For us at Departful, beer and travel have always been inseparable. Like an intrepid food writer who unwaveringly hunts down the best dishes for an insight into the local culture, we focus on exploring a country’s beer scene to sneak a peak into both its past and present. While Departful casts a wide net featuring our travel experiences from around the globe, we created Prostly to exclusively tell the stories of beer that we’ve gathered over the years, from continent to continent.

Prostly’s latest edition focuses on the delicate balance of tradition and innovation. Increasingly often it’s made to seem like there’s a war playing out in beer – the traditional, larger breweries versus the independent microbreweries, usually wrapped up in a ‘David and Goliath’ stereotype. But this kind of ‘good versus evil’ thinking can be damaging and divisive. At Prostly, we’re all for there being a space for both the traditional and the innovative, which we make the case for in our editorial.

First we stop in the Lithuanian capital, where resident local Šarūnas outlines the top beer spots in Vilnius. While the city is in the throes of a craft beer movement, there’s still a place and appreciation for the local farmhouse ales that have been pivotal to Lithuania’s beer scene for generations.

In a piece on Mexico’s beer scene we highlight this divide in action, and after traveling the country trying as many beers as possible, Lauren concludes that there’s a time and place for both. Lending support for Mexico’s reigning Pilsner, the quote “who the fuck wants to drink a bourbon barrel-aged Imperial Stout on the beach?” perhaps best encapsulates the tone of the article.

German expat Shay writes about the time he skipped his language class to have a beer at the classic Bönnsch Brauhaus in Bonn. While he might’ve missed out on that week’s lesson, he did get a unique education from the locals he befriended at the uber traditional beer house.

Finally, we get some expert tips from our resident beer guru Aynsley on how best to pick beers abroad and bring them home with you for maximum enjoyment (and spillage avoidance).

Prostly is an edition based online magazine, published monthly. You can get each issue of Prostly in your inbox by subscribing to our newsletter and you can follow along on Instagram @prostlymagazine. We are a collaborative community of beer loving content creators at Prostly so if you’re a brewer, beer writer or plain old beer enthusiast, we’d love to connect with you.

Prost!

Header artwork by Ana Estrada.