Wake up and smell Cologne!

Many cities can lay a half-decent claim to be the beer capital of the world. Plzen and Prague in the Czech Republic, Munich and Bamberg in Germany, Brussels in Belgium, perhaps even Portland in Oregon, they all have an established beer culture, long traditions and plenty of fantastic pubs where you can happily sip your way through a selection of the world’s greatest beers.

However, if I were going to list the 10 best beer cities in the world, and perhaps I will one day so that you all can make proper plans for your next 10 holidays, one city just has to be included: Cologne, or Köln as it is known in its native language, German, or Deutsch as the language is known in its native language. Why Cologne? Because it’s simply one of the finest places to sip beer on planet earth.

Cologne has, until recently, been a somewhat unfortunate place. It sits on the west bank of the mighty river Rhine, and is therefore separated from the majority of Germany by one of Europe’s most strategic waterways. This meant that the city was frequently part of some war or other, and changed hands from one crazy emperor to the next roughly as often as people used to change underwear in those days. The upshot was that the people in Cologne learned to get on with their lives with a healthy dose of scepticism for authorities. During that big clash now known as World War Two, Cologne was pretty much reduced to a giant pile of rubble – the only thing of note left standing was, amazingly, the cathedral, which is so big you’d think it’d be impossible to miss.

But this blog post isn’t a history lesson, it’s about beer. What in St Gambrinus’ name does Cologne have to do with my favourite drink, I hear you cry. Well, as it happens, Cologne is one of the very few cities on this planet to have a beer style named after it. Those of you who have paid attention to my earlier posts will know this already: it’s called Kölsch, a top-fermented yet golden and clear ale with hoppy and sometimes flowery notes. Most people haven’t even heard of it – when the Pils style was busy being copied and abused all over the world, the citizens of Cologne decided to jealously guard theirs by drinking it all themselves and making sure that nobody outside their region was allowed to brew it.

In other words, to experience Kölsch you have to go to Cologne. It’s worth the trip. The old town, which was partially rebuilt after the aforementioned war and now looks quite nice, is home to some of the finest drinking houses in the world. When you enter one of these for the first time it can be a bit of a shock. As soon as you’ve found a place to sit, stand or otherwise deposit the body parts not required for drinking, a waiter will deliver beers. You may at this point think that you’ve already lost your sense of perspective. Rest assured, the glass is small, it’s not far away, and you can reach it assuming you’re still capable of lifting your arms. Kölsch beer is traditionally served in 0.2l glasses. Now don’t panic! As soon as you’ve finished the last sip, the waiter will automatically bring you a new, fresh one unless you’ve put the coaster on top of the glass.

Beginners don’t normally realize this, so it’s great fun to watch people desperate to get out of there to catch a flight or sober up or something equally pointless, and not being able to due to new rounds of beer constantly appearing. Once they finally figure it out, they’ve usually missed their flight anyway so they might as well continue to the next great place to drink Kölsch, which is always conveniently located next door, across the street or, in some tedious cases, around the corner. The other thing to note about these beer houses is that the atmosphere is extremely friendly, even if the waiters can be quite rude if you don’t know the rules, don’t speak their dialect or otherwise look like you haven’t grown up in their neighbourhood. You can solve this problem by ordering a 5 or 10-litre cask delivered at your table, and pour new beers as often as you like until you invariably end up realizing that you should have been thrown out several hours ago.

Finally, at the end of the visit, you’ll also understand how the waiter kept track of the number of beers you drank – he made a little pencil mark on your beer coaster every time he brought a new one. Paying your bill, then, involves simply counting the marks and multiplying by the price per beer, something the waiter luckily will do for you. I have never tried to cheat by substituting the coaster or something like that, and I certainly wouldn’t recommend doing so since the waiters all look like they’ve dealt efficiently with a little mischief here and there in the past. They’d probably chuck you in the Rhine and tell you to swim downstream to Düsseldorf.

There are about 20 different varieties of Kölsch. They all have the same colour, but the taste can vary significantly. However, I’m not going to reveal more, partially because I cannot remember, and partially because the great thing about Cologne is to go there and do a massive pub crawl to discover your own favourite. Be warned: whatever you do when you get there, don’t even think about ordering a beer other than Kölsch – and especially not the type so beloved by the people living just downstream, namely Altbier. If you do, you’ll join the people who cheated on the coaster marks sooner than you can say “Rheindampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän”. Then you can, to pass the time whilst trying to keep your head above water and out of the propellers of the myriad of barges, think about the old Cologne saying: “We drink Kölsch. After we’ve drunk it, it eventually ends up in the Rhine where it flows downstream to Düsseldorf. There they use it to brew Altbier”.