Beer and Cycling

Regular readers won’t be surprised to hear that I like visiting beer and drinking breweries. There are few pleasures to rival arriving at a new brewery, having a nosey around their buildings, perhaps purchasing a T-shirt, and then heading off to the brewery tap for a couple of jars.

The problem is always how to get there since a considerable number of them set up shop inconsiderately far from where I live. Needless to say, I do not own a car. Beer drinking and driving simply don’t go together. I may kill somebody or myself, I may lose my licence, and in any case it’s a very bad thing to do. Therefore, I use trains a lot. Quick, comfortable, occasionally even running to some kind of schedule, this is the ideal mode of transport for the dedicated beer drinker. In Germany, you can even bring your own beer on board and drink it at your seat without having to hide the bottle in your armpit and pretend you’re checking that your deodorant is still working every time you take a sip.

However, in Germany there are in the region of 1300 breweries. Not all of these happen to be situated within easy reach of a train station. This is where the humble bicycle enters the picture. I’ve got a steady bike, with panniers and mud guards, ideal for excursions. Germany has about a billion kilometres of paved cycle paths criss-crossing the country, literally paving the way from one brewery to the next. Having learned once and for all how to cycle whilst slightly (or very) inebriated during my student days, and estimating the added danger of a couple of beers to be negligible when coasting along at 20 km/h on near-deserted paths through forests and fields, the pedal-driven treadmobile is the ideal solution for leisurely inter-brewery travel.

The weather last weekend was simply glorious. With pale skin after a long winter, and our hair flowing freely in the mild spring air, my wife and I set off for the 50km ride to one of the nearest breweries, situated in Königseggwald – pretty much directly north of Lake Constance. The ride was beautiful, the sun baking, and we arrived just in time to miss last orders for lunch as the brewery tap. We settled for a fluid lunch, and ordered beer. Straight away I encountered one of the really quite weird things in Germany – they only serve pilsner in 300ml glasses. The conversation with the waitress went as follows:

Me: Could I have a half litre of pilsner, please?
Waitress: Sorry, we only have small glasses of pils.
Me: Is the pilsner on tap?
Waitress: Yes
Me: And you clearly have half litre glasses available, because you sell the Spezial in half litre sizes?
Waitress: Yes, shall I get you a Spezial?
Me: Could you perhaps pour the pilsner beer from the tap into the half litre glass?
Waitress:<long pause> I guess that is possible.

I can only presume that the 345-page manual entitled “how to be a waitress in our pub” doesn’t include clear instructions on the not exactly mind-numbingly difficult task of pouring pilsner into a half-litre glass. Maybe it’s a combination the Germans simply never thought of. However, considering the weird array of beer mixers on offer – they don’t bat an eyelid when you ask for lemonade, coca-cola or banana-juice to be mixed with beer – it’s just bizarre.

The beer tasted, as brewery tap beers tend to do, extremely fresh and delicious. I find that really fresh beer has an extra almost citrus-like zippiness to it, which makes it go down even better, especially on a hot sunny day in a lovely peaceful beer garden.

I must admit that motivating myself for a 50km ride back after a fluid lunch was hard. The early spring sun was hot and strong, and slowly changed our skin colour to something resembling cooked lobsters. I don’t like lobsters. We rode home and drank pizza and ate red wine. It had been a fine day.