Craft beer in Croatia: Pulfer Brewery

Published: March 4, 2025

From PriMarius craft pivovara our brewery tour in Zagreb continued to Pulfer Brewery, a wonderful, innovative microbrewery based in Zagreb. Pulfer is an internationally well-known artisan brewery, especially famous for their delicious Smoothie Sours and IPAs, as well as their artistic label designs.

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From learning in a garage to founding a brewery

Pulfer was born out of love for good beer and founded by four friends, who basically decided to found a brewery before knowing much anything about brewing. To change that, they started small-scale home-brewing in a garage first, learning about the art of beer-making and developing recipes.

Pulfer was first established as a gypsy brewery in 2016, and in 2019 it was time to build their own brewery in Zagreb. Pulfer started with just four different beers – at first they focused mostly on IPAs, but later started to brewing artisan beers in a great variety of styles. At some point they experimented a lot with Saisons, a style that was not really known yet in Croatia, and gained a reputation as a creative and experimental brewery.

The name and logo Pulfer comes for a word that means the platform / part that is used for connecting tram carriages. On the last carriage of a tram, the platform allowed brave “pulferistas” to ride outside the carriage without a ticket. This action is a minor violation of traffic laws of course, and the free-riders were in danger of falling and also by being punished by the militia, but they still proudly did it. This is how “pulfering” became a symbol of positive rebellion and inexhaustible energy. As a craft brewery, Pulfer channel these attributes to the creation of different, exciting artisan beers.

“As proud representatives of the independent Croatian beer scene, we have been committed to our mission of providing top-quality beer, made from the highest quality raw materials, while developing a professional and educational relationship with our business partners and the communities we help create and develop.”

From Croatia to the international market

Pulfer is a well-known brand for beer lovers around Europe, but the brewery is still relatively small. In the current location in Zitnjak, eastern Zagreb, the small crew brewers with a 10 hl brewhouse, with 160 hl fermenting capacity. In 2024 total production was roughly 200 000 liters. At some point in the future the plan is to move to larger premises and expand the production capacity.

Since the beginning, Pulfer team has brewed such craft beers that they want to drink themselves. This means, that the brewery is a bit “ahead of its time” in Croatia, as the local crowd is only slowly warming up to new beer styles like Smoothie Sours for example. This was one reason to focus on international sales, and nowadays roughly half of the production is exported to other European countries.

Pulfer Brewery released the first super fruity Smoothie Sours in 2021, and since then these thick and juicy beers have captivated beer enthusiasts all over Europe. During the past five years, Pulfer has grown into an internationally recognizable beer brand, and beer geeks around Europe look forward to getting their hands on the new releases of Pulfer’s special craft beers.

Pulfer packs their beers in kegs, bottles and cans. Bottles are used for the core series of more traditional beer styles, that are sold in supermarkets in addition to pubs and restaurants. Most of the special beers are packed in cans, and are available in bottle shops and craft beer pubs.

Pulfer Brewery crew trusts that the appearance of the beers is an important factor in creating a brand and standing out. And just take a look at their cans, they are stunning! In the beginning the team designed the labels themselves, but soon outsourced the artistic work. They do still provide ideas about the label graphics, and a design studio called Yan Kamov Graphic Design then does the artwork.

Pulfer has different themes in their labels for different kinds of beers, like monstrous storms and mythical creatures and legends for New England Pale Ales and IPAs and dad jokes for the Smoothiesh series. The Smoothiesh beers are released two at a time, with a joke, that includes a question, in one and the answer in another, like for example “What did the sushi say to the bee?” and “Wasabee!”. Then there is also for example a West Coast lager series inspired by West Coast American bands and their songs, and the Hot Cakes -series of fruity cheesecake Pastry Sours.

Tasting Pulfer Brewery craft beers

Pulfer keeps releasing new beers almost weekly, and their range is very impressive. Pulfer has a core series of five classic beers that have been on the market for several years; Ziher Pale Ale, Landsky Session IPA, Lagerica Munich Helles and Boranka Stout. The special assortment includes a more bold and innovative beers, especially lot of IPAs in different styles, but also for example fruited Saisons, Hefeweizens and barrel-aged Imperial Stouts.

“Developing the assortment is one of our most complex processes, but at the same time the most creative and exciting. The constant production of new styles and special assortment with which we delight our consumers month after month is a specificity we insist on. With new styles, we push our own boundaries, but also those of the market itself.”

Below you can see four Pulfer craft beers in different styles, two from the core series and two special beers released in 2024 – jump from the pictures or links to beer cards with more information about each beer and our tasting notes. In addition to these we loved for example the Give It To Me Baby West Coast Lager and Veridian Hailstorm NEIPA.