Beer tasting & brewery tour stag do

The big draw is the self-guided experience inside the city's famous former brewery, now an interactive attraction in the centre. Allow about two hours, with two beers each at the end. Entry slots run from mid-morning into the evening, but on Saturdays groups must be in by about 11:30am, so it usually works better as a Friday or Sunday plan. The more relaxed alternative is a 90-minute tasting of five Dutch beers, blondes and darks, hosted by a bartender in a central bar or at a working local brewery. Both are 18-plus, with ID checked.

Barcelona's craft brewery tours are central and short, about 75 to 90 minutes with a guide who knows the beer, and they take 8 to 20 people. Expect four or five beers, including a seasonal one and a taste straight from the tanks, with small tapas such as olives, cured sausage and patatas bravas. Tours do not run on Sundays, so plan it for Friday or Saturday. There is also a two-hour hosted tasting of five craft beers in a private area of a bar near the port, with afternoon slots at 12pm, 2pm and 4pm. It is a good shaded option on a hot afternoon.

The big one is the stout visitor experience at St James's Gate in Dublin 8: a self-guided route over seven floors, about 90 minutes to two hours, finishing with a pint in a rooftop bar with views across the city. It is one of the busiest attractions in Ireland, so book a timed slot. For something smaller, a working craft brewery runs one-hour behind-the-scenes tours with four core beers for groups of 10 to 25, and an experimental brewery offers tasting boards of four. All 18+.

Lisbon's beer tasting is a craft-beer session rather than a brewery tour: about an hour in the Baixa, the downtown grid, with an English-speaking host pouring five small measures of craft beer alongside traditional Portuguese snacks. Sessions run daily from 2pm to about 8pm, and groups from 2 to 50 can be booked, so it scales for a big stag party. It is a relaxed late-afternoon option between the day's activity and dinner, and an easy one to add on arrival day once everyone has checked in and dropped their bags.

Two formats run in Prague. The brewery visit goes out to one of the city's big working breweries, roughly 45 minutes door to door, for an hour-long tour followed by a few beers; some versions add a three-course meal in the brewery restaurant, which turns it into a two-hour lunch or dinner. The alternative stays central: a 90-minute sit-down tasting of around ten small local pours with a Czech snack, starting at a beer museum. Bring ID, as 18-plus checks apply. Both run all year, and the central tasting suits a Friday afternoon while the group is still arriving.