One year ago I was in Peru; we had flown to Cusco from Lima and taken a combi van to Ollantaytambo where we met our friends and their baby and their dog Rabbit. The day after we arrived, I assisted on the first of a two-day kettle sour beer at Cerverceria del Valle Sagrado, which my friends had helped build. The brewery is right next to the Urubamba River, and right across the street from thousand-foot cliffs. Finding a witbier at 9,000 feet elevation halfway across the world from its origin would have been a preposterous idea ten years ago. But there it was (and then wasn’t; I drank it).

Even odder was Wick’s, the English pub in Lima’s Barranco district. Barranco is the Peruvian version of the hip, low-slung neighborhood you might find in Portland or San Francisco. Every night, bands played at several spots on the sprawling plaza. Little kids zipped around on tiny wheels while parents watched percussion troupes. Native and tourist couples snogged and took selfies on el Puente de los Suspiros, the Bridge of Sighs.

In Wick’s, the street life disappeared except when the door opened. The large men at the bar had British accents, though they may have been Dutch. The barkeep pulled pints with sluggish indignation; I tried to chat him up casually, but he wasn’t having it. Only on my return visit, to watch the Super Bowl (yes, the Super Bowl goddammit), did he engage in the slightest. It must be frustrating to have a rotating cast of ex-pats and tourists at your bar.

But the beer was fantastic. The stout was stout but quaffable. The pale was flowers and biscuits. The tiny brew system couldn’t have been larger than 3 barrels. The gin ‘n tonic was mostly gin; that seems pretty appropriate. It felt sort of wrong to sit at a brown bar crushing pints of bitter in the middle of Lima; wrong that I chose to escape the onslaught of culture outside for a moment; wrong that such a place even existed amid the cevicherias. But then there are McDonalds and Starbucks crowded with locals; it is a huge, international city. Would a Peruvian think twice about getting a causa in D.C.? At the time, it also felt quite comfortable.

This won’t be the last not-in-Kansas-anymore sensation I get in my beer travels. I look forward to tasting how breweries in Berlin interpret an IPA in a couple months. As craft beer has grown global, it’s brought along certain aesthetics; these manifested differently at each of the 6 or so breweries we went to in Peru. The vibes swung from modern to homey, but each insinuated “craft beer” in its own way.