Bikes, beer and Bavaria!

Bavaria, or Bayern as this part of Germany is known in the native language, has it all, with the possible exception of a coastline. Big bustling cities, small charming towns, snaking rivers, non-snaking canals, tall mountains, refreshing lakes, cycle-friendly roads, non-smoking legislation and lively folk-fests on a weekly basis – what more could you ask for? Well, there’s beer of course. Luckily, Bavaria has more of that than anywhere else on this planet as well as all other planets I’m aware of. So why do people go to Italy on holiday instead? Because people are stupid, that’s why.

I’ve spent most of the last couple of weeks inside the “Free State of Bavaria”, as it’s known to the locals. It might technically be part of Germany, but only because the locals choose this out of their own free will, you understand. This is very important. Should Berlin try and impose some restrictions on the Bavarians that they don’t like, you can safely assume that Europe will gain another independent nation before you can say “Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän”.

There’s an on-going debate as to where the beer-drinker’s heaven on earth is actually located. Some say Belgium. Others say the Czech Republic. Nobody says Iran. I say Bavaria. Mostly because of the fact that in this state alone, there are more than 600 operational breweries that fuel the aforementioned folk-fests and other jolly occasions such as Tuesdays. The vast majority of these breweries are several hundred years old, family-owned, and – not surprisingly – very traditional. This does mean that there’s a certain predictability as to what you will get when you order a beer – almost all have a portfolio consisting of a very drinkable pilsner, an very quaffable helles (light lager), a rich and malty dunkles (dark lager) and a fruity wheat beer. In addition, many also have a Landbier or Vollbier, which is an amber, malty and full-bodied beer.

My lovely wife and I went on a cycling trip through Bavaria a couple of weeks ago. As mentioned in previous blog posts, cycling and beer is a great combination. First and foremost, cycling makes you thirsty, especially on a hot summer’s day. Second and middlemost, you can cover relatively large distances on a bike, so you can visit several breweries in a day. Third and lastmost, a bit of pedalling between breweries means that you sober up sufficiently to avoid risking your own or anybody else’s life due to the combination of your mode of transport and the state of your mental awareness. In other words, with a little bit of planning you can easily visit 4-5 breweries during a happy day of relaxed cycling and even live to tell the tale.

We chose to start our trip in Frankfurt. Not because this is a lovely, charming city (it isn’t), nor because it’s got great beer (it hasn’t), but because it’s got a massive train station that has direct connections from everywhere except Iceland. By following the river Main, which is a tributary to the slightly more well-known river Rhine, you very quickly cross the border into Bavaria – and not just any part of Bavaria, but Franconia, which is where they make loads of wine, until you move a bit further upstream to the region around Bamberg and those nasty vineyards disappear and they start making beer instead.

Small brewery with beer garden

I shan’t describe in detail each and every brewery we visited, since they numbered 42 by the end of the 9^th day in the saddle. There’s a photo of my good self in front of each and every one, but since drinking at all of them would have been somewhat suicidal, especially on the day we visited 11, I’ll limit this blog post to more general observations. Here they are:

1) Most breweries are very small and supply the drinkers at only a handful of pubs, or even just the one where the brewery is situated. In this respect they are similar to modern microbreweries. The main difference is that the vast majority of these breweries have been handed down about a dozen generations of a family with the name Schnausenfutter (or similar), and are therefore typically several hundred years old.

2) The majority of these breweries are found in very small towns or villages where there’s very little sign of life, and a surprising number of these have two or more, often within a few bottle lengths of each other.

3) Each brewery with respect for itself has its own Bierkeller (beer cellar), where people drink in summer. You may think this sounds strange. That’s because it is. What happened was that the brewers needed a cool place to store (lager) their beers, which they found in small underground caves at the local hill – the cellars. Then, the thirsty local people would be drawn like dehydrated magnets to the hill, demanding fresh beer. The brewer, sensing a business opportunity, duly planted a couple of massive trees to provide shade, put up some tables and some chairs, and the rest is history.

4) The beer is, without exception, very good and sometimes absolutely wonderful.

One of the larger ones

Of course, there are plenty of other things to see and do in Bavaria as well. However, since this is a beer blog, I’ll just encourage you to read a travel blog if you crave details on museums, art and outdoor pursuits other than sitting in the beer garden. Meanwhile, you could do worse than cancelling your planned trip to Italy next summer and going to Bamberg instead, which is arguably the beeriest town in the world, being host to no fewer than 9 breweries, including ones that brew beers that taste like bacon, ideal for breakfast. The real treasure is the land that surrounds Bamberg, though, where the main output of most brewers is a malty amber lager that tastes so good that it makes you want to drink nothing else for the rest of your life, which in which case would be happy and short, though considering the number of old fellows seemingly spending all day in the bar, perhaps the opposite is true. The fact that the price of a half litre of this amber treasure is around two euros also means that your holiday budget will stretch very far.

In conclusion, Bavaria should be a mandatory stop on every beer lover’s agenda, and just attending Oktoberfest in Munich does not count. Visiting in summer is recommended, since the shady trees of the Bierkeller provide the ideal environment in which to enjoy a half litre or nine. There’s still time this year, so off you go! See you there - I’ll be the one in the corner with the sweatiest bike and the happiest smile.

Swiss time

Having spent a large chunk of my life in Switzerland due to the fact that I’ve been working there for more than four years, it may come as a surprise to you that I have yet to describe the ins and outs of this country from a beer blogger’s perspective. However, having spent the entire last weekend fully within the borders of this strange island in the middle of Europe, I feel that now is the time to put this right.

Switzerland is an old country. It was founded August 1^st 1291 when a bunch of sturdy mountain-loving fellows met for a few beers in a hidden valley in the middle of the Alps. They started drinking, and before they knew it they had united their three Cantons to form a country, conveniently named after the only canton anyone could remember after several beers, namely Schwyz. Eventually several more cantons joined this jolly party, including ones where they didn’t understand a word of what they were saying in the others, but despite such minor communication problems this strange mixture of mini-fiefdoms somehow survived to become the only country in Europe that votes no to everything every three months whilst simultaneously having trains that run on time.

No single country in the world has more stereotypes associated with it than Switzerland. Be it secret bank accounts, yodelling alp-horn blowing peasants, big holes with cheese around them, being incredibly neutral, complicated army knifes, triangular chocolate, expensive watches, picture-perfect villages clinging to impossibly steep mountainsides or the aforementioned trains that run on time, the Swiss have it all. It’s just a pity they can’t brew beer. This blog post could have ended right there, if it wasn’t for the fact that the last sentence isn’t entirely true. It’s mostly true, for sure, but not entirely. Read on, and ye shall learn a couple of secrets – but let’s first look at some background information.

There used to be hundreds of breweries dotted around this small country. However, unlike their big German-speaking neighbour to the north, but pretty much not unlike the rest of the world, the vast majority of these breweries were either bought up, shut down, or bought up and then shut down, during the years following the War. This resulted in two or three big players in the market, which were then unsurprisingly bought up by big multinational brewing conglomerates – yes, we’re talking about Heineken and Carlsberg. The biggest selling brands in Switzerland such as Calanda and Feldschlösschen consequently tastes pretty much like bland lager does everywhere else: boring and predictable. Luckily, a few of the independent regional brewers have survived, and, in the last few years, a range of small new breweries have opened.

The beer blogger approved of the tram depot

Last weekend’s big occasion in Switzerland was the visit of Muse, which is a very good band from England. The wife and I managed to get hold of a couple of tickets at great expense, and consequently headed off on an on-time train towards the capital of Switzerland, a place known as Bern, Berne or Berna, depending on which official language you choose. You might think that the capital of a country with almost 8 million inhabitants in the middle of Europe would be a big city, but no: not wishing to make a dent in any of the aforementioned stereotypes, the Swiss chose a small city with a cute old town that would fit comfortably inside some of Paris’ biggest roundabouts.

After our on-time arrival, we obviously wasted no time in tracking down a brewery, and we were lucky – in 1998, an enterprising soul or two had converted an old tram depot beautifully located next to a colony of bears and a winding river into a brewery. They brew three standard beers: an unfiltered helles, a darker märzen, and a wheat beer. Additionally, they frequently do special beers, usually to suit the season. I tried the helles and the märzen, both of which were lively and full of flavour – great drinks to accompany the unseasonably late arrival of summer.

The next day was the concert day, so after a pit stop at the tram shed again to remind me how good the märzen was, we headed towards the 45000-capacity Stade the Suisse, where the aforementioned band were due to play in a few hours. To avoid eating the overpriced food usually found at such massive venues, we had a pizza on the way, which I washed down with a couple of remarkably tasty beers from the local independent survivor Felsenau, founded in 1881.

What followed was a delight from a music lover’s perspective, but a disaster from a beer lover’s ditto. Why oh why is it so in this world that a poor drinker can only buy not second rate, not third rate, but rock bottom rate lager at big events such as these? Carlsberg was the beer in this case, and though I ought to have known better, I still went ahead and bought one. It did one good thing – it confirmed my long-held opinion that Carlsberg is one of the few beers whose taste actually improves as it passes through the body. Probably the best piss in the world, though.

The weekend was, in other words, like experiencing the Swiss beer scene in a nutshell. There are the new, usually very small breweries that make decent – and sometimes very good – beer. Then there are a few surviving regionals, most of which can conjure up a couple of very drinkable beers. Then we have the nationals, which have been bought out by the multinationals, that make the bland, boring stuff that everyone drinks and most bars and pubs stock. Finally, there are the multinationals that sponsor all big events and have the nerve to charge an arm and a leg for a plastic cup of vile-tasting yellow liquid that is, to quote an earlier blog post of mine, almost, but not entirely unlike beer.

So, in summary: Switzerland is a nice country, and if you’re concerned that someone may have a serious throat problem when they speak to you, don’t worry – this is just the local dialect – speak back in your own language and they’ll immediately switch. The scenery is stunning and the skiing, especially in winter, is usually very good, so the Swiss can be forgiven if they don’t have the best beer in the world. Having said that, it’s certainly not the worst beer in the world either, and things are rapidly improving. If you’re in a bar, ask for a beer from a local brewery, and if they don’t have one, suggest that they should organize a referendum to ban mediocre beer. You never know, perhaps they’ll vote yes one day.

It's Czech, mate!

Well, well, well. It’s been a while. My keyboard may not have been fingered as much as usual, but I have not been idle drinking-wise. Since the last blog entry, I have had the (somewhat mixed) pleasure of drinking beer in Germany, Switzerland, France, Norway, Belgium, Russia, England, Scotland and last – but definitely not least – the Czech Republic.

My wife had never been to Prague, and I hadn’t been there for almost 8 years, so in order to drink two beers with one hand I gave her a very cunning Christmas present, namely a trip to Prague accompanied by yours truly. Rumour has it that Prague is one of the most attractive cities in Europe. This may well be the case. What I have established beyond reasonable doubt is that Prague is arguably the finest city in Europe in which to drink beer.

Before I start describing the delights of this city from a beer lover’s perspective, I’ll give you some basic facts about Czech beer. Of course, the momentous occasion in the city of Plzen (also known by its German name Pilsen) in 1842, when Joseph Groll invented the golden lager style known all over the world as “pils” or “pilsner”, remains the turning point. After this, all Czech breweries worth their malt started to brew their own interpretations of this style. What is interesting, though, is that the Czech pilsner-style beers remain different from other pilsners in that they tend to have a richer, more full-bodied malt sweetness to them. The reason for this is that the brewers use a lot of malt in the wort, but then stop the fermentation process before all the fermentable sugars have been turned to alcohol. Most other factory brewers abhor such ideas, because malt is expensive – and to get people drunk cheaply, the best idea is to turn almost all the malt sugars to alcohol. Not so in Czech lands – instead, the brewer deliberately leaves malt sweetness in the finished products and then – wait for it – adds another expensive ingredient, namely hops, to balance the sweetness! No wonder the Czech Republic is one of the cheapest places in Europe to drink beer! Erm, hang on a minute...

If you’re visiting this fantastic country and wander into a pub for the first time, you’re likely to be a little confused by the beer menu. It’s not going to be very extensive – 2 or 3 beers on tap and perhaps a handful of bottled ones is the norm. If you want a beer menu looking more like a telephone book (if you don’t remember what telephone books look like, you’re either too young or too drunk and should stop reading right now to either grow or sober up), go to Belgium. However, you will notice some very scary looking numbers next to the beers, usually 10, 11, 12 or 14, with a symbol that looks a little like the percent or degree symbol. Fear not, this is not the alcoholic content, nor is it the temperature of the beer. Rather, it is a number that indicates how much malt went into the beer before it started fermenting. This is known as the gravity of the beer, and is information that is difficult to obtain for the vast majority of brews in the world. In Czech, though, this is used to categorize beers in the menu, along with its colour (light, amber or dark). The number comes, allegedly, from the Balling scale, which surely deserves to be at least as well known as the Richter or Bathroom scales. Anyway, the Balling scale very nicely tells you how much malt the brewer put into the beer and therefore indicates its value as a nutritious drink: 10 indicates a relatively light beer for everyday drinking, 12 is usually a brewery’s flagship lager that corresponds roughly to “premium beers” elsewhere, and 14 or higher are special beers for special occasions such as breakfast.

OK, enough lecturing. You are, after all, reading this blog to get my heavily biased opinions, not a bunch of dry facts that you could easily look up on Wikipeida. As soon as you arrive in Prague, make sure you get the heck out of the airport as soon as possible, because the airport is, as far as I could tell, the only place where beer is actually expensive. The first thing you need to do when you get to town is to avoid going into any pub that displays the sign “Staropramen” on the outside. Staropramen is owned by the biggest brewing corporation in the world, which means that they have turned a once-great lager into standard euro-fizz and, to add insult to injury, they’re trying to flog you imported Stella as well. You’re much better off going into bars that display the sign “Budweiser Budvar” or “Pilsner Urquell”. If you’re going to find anything else than these Big Three, you’ll have to search. Needless to say, I searched – with good help of the invaluable “Good Beer Guide to Prague”, a guide book so essential that I’m surprised they don’t automatically include it in the price of the bus ticket from the airport.

These beers from one of the Big Three weren't quite up to the normal Czech standard

The first place to try and find is the “Pivovarsky Dum”. This is a fantastic little microbrewery that serves one of the best unfiltered pilsner-style lagers, one of the best dark lagers and some of the weirdest fruity concoctions in the whole of the land. If you’re feeling adventurous, get the beer sampler where you get a tenth of a litre of each beer, including the sour cherry, the coffee and the stinging nettle beers. Then re-order your favourites, which are likely to be the lovely wheat beer, the aforementioned lagers and perhaps the seasonal. Incredible stuff.

Weird and wonderful beers from Pivovarsky Dum

Next, you could wander across town or get a few trams and land up in the “Pivovarsky Klub”. This is one of the few places with a beer menu approaching what you’re used to from Belgium – a large selection of Czech and foreign beers are on offer. Ignore the foreign stuff and start with the 5 or 6 they have on tap. These probably change – after our visit, there sure wasn’t much left, anyway – but the ones we tried were simply superb: a couple of light-coloured, unfiltered pilsner-style beers, a couple of amber ones and a very fine dark. The bottled stuff will probably be a little disappointing after the freshness of the ones on tap, but it’s a great opportunity to try beers from all corners of the republic.

Prague’s weirdest and wonderfullest microbrewery has been there since 1499, and it’s called “U Fleku”. This place is worth a trip to Prague on its own – a vast complex of different rooms, all kitted out with great big tables full of tourists drinking a pitch-black beer, which is explained by the fact that it is the only thing on offer. Try asking the waiter for a pilsner, and you’ll be told in no uncertain terms that there are 97 other people waiting for your table space so you should stop wasting his time. A better strategy is to order the beer, which is so good I’ve decided to compose a symphony in its honour. Actually, make that two symphonies.

Novomestsky Pivovar is another microbrewery in Prague - worth seeking out, as you can see!

Prague is much more than its tourist-infested old town, though. A walk out into the suburbs gives you a very different impression of the city – gone are all the fine architecture and foreign crowds, replaced by a nice mixture of Czechs going about their daily business and old, dilapidated remnants of former times. On our final day, we walked over to the Prague Exhibition Grounds, which had a fantastic old main building which looked like it couldn’t decide whether to fall down or be renovated. Next door was a cafe which served beers from the “Uneticky Pivovar”, which I had, astonishingly, never heard of. Apparently, the original brewery that was founded in 1710 stopped brewing in 1949, only to be revived in 2011. I promptly ordered the unfiltered lager, which cost about half as much as in the centre of Prague, and enjoyed what was perhaps the finest lager I’ve ever had the pleasure to drink on a Monday afternoon.

Czech out the prices...

Sadly, all good things must come to an end, and so it was with our trip to Prague also. All too soon, the trip out to the airport beckoned, and we collected our luggage with heavy hearts (actually, we used our hands) and a few hoppy tears in our eyes. To soften the blow, we stopped off at the splendid litte Pivovarsky Dvur in Chyne, from where you can pretty much see the airport (still the best part of an hour away by bus though), and enjoyed a last couple of lovely Czech beers. I would probably have labelled these as unforgettable if it hadn’t been for the fact that, due to the plethora of unforgettable beers we had already sampled and forgotten, I promptly forgot what they were like.

In conclusion, Prague is a great city and you must go there immediately. There are plenty of tourist attractions, most of which we ignored, and an insane number of places to drink excellent beer, most of which we didn’t have time to visit. Although the beer scene is dominated by the aforementioned Big Three, finding excellent and unusual brews both from Prague and around the country is not difficult. Add the fact that the beer is somewhere between cheap and ridiculously cheap (at least seen with my Norwegian eyes, which are used to watching my Norwegian hands paying up to 10 times as much for a beer), and you quickly realize that you’re in a beer-lover’s paradise. Are you still reading? I thought I told you to go immediately. No time to waste! Na zdraví!

Live life to the Max

The beer selection in my local supermarket can be a little bit boring, I must admit. It tends to stock the same selection of beer month in, month out, with a few extra ones appearing at Christmas time. Imagine my surprise and unbridled delight when, a week or two ago, I discovered a completely new beer which I had never tried before, which even originated from my favourite Munich brewery, inconspicuously placed between the known and the very well-known stuff on the shelves.

Augustiner Bräu, which traces its history as far back as 1328, is arguably Munich's finest surviving brewery. There are a number of reasons for this. First and foremost, their beers tend to be of high quality. Second, it is the only one of Munich's big breweries which is still privately owned. Third, there are lots of lovely beer gardens where you can enjoy their brews on a warm summer’s day. Fourth, they haven’t changed the labels on their bottles in more than 20 years. Fifth, they supplied the beers that I enjoyed, somewhat excessively, at last year’s Oktoberfest.

The Doppelbock (double bock) style of beer is a style of beer that originated in Germany when the monks in various monasteries simultaneously realized that they where starving and in dire need of something a bit more nourishing than water to sustain them through the ridiculously long fasting period known as Lent. Therefore, they invented a new beer, full of malt, flavour and alcohol, which could be used almost as a substitute for bread and certainly as a substitute for famine-induced madness, but came in fluid form and was consequently allowed to be consumed. This style was eventually picked up by several German breweries, mainly in Bavaria, and developed into what is now recognized as the Doppelbock style.

It is hard to overstate how wonderful this type of beer really is, but I will nevertheless give it a try. Imagine that you’re in a restaurant with more Michelin stars than tables, and that you’ve just received the second course, which happens to be a concoction of all your favourite ingredients. Sharing this meal with your favourite person, you take a bite and realize that this dish is by far the best thing you’ve ever tasted, blending the flavours of the ingredients to ultimate perfection. Even then, should the waiter pour you a Doppelbock, you’d immediately forget the meal, your favourite person and the astronomical bill once you've taken the first sip of this lovely beer. Put simply, it’s like multiple orgasms in a bottle.

The beer mysteriously disappeared before the camera could take the picture

There are many breweries that brew this type of beer. Given the introduction to this blog post, you won’t be surprised to learn that Augustiner is one of them. However, the brewery that lays claim to brew the original is another Munich institution, namely Paulaner. Their beer is called “Salvator”, which allegedly is Latin for “yum”, and this has caused most of the versions brewed here in Germany to adopt names that end with “-ator”. There are, to name but a few, a Celebrator, an Optimator, a Terminator, a Consecrator and an Alligator. The one I just enjoyed, though, is called “Maximator”, and the second thing that won’t surprise you is the fact that I enjoyed it very much. It is brown, malty, slightly sweet, beautifully balanced, has a wonderfully rich and smooth mouth feel, and finally an aftertaste that lingers longer than a Libyan leader. If only Mick Jagger had had a Maximator in the fridge then perhaps he’d have got some satisfaction after all.

OK, I realize that I like beer ever so slightly more than the average person, and I’ve also written this unrestrained celebration of a beer with a very strong bias caused by being under the influence of said beer’s alcohol, which clocked in at a respectable 8% or so. All I can think about when I’m not concentrating on finding the keys on my keyboard, which have mysteriously decided to move around randomly, is that I would really like another one. This may take a little while since the shop won’t open for another 10 hours or so. I think I’ll go and pitch a tent outside, just in case a queue starts building as soon as I post this. Good night and sleep tight!

Nine more beers fight for much more glory!

The countless millions of people who are regular readers of this blog will no doubt remember one of the great entries of 2011, namely the one where nine beers were fighting for glory by tempting the palates of five lucky beer tasters assembled for the occasion in my flat here in Konstanz. This was so much fun that when two beer-loving mates from Norway came to visit a couple of weeks ago, I stocked up again for a repeat session, albeit with a slightly different selection this time.

To ensure some continuity, two of the beers from last time were allowed back in, namely the Meckatzer Weiss-Gold (the winner from 2011) and Wernesgrüner Pils (5^th). The methodology was the same: I dressed up the beer bottles (all half-litres) in German newspapers and opened them before placing them randomly in the fridge. Then, one of my friends who hadn’t seen any of this would pick a beer randomly and pour it into three anonymous glasses. We then proceeded to sniff, drink and score them one by one whilst the empties were placed along a wall in the order in which they were served. Finally, once all were empty, we ceremoniously disrobed the bottles to reveal which beer was which.

The selection this time was based around golden-coloured beers of various types, namely two Pilsners (one of which was cheap, the other ridiculously cheap), three Octoberfest-style beers, two Helles, one Bock and last, but not least, a very expensive bottle imported from Britain, labelled “VSOP”, which I believe is short for "Very Sour Old Piss", but since it tasted rather good it is possible that I may be wrong there. Incidentally, just to illustrate the price range we're talking about: I could have bought about 15 bottles of the cheapest beer for the same price.

The results certainly showed that price is not necessarily proportional to taste or quality. Our two favourites were the cheap and the even cheaper Pilsners, whereas the VSOP didn’t quite make it to the throne. A note to British readers out there: the "p" stands for "points" and not the price of the beer in pence (though I wish it was). The results:

1)      Wernesgrüner Pils (25p)

2)      Ratskrone Pils (24p)

3)      Pedigree VSOP (21p)

3)      Schussenrieder Helles (21p)

5)      Andechs Bock (19p)

6)      Augustiner Octoberfest (18p)

7)      Meckatzer Weiss-Gold (17p)

7)      Maiser Heinrich Urstoff (17p)

9)      Augustiner Edelstoff (8p)

The podium! And the others. And the poor beer that nobody likes.

The unobservant reader has by now no doubt failed to notice that last year’s winner didn’t do quite as well this year – it finished way down in 7^th place. There could, of course, be any number of reasons for this, such as coincidence and Act of Gambrinus. However, I strongly believe that all the non-winning German breweries have taken note of the results last year and worked very hard to improve their brews, whereas the winner last year may have been a little complacent, resting on the hoppy laurels and basking in the malty glory for a bit too long. I expect greater things from everyone next year.

It should also be noted that this event took place on a Friday when the weather was unusually warm, so perhaps the Pilsners had a little advantage there. Furthermore, since the beers were served from the fridge at the same, cold temperature, the beers that should ideally be served warmer (especially the bock and the VSOP) probably had a disadvantage. It must also be admitted that two of the three tasters were already blind drunk since they had been following the Norwegian tradition of knocking back all alcoholic beverages within earshot since leaving Norway. So essentially, this turned out to be a giant excuse to get drunk and had nothing to do with a proper beer tasting session. Oh well, never mind.

It’s good fun though, drinking beer and pretending you know something about it. Furthermore, judging something that cannot defend itself in other ways than by losing its head gives you a sense of power. Moah-hah-hah!