft Beer and is one of the few craft beer brands based in Cascais. Founded a handful of years ago by Brazilian brewer Roberto Stein, it’s about to launch a new drink – OYÁ, in collaboration with local kombucha brand Homelab – and open a space in town.
On a Thursday morning, we find Roberto Stein at the HopSin craft beer bar and brewery in Colares, Sintra. He’s overseeing the production of the first batch of OYÁ, his first alcohol-free beer. Alongside him are HopSin’s master brewers, carefully managing the process and filling the beer into barrels before it goes into cans. “The beer is photosensitive,” Roberto explains, “so the advantage of cans over bottles is precisely the preservation and protection from light”.
"The market started asking for lower-alcohol beers. The trend is real – young people are drinking less, and so are older folks. Health is becoming a concern", Roberto tells Time Out Cascais, explaining why he decided to go for an alcohol-free beer, which turned out to be a big challenge.
"I’m part of a study group with other brewers. We bought loads of alcohol-free beers and tried them, but it’s different… Without full fermentation, they’re sensorially different, lacking the structure to support what goes into them. We talked a lot, I did research, read a lot – and then I tasted a Spanish sour beer made with fruit, and I knew: this is what I want to make".
Roberto Stein and his Bah! Craft Beer had already won the Ale category at the 2023 National Home and Craft Beer Competition with their Catharina Sour Maracujá (€3). This year, he was recognised again at the same competition with the Gose Passion Sour, which will be hitting the market soon. It was through his experience making fruit beers that he came up with the recipe for OYÁ, named after a deity in Afro-Brazilian popular culture.
He teamed up with Homelab, experienced in the non-alcoholic drinks market, for a partnership that is just starting to bear fruit. The passionfruit beer hasn’t officially launched yet, but some venues that stock Bah! Craft Beer are already receiving cans from this first batch – which, as always, serves as a test run for minor tweaks ahead of the next production.
This is the latest news from Bah! Craft Beer, but it all started around 15 years ago, when the craft beer culture really took off in southern Brazil, where Roberto Stein was living with his family. He ran a kitchenware shop and suddenly, many customers were buying huge pots to brew large batches. They explained they were making homebrew, and Roberto started chatting with them about it. “I realised there was a business opportunity and developed a beer-making kit, which I sold in the shop”.
To deepen his knowledge, he took a brewer’s course. Soon he was experimenting with making his own beer. “In southern Brazil we have lots of barbecues, so we made beer for our own consumption”, he explains.
The decision to move to Portugal came suddenly, after Roberto and his wife travelled here on holiday in 2017. “We fell in love”, the Brazilian says. “We have two daughters, and we thought, why not move the family to Portugal? We had European passports – my grandfather was born in Poland, and my wife and daughters have Italian passports – so we started planning the move”.
While Roberto’s wife, a psychoanalyst, was figuring out what she’d need to do to practise in Portugal, Roberto decided to throw himself entirely into beer. “I took a sommelier course, a fermentation course, a yeast course, visited brewery after brewery, and worked for free for about three months in a brewpub – all before moving to Portugal, already with this goal in mind”.
They moved in October 2018. Just a few months later, in 2019, Bah! Craft Beer was born. “‘Bah’ is a southern Brazilian expression, short for ‘barbaridade’ – us Gaúchos cut words a lot. We use ‘bah’ like you’d say ‘wow’, as an exclamation”, Roberto explains.
In Portugal, he explored the craft beer scene, attending events, meeting other brewers and immersing himself in the community. “I bought a small setup and started brewing in the garage, really homemade, in Estoril. I’d pour it into a barrel and started getting more professional, learning how to work with pressure, because before it was just in bottles. I started selling at fairs – the first one I joined was at Casa da Guia, in the space that’s now Palaphita”.
The first beer he created was his take on an APA (€3), an American Pale Ale. He quickly realised that, now 59, he didn’t want to run a brewery or manage the entire production process. Instead, Roberto Stein partners with breweries to execute his recipes – while he oversees every step, as we saw on the day we visited him at HopSin.
Meanwhile, he rents a cold storage unit in Sintra, where he keeps his beer stock – a crucial step to maintain quality, especially for unpasteurised craft beer. “Then I go there little by little, like an ant, taking stock to put on the market”.
Today, Bah! Craft Beer sells its beers directly to the public via its official website and at events, but it also has over 80 client venues – restaurants, bars and cafés in Cascais, Lisbon and Porto – that stock the brand’s specialties.
Among them are the IPA (€3), NEIPA (€4.50), Red IPA (€3.50), American Blonde (€2.75), Outmeal Stout (€3) and Session IPA (€4.50), sold in a can celebrating Cascais, featuring the Santa Marta Lighthouse against the sunset. “It’s a beer with the bitterness of an IPA but very light in alcohol”, Roberto explains. A six-bottle pack with a bottle opener costs €19, while a monthly subscription is currently available for €35.
The future is looking bright in Cascais. In partnership with a local restaurant, Bah! Craft Beer is preparing to open a new spot in town, continuing its story of craft brewing in Cascais.