Blah-blah-blah
Loo-Blah-Nah co-founder Igor Lazar says Slovenia is ready to put its own unique stamp on beer
Robyn Gilmour
Saturday 05 April 2025
This article is from
Balkans
issue 116
Share this article
“Slovenia is a small country, but it contains the influences of many others,” observes Igor Lazar, one of three co-founders of the wonderful Loo-Blah-Nah brewery. “The west is influenced by Italy, has many small wineries and people there tend to drink wines. However, central and north Slovenia has a germanic influence so this part of Slovenia is beer-drinking country. Everybody drinks both wine and beer, but what your primary drink is depends on where you live.”
Despite such regional preferences, Igor says beer doesn’t necessarily see wine as a competitor. “It has helped in a sense,” he says. “We can make comparisons, and tell people that, for example, ‘beer is like wine’. We have many different styles, in fact, we have more styles than wine. Microbreweries are like local wineries. We have the same passion and love for what we produce. Beer is similar to wine in the sense that it’s also for trying, not just getting drunk.”
When Igor says ‘we’, he’s referring to all producers and purveyors of beer, a group well represented in the Slovenian Brewers’ Association. Interestingly, this alliance is made up of microbreweries and industrial players alike. “The big breweries basically finance our association,” says Igor. “They want to be a part of it, even if they only count for one voice out of twenty, because they see that we’re making the beer market better and making beer a better beverage. This is something they might benefit from in the long run, you know, maybe they can charge more for their beer in the future if beer as a whole is treated differently in Slovenia.”
Before Heineken bought both of Slovenia’s biggest breweries, if you lived in the east of the country you drank Union, if you lived in the west you drank Laško. Since the acquisition, both brands are now brewed at Laško, but between them — and perhaps a couple of other brands — industrial beer accounts for 70% of the overall market, craft counts for 2%, and interestingly, the remaining 28% is Czech beer.
According to Igor, Czech beer is, as you would expect, of brilliant quality, but it's also very price competitive, making it hard for even local macrobreweries to compete with. As such, it has had a positive effect on beer drinking culture in Slovenia, even if that influence hasn’t manifested as an interest in producing craft lager among local brewers. Czech beer has filled that niche so thoroughly that drinkers overwhelmingly demand something different from craft producers. In that respect, hoppy beer reigns supreme.
Igor says that when Loo-Blah-Nah first started out, the three founders’ interests were actually in British styles. The brewery's first, and best beer for a long time, was its extra special bitter, which it described to consumers as an “English ale”. Igor loved it, but it became increasingly obvious over time that consumers wanted something modern and hoppy. The brewery retired its ESB last year, and replaced it with a pale ale.
Loo-Blah-Nah has been around long enough to observe the ebb and flow of the Slovenian beer market. The brewery opened in 2016, at the end of what Igor describes as the first big wave of microbrewery openings in Slovenia. That wave started with Human Fish Brewery, which is now sadly closed, then Bevog, which came on the market strong and immediately had a huge influence on beer. Following them came Pelicon, Reservoir Dogs, Maister, Mali Grad and Loo-Blah-Nah.
Breweries continued opening in unpredictable bursts until 2019, when Igor says the market really stagnated. Of course, COVID and its aftermath played a part, but since last year — the first year that things felt normal at Loo-Blah-Nah — Igor has felt like he’s ready for something new, whether that be a trend, ingredient, or style, and is wondering from what direction it will come. The only thing Igor seems sure of, is that the brewery won’t find what it’s looking for outside of Slovenia.
Loo-Blah-Nah isn’t particularly interested in export. Of course, if an opportunity arose to work with an exporter that seemed like a good fit, they would consider it, but overall its attention is focused on the domestic market and surrounding countries. “When I visit Croatia, I want to try Croatian beer, I don’t want to drink Polish beer,” says Igor. “I’m there to experience what’s local, which is also our philosophy. Why would someone want to drink Slovenian beer in France or Spain?”
His emphasis on experience, and the context in which a beer is consumed, speaks to a wider approach to beer drinking in Slovenia. Loo-Blah-Nah only cans about 25% of what it produces, while the rest goes into the HORECA — a term commonly used across mainland Europe which stands for Hotels (Ho), Restaurants (Re) and Cafes (Ca) but generally refers to any part of the wider hospitality and catering sector. Igor says that macrobreweries tend to work in the opposite ratio, selling the majority of what they produce through retail channels like supermarkets. People aren’t willing to spend what craft beer costs outside the carefully curated environment of a bar or restaurant, where a good time is almost guaranteed.
And so, with tourism and industry finally bouncing back from the effects of the pandemic, Igor and Loo-Blah-Nah seem poised and ready for visitors to charge Slovenia’s beer industry with the energy it needs to move forward, dive deeper, and firmly stamp its home country on a map of must-visit beer destinations.
Share this article
