Beer lover’s nirvana, with Ermita sensibilities and European standards, opens in BGC

There’s probably only one place in Metro Manila where you can find smoked beer (Håkan Hard Smoked Malt Rauch Bier), a beer made of organically-grown beets (Redhead), and — if you’re lucky and happen to drop by when the owner’s wife is in the mood to make it — beer-inflected fondue.

In addition to Håkan and Redhead, the same place also has 20+ more originally-crafted beers on draught, all of which can be drunk on the premises, or brought home in a mason jar (with a deposit of PHP150).

It harkens back to the days when mommas and poppas could tell their children to go downstairs and get ’em a pail of ale. Like all proper pubs allowed way back when.

This proper pub goes by the name Tap Station, and what a welcome addition to the Burgos Circle community it is. You come in, choose what kind of beer and glass you want, drink, and enjoy.

Light drinkers can order the Easy Bright (a light, citrusy IPA) or Hard Day (a blonde ale); hardier drinkers can try the Rustic Trip or Shut Up (a stronger, hoppier IPA) or Black Bitch (a stout); and those who like deeper, more rounded flavors should go for Flame Out, another IPA.

All are four percent ABV and above. Each pint goes from PHP175 to PHP295.

Trivia: many argue that IPA — or India Pale Ale — is what beer should really taste like, not the swill most of us are used to. The IPA is named so because the British — among the greatest beer drinkers in the world — had to devise a way to bring over their beer to India and their other colonial territories. To make it last, they added more hops to their brew. Hence, IPA flavors range from being sharp and tangy to downright bitter.

Tap Station BGC
“With opening Tap Station here, we wanted to try to another type of (audience). I’ve seen how the love of craft beer (is growing). And the traffic jams! You don’t want to be stuck. You want to be in some place where you can just walk to nearby. So I’m thinking maybe, this should be the right area to hang out because of my beers,” says Tap Station’s co-owner. PHOTO: Jose Enrique Soriano 

For food, there are Grandma’s Egg Wanapes (canapés with waffle beds, ranging from savory to sweet, PHP65 each), toast rounds with assorted toppings, the aforementioned fondue, and (at least on the day we visited), a sausage and shrimp platter.

Sometimes you’ll see a little, fair-haired boy of 10 on his iPad at the bar (he’s the owners’ son). Sometimes, you’ll see the owner’s wife testing dishes out in the open. Sometimes, the waitresses will display a friendly roughness and brazenness unheard of in waitstaff in that part of town.

It’s organic and refreshing and buoyant, and totally unpretentious, echoing Tap Station’s origins in Ermita, Manila.

Owned by husband and wife team Swede Morgan Kallfejord and his Filipina wife Rose, the first Tap Station was born in Adriatico Street in July 2015.

“He got tired of the few choices, so we went abroad for the purpose of importing, but we went around Europe and found so many places that had breweries inside the pubs,” says Rose, “so that’s where Morgan got the inspiration to do this.”

“Yeah that’s true. I was disappointed with (the choices),” admits Morgan. Also part-owner of G-Point, a phenomenally successful restaurant and pub on Padre Faura Street, Ermita, he was thinking of ways to infuse new ideas and concepts to the 15-year old gastropub.

“I wanted to offer the people something different. When I was young, I brewed my own beer and also made my own wine. Not everyone liked it, but I said maybe I should do it again, so we went to Europe and took a trip to Germany and these classic places.”

As it so happened, craft brewing was picking up in Sweden, “and so we took up a course, that’s how everything started.” So Morgan and Rose trained in Sweden for a full three months, and came back to the Philippines to teach their longtime employee-now-brewmaster, Rose Duran, the tricks of the trade.

At first, the spoilage would reach up to 1,000 liters, amounting up to PHP20,000 to PHP30,000 a batch, according to Rose Kallfejord. That was in 2012, and it took Rose Duran a year before Morgan felt she got it right.

“Maraming error, tapon, kasi sensitive masyado ang beer sa temperature, contamination, kelangan laging naka-sterilize,” Duran says. Now, production has normalized, and the brewery in Tagaytay produces around 1,000 viable liters a week.

 (“There were a lot of errors, wastage, because beer is very sensitive to temperature, contamination, the environment should always be kept sterilized.”)

Morgan Kallfejord
Morgan, who co-owns the BGC bar with his wife Rose, here with their 8-year-old son. PHOTO: Jose Enrique Soriano

Aside from the two Tap Stations, their beers go to ten other bars in Metro Manila.

Rose Duran is hands-on with the brewing; Morgan just hands her the recipe and lets her run with it. The hardest to brew, according to Rose Duran, is Redhead, “Dahil ‘yon ang organic.” (“Because it’s organic”).

Made of sugar beets, the red-tinted color of the beer is natural, and “siempre dahil sa ilang kilos ginagamit namin at step by step. Kasi hand crafted na e. Gawa kamay lang talaga, pagbalat, pag slice, pag grind…imagine mo!”

(“Because it’s organic. We use kilos of it, every step is done by hand. The peeling, slicing, the grinding…you can just imagine!”)   

When it’s tasting time, Morgan steps in. He takes a pitcher, locks himself in his room or finds a quiet place, and discerns if the beer has that x-factor. If it doesn’t, he tries to find out how to tweak it to make it better — or chucks it out altogether.

Morgan doesn’t have any favorites, though. He says it depends on his mood. He’s partial to the new ones, Flame Out and Håkan, and sometimes Shut Up, but “it’s hard to say. Like one day when it was hot and we were still fixing (Tap Station BGC), I drank Manila Hipster and I don’t like Manila Hipster — but that day, it was so refreshing!”

Manila Hipster is a fruity, cloying, pineapple-based beer. “All of us need some kind of introduction to new things. Same thing with IPAs for me. For so many years, I was used to lager.” he says, in his drawling Swedish accent. “We have to get used to things.”

“When I was young, there were eight breweries in Sweden. Today there are over 200,” he says. “In the Philippines it will be the same. It will grow. I’m sure about that. There are two breweries now — San Miguel and Asia Brewery. Maybe in five years, there will be more, many more. And look at the many places (serving craft beer), there’s so much competition. They’re stealing from the big guys. They’re not taking from each other. And they’re (encouraging) people to drink craft beer. This is a learning process.”

With places like Tap Station and the rise in the popularity of craft beers, Morgan is confident the Filipino beer drinker will be more open to newer flavor experiences and broaden not only his palate, but the desire to learn more about beer and its many, many wonderful facets.

Tap Station BGC is located in Forbes Town Center, Bonifacio Global City, Taguig. Tap Station Ermita is located at 1313 Adriatico Street, Ermita, Manila.




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