Last year Olga, the landlady of The Russian Tavern on the Isle of Bute, was a guest at the Kalinka Brewery in St. Petersburg, now renamed after Stepan Rasin, the leader of an unsuccessful rebellion against the Tsar in the 18^th century, and now a folk hero. This brewery was nationalised after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, yet kept its traditional methods brought from England in 1795. At that time Tsarina Catherine II had a young Swedish apprentice baker from the Baltic island of Rugen. Each day his task was to bring in a selection of breads and pastries for the Empress to choose from. It is recorded that one day in front of favoured courtiers she said that the very next person to be shown into the room would receive a Royal Boon. And very next person happened to be Abraham Kron carrying his basket of bread .

Not used to receiving favours from Empresses, young Abraham asked for five days to consider the wish he would have granted, and wandered the streets of St imported from London, and that he would wish to start a new brewery to make the finest Beers, there in Russia. "But you are a baker!" Her Majesty objected. But the five days of considering his argument had not been wasted. He explained the brewing process, the action of yeasts both in beer and bread, and asked permission to bring an English friend to the city, with all the arts and skills of beer brewing. Catherine, who had a taste for strong English ales of the period, favoured her baker with 30,000 roubles, a fortune at the time, and papers to invite the English brewer Frederick Nicholas Danielson to Russia.

He duly arrived with his own coveted stock of yeast, and the Kalinka Brewery was born. We do not know from which town or brewery Danielson came from, but his gravestone still stands in St. Petersburg so he had a lifetime's work provided him. Indeed within a few years they were making a quarter of a million litres a year, and a second brewery was opened in Moscow.

These Russian beers are of particular interest because the recipes, yeast and strains of barley and wheat have remained unchanged for two hundred years and so give a faithful reproduction of how beer would have tasted here. At the brewery on Stepan Rasin Street you can sample a full range of beers, from a malty porter at 8% up to Kalinkin Light, still with a hefty 7%!

Should you fancy a trip to St Petersburg* Galina Klyarovskaya, the Directress of the Beer Museum gallery would be delighted to show you the many artefacts they have dating back to the 1780s. Her Email is: kondir@razin.spb.ru

There is now a no-frills Airline flying from London to Tallin, and an economic ferry that runs from there to St. Petersburg, returning via Helsinki. So it's possible to go Easyjet or RyanAir to London and connect up to Tallin at an impressive fare, if booked in advance.