About Andrea Tambone – Beer Consultant in Sofia & BJCP Certified Judge
I’m not “someone who likes beer”. I care about quality beer.
If you’re here, you’re probably tired of “just another beer” on the menu.
I’m Andrea Tambone, a beer consultant in Sofia and an Italian living in Bulgaria. I’ve been involved in the craft beer world for more than ten years – brewing, judging, running events and working with independent breweries.
Today I use that experience to help:
- pubs, restaurants and bars that want to raise the level of their beer offer,
- people and companies looking for guided tastings and pairing dinners,
- beer projects that need an external professional for recipes, launches and positioning.
My job is to turn beer from a simple line on a price list into an experience your guests remember and talk about.
From curiosity to brewing beer “the right way”
The first spark came on a school trip to Prague, where I realised beer didn’t have to be pale, fizzy and anonymous. There were styles, aromas and characters I had never seen before.
A few years later, during my Erasmus in Vilnius, Lithuania, that idea exploded: a lively beer scene, several styles from each brewery, bottling dates on labels, and venues where beer was treated seriously. I stopped asking “do I like this?” and started asking why a beer works in the glass or not.
Back in Italy I started brewing. Like many people I began with kits, but I didn’t stay there for long. I moved on to more serious equipment, then to all-grain brewing, and began working on recipes with a method, not just by trial and error.
That’s when my first project, Birra Vienuolika, was born. With it I reached the finals of homebrewing competitions and took part in the Italian championship.
It’s not the centre of what I do today, but it’s where I built my technical foundation: years of mistakes, notebooks full of notes and re-brews that taught me to judge a beer not by sympathy, but by what it actually delivers in the glass.
When the project takes my name: Birra Tambone
After years of studying, brewing, fixing and refining recipes, one thing became clear: I was no longer “the guy who makes beer at home”. I needed a project with a clear direction.
In 2023, Birra Vienuolika became Birra Tambone.
Putting my own surname on the label means one simple thing: I take responsibility for what ends up in your glass when you choose my beers.
In 2025 I took another step: Birra Tambone became a contract brewery.
Instead of closing myself inside my own brewhouse and slowing everything down, I chose to work with selected breweries and focus on:
- ideas and recipe design,
- the choice of raw materials,
- the identity of the beers and of the project.
From this approach came some key milestones:
These are not just “my beers”: they are projects that must work for the people who drink them and for the people who sell them.
That’s the same mindset I bring when I work with your venue or your event.
I judge beer even when it isn’t mine
Saying “this beer is good” is not enough. If you want to make better choices, you need a method to evaluate what’s in the glass, beyond personal taste.
This work forces me to be:
- precise when describing aromas, faults and strengths,
- consistent in evaluation across different styles,
- honest in separating my personal preferences from the actual quality of the beer.
That’s exactly the approach I bring when I help you choose what to put on your beer list, how to present it to guests or which beers to use in a tasting.
Over the years I’ve invested time and money in training and competitions. Today I am:
and I keep challenging myself as a judge in both homebrewing and professional competitions. I’ve been part of judging panels in:
- Italy
- Bulgaria
- Croatia
- United Kingdom
- USA
- Brazil
including the Brazilian Beer Awards 2025 in Bahia, tasting and scoring beers from all over the world.
What you really get from working with a beer consultant in Sofia
My job as a beer consultant is not to drown you in theory, but to help you make better decisions about what you pour and how you present it.
For bars and restaurants
If you run a venue, working with a beer consultant means:
- A beer list that makes sense, not a random collection of labels “because somebody likes them”.
- Thoughtful beer & food pairings that support your menu and make ordering easier for your guests.
- Staff who feel confident talking about beer, without sounding like professors or getting lost in jargon.
- Events and tastings that fit your identity, giving your regulars one more reason to come back and talk about your place.
- Less waste and less dead stock, because we decide together what deserves to stay, rotate or disappear.
I’m not a PR and I don’t “bring people to your venue”.
I help you make sure that those who come in drink better, understand what they’re drinking and have more reasons to return.
For private clients and small groups
If you want to organise a tasting or a dinner with friends or family, I can help you:
- Build a clear tasting journey, where every beer has a reason to be in the glass at that moment.
- Make people enjoy themselves without boring them, with explanations that even non-beer-geeks can follow.
- Use beer as an experience, not just “another drink on the table”.
Tastings can be held in Italian, English or Bulgarian, depending on the group.
For companies and teams
If you’re a company, I can help you use beer smartly for internal culture and employee experience, not as “random free beer in the fridge”.
Concretely, I can take care of:
- Team building sessions and themed evenings, with guided tastings and tailored beer journeys (in Italian, English or Bulgarian).
- Curated corporate beer supplies, with a rotating selection of quality bottles and cans or dedicated draft beer systems for internal use.
- Tap rotation and maintenance, so you don’t end up with old product or technical issues.
- Tailor-made programs, using weekly or monthly surveys to understand which styles your people prefer, gather their suggestions and adjust the offer over time.
The goal is not to “throw a party at the office”, but to offer a thoughtful, well-curated benefit that improves atmosphere and how people feel about working there.
In short, I don’t come to tell you how much I love beer.
I come to make the beer part of your world work better – in your bar, in your office and in the events you organise for the people who matter to you.
If you’d like to see the types of projects I work on, take a look at my Services page. When you’re ready to talk about your venue, team or event, you can contact me here.
If you want, the next project can be yours
If what you’ve read sounds like what you’re looking for and you want to take your beer game more seriously, the next step is simple: tell me who you are and what you need.
Whether you run a venue, manage a company or are planning a private tasting, I need to understand:
- who you want to serve,
- what kind of experience you want beer to create,
- which problems you want to solve – or avoid.