Despite recent advances, craft beer in Split still doesn’t pay. Of Tap B’s four founders, only one, Stipe Tabak, works at the brewery full-time. The others—Paštar, Dario Pelivan, and Goran Boban—have second jobs as an IT specialist, a sales manager for an Italian company, and a sailor, respectively. The same is true for Anđelić, who still works part-time as a recruitment manager for Croatian seafarers. Our conversation is punctured by a high-pitched siren: it marks the end of the shift at the local shipyard.

You could compare building a beer scene in a city like Split to laying the foundations for a high-rise on a sand dune. It’s difficult to brew for an audience that is half-absent, to establish yourself in a place that functions according to such stark seasonal population shifts. In the winter, the bora wind tears down the mountains, and EasyJet cancels its direct routes from the U.K. In the summer, the city is overrun.

“Talking in general, what most of my friends think about it [is] that part of their city has been stolen from them,” Anđelić says in reference to Split’s teeming high season.

For him, however, tourism is complex: if better managed, it could help the city. For now, it’s both a point of contention and a lifeline for local brewers. As Maleš jokes over lunch, brewers aside, Split has only five beer geeks of its own. They could use back-up.