A new microbrewery at One Indiabulls, Lower Parel, in Mumbai, has become the latest to stand in line—to become the city’s first to produce craft beer. As reported in Hunger Games before , there already are two companies, Gateway Brewing Company (with a production unit in Dombivli outside the city limits) and Seven Islands Craft Brewery (with a bar The Barking Deer in Lower Parel), which have been waiting for the last several months to start producing their own beer.

Started by young entrepreneurs Javed Murad and Kunjan Chikhlikar, The White Owl started off with a rumbustious opening party a couple of weeks ago. The place is designed to draw contrast—the plushness of the Indiabulls glass facade versus the grungy, garage look of the Owl. The shiny new barrels that will one day hold frothy liquid stand forlorn behind glass walls, waiting for the final paper work to come through from whichever governmental agency it’s been stuck with. The same story repeats with the other two companies as well, who are ready and raring to go but for that stamp of approval. The Barking Deer and The White Owl currently do serve alcohol but not their own.

What makes it so difficult for Mumbai, generally considered among India’s more progressive, entrepreneurial and wealthy cities, to start something as simple as a brewery? The boring and accurate answer is unfriendly legislation and high costs; but it’s also perhaps a lack of geeky coolness.

On a visit last month to Bangalore, thanks to friends and family, I found my way to two local breweries, Windmills Craftworks in Whitefield and Arbor Brewing Company on Magrath Road (This link would be most useful for visitors to Bangalore).

For someone from Mumbai, both places stand out in terms of the amount of space available. Arbor is particularly long—it has carom boards, an additional bar on one corner, a fussball table, outdoor seating etc. and a younger clientele. Windmills is uniquely designed—all seating is in the form of sofas facing a stage at the far end which holds musical performances. Surrounding the stage is a library with bound copies of the Reader’s Digest. The beverage prices are surprisingly the same as in Mumbai, which usually has the excuse of high rents as justification, and the crowd is older, perhaps better dressed.

Neither of these two places had any particular dress codes though—some people were in shorts, some particularly well dressed and others in Bangalore-wear, which is floaters and the office ID badge hanging from the shirt collar.

I tried the Phat Abbot Tripel at Arbor and the local interpretation of the German wheat beer, Hefeweizen, at Windmills—both sufficiently enjoyable brews and at over ₹ 200 each, not cheap. Arbor had a practised but casual ease to its ambience, Windmills a more pretentious, oh-I-am-so-chic feel. But neither looked impossible to achieve or replicate in Mumbai.

This city right now seems to accept fine dining restaurants—Nido and Mamagoto opened in Bandra recently, Ping Pong will come soon in BKC, so many exist already—but nightclubs and bars have not had it easy. Hype in Worli is the latest nightclub to shut down after a relatively short run—this despite the city having a friendlier police deadline compared to Bangalore. Will the microbreweries change the way the city parties, if ever they open? We are thirsting to find out.

Postscript: Why have so many recently started bars in the city been named after animals/birds? The Barking Deer, The White Own, The Lazy Dog, 3 Wise Monkeys, (the older) blueFROG …

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