Drinking beer so that you don't have to!

Beck’s is Germany’s best-known international beer brand with availability in more than 90 countries. It has for a number of years been owned by the biggest brewing behemoth on the planet, namely AB InBev, a company that brews more than 45 billion litres of beer per year (almost 7 litres per living human being), has a turnover in excess of US$47 billion (about the same as the gross domestic product of Lithuania), and generates more than US$15 billion in profit for its shareholders. Not surprisingly, the company has a reputation for bland beers, cost cutting, buying and shutting breweries and other such shameful shenanigans. Therefore, many beer lovers (myself included) try to avoid their products, preferring to spend our hard-earned money supporting brewers that care more about taste and quality. However, as I was browsing the beer shelves in my local supermarket the other day, I failed to avoid noticing that Beck’s have jumped on the Craft Beer Bandwagon (CBB), launching three new beers on the market: an amber lager, a pale ale and a “traditional” pilsner (called “1873 pils” in reference to the year that Beck’s was originally founded), and providing the consumers with a very handy 3-pack containing one of each, making the purchase process very smooth indeed.

Needless to say, I saw it as my sacred duty to you, the faithful readers of this blog, to purchase one bottle of each of these and conduct a tasting session, to save you from having to go through this potentially costly and painful experience yourselves – and so it came to pass that last night a few weeks ago, I opened said three bottles and poured them into a glass with a minimum of pomp but an appropriate amount of circumstance. The first one out was the 1873 Pils, and it poured nicely – as you would expect, it left the bottle willingly once I had remembered to remove the bottle top and tilted the bottle the required amount, and since I had cunningly positioned the glass underneath, nothing was spilled. There was some head, which is always nice, though this disappeared disappointingly quickly, which on the positive side gave me a golden excuse to drink the beer faster. On the nose, the beer felt wet and a little bit fizzy, but once it found its way down my gullet it revealed a fair amount of taste. Where most German pilsners from the north are quite dry and hoppy, this one was malty and had a touch of sweetness. Certainly not unpleasant, but not something to write a poem about either, except possibly a mediocre limerick.

It's pils as it was back in 1873, apparently.

Next up was the Amber Lager. Some of my favourite lagers are amber and some of my favourite ambers are lagers, so I had high hopes that this would be one that would make its forefathers in Vienna proud. Unfortunately, it was on the bland side. Not unpleasant, just lacking something – a bit like a bee happily buzzing around pollenating some fairly attractive flowers, but knowing in its tiny little heart that if it had only found an extra “r” it could be a beer instead.

Don't underestimate the power of the amber side.

Finally, there was the Pale Ale. This had more hops and certainly a more flowery sort of taste, though this was also miles away from some of the finer interpretations of the style both in terms of the overall attack on the taste buds as well as the subtler aspects. However, credit should be given for a decent effort – it was quite drinkable, and I finished the whole bottle without having to force anything down. I could go on about notes of freshly mown grass and lightly used badminton rackets, but for some reason such descriptions never enter my head whilst drinking, only when I sit down afterwards to write about a taste I have long since forgotten… so I won’t.

It's pale and presumably ale, but is it pale ale?

In confusion, this was an eminently forgettable, but nevertheless not unpleasant drinking session. My prediction is that these beers will disappear from the market as suddenly as they appeared, and looking at their web site just now this is exactly what seems to have happened – the focus is back on the standard pils and the crazy mixtures they concoct up there in Bremen, like beer mixed with lemon, lime and other citrus fruits that really should go nowhere near a decent brewery’s drink portfolio. Never mind – Beck’s marketing department probably has an idea or two on how to continue to contribute healthily to AB InBev’s profits, and they don’t need my help, even though I’d be happy to provide expert advice for a very reasonable 10% cut. Meanwhile, I shall shift my attention to other parts of Europe – I have travelled a bit lately, which has enabled me to expand my beery horizons even further. In other words – stay tuned. As they say in Thailand despite the fact that I haven't been there for 20 years: Chok dee!

The other Switzerland

If you’re a seasoned traveller in Europe, you probably have a fair idea where both France and Switzerland are situated on the map, and you may even know that these two countries in German are known as “Frankreich” and “Schweiz”. What may come as a surprise to you, though, is that a large section of what is technically Bavaria doesn’t like to call itself Bavarian at all – rather, the proud inhabitants call this region “Franken”, in English referred to as “Franconia”, and a sub-section of this even calls itself “Switzerland” – or “Fränkische Schweiz” in the native tongue. Sounds complicated? Well, at least there’s a pretty solid reason for you to find this place on the map and book your next holiday immediately because this, ladies and gentlemen, is the region with the highest density of breweries in the world. Furthermore, these are not just any breweries, these are old, family-owned small breweries that soldier on in tiny villages, serving the local population and a handful of tourists with some of the best beers known to mankind.

The natural focal point for beer lovers in Franconia is, of course, the city of Bamberg. This city is so charming and pretty that every other city in Europe effectively ends up looking like a rubbish tip in comparison. It also has a crapload of breweries and it is the spiritual home of the “rauchbier”, or smoked beer in English, a beer style that for beginners may come as a shock since it tastes suspiciously like bacon, but for those who like this sort of thing is just about reason enough to move there. However, Bamberg has become rather touristy of late, so if you want to head off the beaten path you should rent a beer-friendly vehicle like a bike or a toy tractor and head off eastwards towards Switzerland (as it were).

When you arrive there, it’ll be immediately unclear why it’s called Switzerland since it looks nothing like its bigger (and much more expensive) sister country to the south. There are a few hills and some rocks sticking up, but no banks, no holey cheese, no yodelling and not a single referendum in sight. However, unlike the other one, you’re not unlikely to accidentally crash your bike or tractor into a brewery, because there are several of these on every street corner. Well, that was a bit of an exaggeration, but there are literally a couple of hundred dotted around an area not much bigger than a relatively small section of Belgium.

Once you’re there, one great way to explore the region is to park your bike or tractor and proceed on foot. There are several beer trails of varying lengths that coincidentally lead you past a brewery every kilometre or five, where you can stop for suitable refreshment. One of these is simply called the “Brauereiweg”, or “Brewery Way”, a very simple and ingenious name for a 13km long countryside walk that crashes into four very nice little breweries along the way. The great thing about the walk is that you can sober up a little bit between breweries, the great thing about the beer is that it makes the walk so much more fun, causing people to break into song, cow-tipping and other shenanigans along the way.

The Kathi-Bräu in Franconian Switzerland

Then there’s the beer. Oh, the beer. My talent for waxing lyrical falls light years short of the kind of celestial celebration I would like to write in its honour, but I will attempt it nevertheless. Picture Bach, Beethoven and Mozart getting together for a little jam session where they would combine their talents to compose the greatest symphony ever written, and picture listening to this in the most beautiful place you can imagine, such as a particularly nice pub. That would perhaps come close to the sensory experience of taking a sip of one of the beers that these breweries make. OK, perhaps this was slightly exaggerated and somewhat influenced by the sensory enhancing effects of the beers themselves, but you get my point. There aren’t many places in this world where you can drink better stuff, and you can perhaps even remove the “m” in “many”, though I have not been everywhere yet so I can’t be sure.

Another brewery, another beer.

For those of you who may wonder what the beers are like from a more down-to-earth point of view, I also have some information. First, there’s no Pilsner and second, the lightest beer colour you’re likely to see is amber. Most of the breweries brew only one or perhaps two beers, and the main one will be the style known as “Landbier” or “Vollbier”. These are malty, yet very well balanced brews that are full-bodied without being sweet, refreshing without being tart, and served cold without being frosty. Make sure that you order the brewery’s own beer on tap (“vom Fass”) – they may also stock some bottles from well-known national brands just to cater for those who think McDonald’s is a restaurant.

As if by magic, we came across yet another brewery.

As mentioned, there are many brewery walks in this region, and it is possible to do circular, triangular, square, straight and gay walks spanning anything from a couple of hours to several days. Some breweries even offer comfortable lodging, and if you can distract yourself long enough from the singing and cow-tipping whilst walking, you may also appreciate the scenery which is pleasantly rural with rolling hills, river valleys and occasional rocky parts where you may decide to climb up, fall down and kill yourself unless you bring a rope, in which case the rope may save your wife. Enough rambling (no pun unintended), the conclusion is simple: this is a great region for beer lovers, and you should make a pilgrimage at least once (a year). Explore Bamberg first, then rent the aforementioned bike or tractor and head towards Switzerland, do a few walks, drink some great beers, meet some new friends, say goodbye, meet the same new friends at the next brewery, and so on. You can’t go wrong, there are signs everywhere and it’s really confusing. As they say in Mongolia: Tulatsgaaya!!

New year – more beer!

January’s one of those months that seem to just zoom by in some kind of a blur. It always tends to start off on a great note – together with old friends for a great party, good food and beer, and a superb atmosphere as the clock strikes midnight. Unfortunately, the rest of January usually doesn’t follow up in the same vein, so the fact that we’re already in February is quite OK – the days are getting longer and what the Germans call the 5^th season – carnival time – is just around the corner. Loads of opportunities to drink good beer, in other words.

The reason I sit down here feeling inspired to write a blog entry is something that did happen in January, though: together with a couple of old friends from university, I went skiing in the Austrian Alps. This was very nice in its own right, but these great chaps had also thought further ahead and bought a few great beers from the duty free store as a gift for yours truly. And therefore, since the beer blogger always tries to acknowledge free beer by posting some ramblings on the internet about it, I will acknowledge the generosity of my friends by posting some ramblings on the internet about it.

One of the first and also most successful micro-breweries in Norway is called “Nøgne Ø”. You may think that this name has a lot of zeroes or other strange characters in it, but the letter “ø” is actually the 28^th one in the Norwegian alphabet. It’s quite simple: you take an “o” and you slash through it, and you get something that’s pronounced more or less the same as the vowel in “turd”. The brewery’s name translates simply as “naked island”, presumably a nudist's paradise, and their slogan is “the brewery that does not compromise”, presumably by refusing to wear clothes even in winter. These days their "no compromise" attitude rings a little bit hollow since they allowed themselves to be bought out by a big brewery multinational, but their beers are still very drinkable even though the brewery is situated in a place called “Grimstad” which means simply “ugly town” in Norwegian - a corresponding name in the English-speaking world may be "Shitville" or "Crapton". They don’t lie when they say that Norwegians tend to get straight to the point.

Once you go black....

Today’s beer was the “Imperial Stout”. Imperial, no less! Defined by the internet as “relating to an empire” – I guess only “global”, “solar systemal”, “milky wayal” and “universal” would trump that. It is also interesting since Norway is one of the few countries that have never been part of an empire, even though the empire did strike back in Norway when they filmed it up in the freezing mountains back in 1980. This beer is black. In fact, it’s so black that it seems that it sucks the light out of the room, like a black hole. It’s also very thick – like crude oil with a head, only much more expensive and, hopefully, better tasting. And tasty it was – a full frontal assault on the taste buds, delivering massive amounts of firepower to make you instantly forget whatever else you had been tasting that day. In fact, it’s got notes of every single taste you’ve ever come across except apricots and aardvark droppings, so even though the beer was great there’s clearly room for improvement. I hereby confidently predict that they will release a “Universal Stout” later this year that will have notes of every single taste known to man and/or woman (and/or his/her dog).

So, what else is going on? Germans have a great way of saying this: “was ist los?” Which just goes to show that not all German words have 17 or more letters in them, unlike “Dampfbierbrauerei” which is a great little brewery in Oberstdorf, way down south in the Bavarian Alps. We went there to do some skiing, but since it got dark conveniently early we also managed to fit in a couple of hours in this fantastic place where you can sit at the bar and look at the staff dispensing huge amounts of beer that has been brewed in the kettle situated just behind the bar. The brewery is right next to the train station, so if you’re somewhere in Europe you can always think of these great beers as just a train ride away.

Well, the effects of the Imperial Stout are slowly wearing off, so inspiration is turning to tiredness, which means that I better wrap this post up before I start yakking on about things that nobody really cares about, like trees. Don’t get me wrong, I love trees, especially oak, which is one of the most suitable trees for making oak barrels in which you can mature beer. But you see my point, this is a beer blog and not a tree blog, so I’ll try to stick to that. Finally, I wish you all a great beery 2015, or at least what’s left of it. As they say in large parts of East Africa: Maisha marefu!

Seeking the Aurora Beerealis

As some of the regular readers of this blog may have realized by now, I stem from the country of Norway, which is situated way north of most sensible latitudes in Europe. Sharing a border with my home country is another country called Finland, also a weird place, covered in snow and saunas. However, should you happen to look really carefully at the map, you may find a third country stuck between the two aforementioned ones – and if you can be bothered to look up the statistics for this country you’ll also find that it is both bigger and more populous than either. This, dear beer lover, is the country of Sweden.

Sweden is a country with a long history of aggressive behaviour. A few hundred years ago, the king would round up an army at regular intervals and go marauding down in central Europe, mainly to escape the long winter nights and the endless supply of pickled herring back home. The army would pillage, rape and murder, but eventually they’d meet someone who could actually fight and promptly retreat homewards. Finally, after many years of such expensive tomfoolery, they simply decided that they preferred pickled herring and long winter nights and declared themselves forever neutral.

Having finished the mandatory history lesson, you now know pretty much all that’s worth knowing about Sweden – except what the beer situation is like. It’s really lucky that I’m writing this blog entry now and not 10 years ago, because back then it would have been summarized in a single word: simply awful. The sober ones amongst you may have realized that this was three words. Never mind. My point is: Sweden’s beer scene has actually improved massively, and can now be summarized in four words: not as awful as it used to be.

Sweden, like most countries, used to have loads of local and regional breweries that would output stuff suitable to quench the thirst of the local populace. The story continues as expected: as transport improved and capitalism started to bite, breweries got bought out by others, and the beer scene steadily converged on a handful of national brands, which then got bought out by the big international you-know-whos. The unusual thing about Sweden, though, is that the politicians decided to add a bureaucratic twist to the story by banning the sale of beers above a certain alcohol percentage from being sold in normal stores – more or less exactly what was done in Norway, too. The depressing thing about Sweden is that they set the limit at 3.5% instead of the Norwegian’s more sensible 4.7% - which means that all normal beer styles can no longer be sold in normal shops.

What followed was a disaster for people who like good beer. The 3.5% limit meant that all breweries focused on alcohol percentage rather than taste – the stuff in the normal shops was weak and undrinkable, whereas the stronger stuff sold in the state-controlled shops known as “Systembolaget” was, well, stronger – but still pretty much undrinkable, even though it at least did a decent job in getting you drunk. In fact, for many years Swedes would simply order "en stor stark", which translates as "a big strong", in this case meaning beer, completely without regard to which beer style or brewery was behind the alcoholic beverage that would subsequently appear in your glass. Luckily, the story does not end here. Slowly, but surely, the Systembolaget shops started to put foreign beers on the shelves, and discerning Swedes (and foreigners in Sweden) realized that there were other types of beer than just “weak” and “strong”.

Rewind forward a dozen years or so, and the Systembolaget stocks hundreds of imported beers as well as a reasonable selection of new Swedish beers made by recently established breweries keen to join the beer revolution. Since my arse is currently sat on a lovely Swedish wooden chair in the far-north city of Luleå, and since I have just had the pleasure of trying 3 of these Swedish beers, I thought I’d write an insanely long introduction before getting to the main point of this blog entry: beer.

Typical Swedish strong beer - nowadays brewed by Spendrup's

Oh, before I forget, since I may have been slightly unkind to Sweden at the beginning of this text, I will now try to balance this by saying that I find both the beer selection and the prices in the Systembolaget (conveniently situated around the corner from my hotel) excellent, especially seen with my Norwegian eyes. Both Norway and Sweden have a reputation for eye-wateringly high taxes on alcohol, but the beer is still about HALF the price in Swedish shops. This, of course, reminds me of the Great Scandinavian Beer Relay: Norwegians pop across the border to buy cheap Swedish beer, the Swedes pop across to Denmark to buy even cheaper beer, and the Danes to the same thing in Germany. I took the shortcut straight to Germany.

So what have I been drinking today to inspire such a wonderfully eloquent entry? Well, I started off with a St Eriks IPA. This brewery is situated in the wonderful capital of Sweden, Stockholm, a city worth visiting for many reasons, not least the chance of visiting the former pride of the Swedish navy, the Wasa, a ship so fantastic that it capsized in calm weather about 1300 metres (yes, metres - less than a mile for the lovers of imperial units) into its maiden voyage and then spent the next 300 years on the bottom of the sea before being salvaged and put into a rather magnificent museum. The St Eriks IPA certainly did not capsize, although I have to say that it didn’t massively impress either – good, but not great.

Next up was the Organic Ale from Sigtuna brewery. Sigtuna is a small town situated just outside Stockholm, and was apparently founded by the Vikings more than 1000 years ago. The brewery is considerably newer, having been founded in 2005. As it happens, their internet pages have just told me that this brewery shares its premises with St Erik. Oh well, I guess this might explain why this beer was also good, but not great. It’s a pleasant beer but without anything to set it apart from the bunch.

The final beer was from a brewery called “Oppigårds”, and the very promising label said “Thurbo Double IPA”. My expectations were unsurprisingly sky high, and in this case the beer did not disappoint. This was a hoppilicious beer, a bit like hopping on a hop field whilst chewing hop gum and being generally hoppy. In fact, I have already thought about immediately planning to write to them and suggest that they change the brewery name to “Hoppigårds”. If you’re now chuckling to yourself, rest assured that you have the same crappy sense of humour as the author, also known to myself simply as “I”.

OK, what’s the conclusion? Well, don’t go to Sweden just because of the beer. The same can be said about the food, the scenery, the weather and the skiing. However, Sweden is a bit like the Volvo – safe, without being terribly exciting. You might find that it’s the combination of many things that makes Sweden a worthwhile place to visit. That, and the Wasa ship. Imagine making one of the world's greatest museums out of your biggest, most embarrassing naval disaster. This alone is worth a trip, and when you’re in Stockholm you might as well drink a few tasty beers from the new breweries that have sprung up in the last decade or so. Have fun, and don’t forget to skål with the locals. Skål!

Back to Bavaria once again!

Every so often, when I travel around Germany for no, one or perhaps several good reasons, I come across strange little places that somehow stick out from the bunch. Most villages in Germany are actually pretty boring – they usually consist of a few well-kept houses clustered around a through road, with perhaps a church, a bakery and – if you’re really lucky – a pub to add a minor amount of interest. The two things that can make a German village leap from complete obscurity to a permanent place in my consciousness are a splendid name and the presence of a brewery.

Village names are usually forgotten as soon as you’ve cycled through, but since there are almost as many villages as there are people in Germany, some are bound to differentiate themselves by naming themselves a bit more adventurously. It could be argued that a handful have taken this too far – the village of “Fucking” situated on the German-Austrian border certainly have their fair share of people driving through with screwdrivers and angle cutters to purloin the signs. There are a few other ones that were no doubt named some time before English became the world language – my favourites, though, are the ones that don’t make sense in English (or any other language I know), but simply sound funny. Which brings me to the main topic of this blog post: beer.

I may have mentioned once or twice that I like beer and that Germany has both good beer and an amazing number of breweries. The fact that I, who likes beer, live in Germany and travel to Bavaria whenever I have the chance, is a happy coincidence. And so it came to pass that, for my lovely wife’s birthday weekend last week, I booked us a nice escape in, you guessed it, Bavaria. I managed to wrap the weekend present in fluffy things such as a gourmet meal, a race, a trip to the local spa/swimming complex and a bit of geocaching, all of which camouflaged the beer hunting agenda very nicely, except that I had made the somewhat obvious “mistake” of booking a hotel next to the local brewery, namely the Löwenbräu (incidentally a very boring brewery name) in Bad Wörishofen. The “bad” actually means “bath”, and was something just about every town that discovered some kind of natural spring decided to stick in front of their name to attract the hordes of tourists that seek to immerse their corpulent bodies in the allegedly healing qualities of the water. There are so many of these “Bad” towns nowadays that the humorous value of reading the name in English has completely faded, with the obvious exception of “Bad Kissingen”.

Another brewery we stumbled  upon

Anyway, having enjoyed a very expensive, fancy and incredibly gourmet meal on my wife’s actual birthday, I managed to convince her to sneak in a little nightcap half-litre in the brewery’s very pleasant and cosy bar. Fresh beer straight from the brewery seldom fails to hit the mark, and the very sturdy beers they had on tap both impressed – the Urtrunk was quite dark, malty and full-bodied whereas the Helles was also malty, but unsurprisingly a bit spicier and lighter.

The real jewel around Bad Wörishofen is a place about 10km away, though – and I’m talking about none other than the world not very famous village of……… DIRLEWANG. Now there’s a village name straight from the top drawer. I have no idea how they managed to come up with such a classic, but considering they also had the sense to reject closing the local brewery, I now officially declare the village of Dirlewang the best tiny place in Germany to visit for between 5 and 10 minutes, unless you’re not driving in which case you should stop for a few beers. As it happened, I was in a car, but I nevertheless stopped for 4 beers, which I requested to be surrounded by brown glass and sealed with a crown cap, a bit like a working class king if you see what I mean. Anyway, the brewery bar itself was an interesting place – probably refurbished sometime just after the Napoleonic Wars and populated by a bunch of geezers who were a smidgeon too young to have fought in them. The reception was friendly though, even though the local dialect can be a challenge, and I was allowed to take away said 4 beers for the princely price of €3.20, which I rounded up to €4 to ensure that the brewery remains profitable.

Why am I telling you all this? Mainly because I haven’t got anything else to say and that I have just tried one of the four beers, just to celebrate the end of yet another working day. And boy was the beer good, in fact even better quality than the work I did today, which wasn’t too bad either. A satisfyingly full body was livened by just the right amount of hoppy spiciness to ensure a pleasurable passage down my thirsty throat. The best news is that I still have two beers left from Dirlewang as well as a six-pack from a very nice brewery in Ottobeuren as well as a few more local ones that I picked up in a bottle shop. Feel free to pop by for a little tasting session.

A real Dirlewanger waiting to be consumed

All good things must come to an end, they say, and so it was with both the weekend in Bavaria, the bottle of beer from Dirlewang and this blog post. All that remains is to observe that the evening is dark and that the temperature is dropping. This, surely, means that winter is around the corner, and that the Christmas beer is sitting somewhere, maturing, and waiting to be wheeled into the shops and supermarkets, or – if you’re in Norway – the state-controlled monopoly outlets. The only benefit of this monopoly is that they’ve got a catalogue of all the beers you can supposedly buy there, so it makes it much easier to compose your Christmas wish list. In fact, perhaps I’ll just send the entire catalogue off to Santa Claus’ North Pole lair and hope he doesn’t drink it all before he delivers it down the chimney in time for the annual Christmas beer tasting. As they say amongst the Inuits up in that part of the world: Inuuhiqatsiaq!

Beer of Flying

I’ve been flying a lot lately. I like travelling, and end up jetting around quite a lot both for business and pleasure. I also like beer, as some of you may have gathered by now. How, then, do these two things go together? Are there hoppy pleasures to be had thirty thousand feet off the ground? These are questions I know most of you have been tempted to consider dying to ask, so I thought I’d share my experiences with you on this absolutely fascinating topic.

As with all serious subjects, a little historical background is a great way to waste a paragraph or two. Flying’s been around since some pre-historic birds first climbed up a convenient tree to fling themselves at the ground, and missed. However, it took a long time before humans developed wings – quite a few tried emulating the birds, but usually failed to miss hitting the ground in what was undoubtedly a very painful fashion, and so it wasn’t really until the Wright brothers combined two oversized ironing boards and a lawn mower on a beach in North Carolina in December 1903 that the concept of flying for humans really, and quite literally, took off. Humanity hasn’t looked back since, though quite often down.

The inflight service on the very first flight was probably quite limited, especially since it lasted less than a minute. Apparently, the first flight attendants appeared only about 30 years later, complete with a friendly smile and an appropriate amount of hard liquor to settle the nerves of the passengers, who back in those days had a relatively high chance of hitting the ground very hard and therefore regretting not taking the train. Luckily, the situation nowadays is very different – flying is just about the safest way to travel, so there’s absolutely no reason not to sit back, relax and enjoy a little luxury such as a fine brew or two, if only such pleasures had been widely available.

Those of you who have actually bothered to drag your arses to the nearest airport to board a sardine box that, in complete breach of most of the laws of physics, lifts itself from the ground and brings you relatively quickly (unless Icelandic Volcanoes are throwing some lava into the mix) to your preferred destination (unless you’ve made the classic mistake of boarding a plane to “Torquay” instead of “Turkey”, or “Dakar” instead of “Dhaka”), will know that (unless you’ve re-mortgaged your house to pay for business class) the stuff you get for free (or, more accurately, included) is, at best, very limited. In fact, many airlines won’t give you anything at all unless you pay extra through a nostril of your choice, though they usually accept credit cards. However, despite all this, most airlines do have at least one beer on offer.

A very common sight up there.

Unfortunately, the beer revolution that has resulted in an incredible increase in the number and styles of beers on offer in the average pub or supermarket has completely failed to lift off the ground. The average inflight trolley will contain a few cans of what is simply known as “beer”, whereas the wine buffs at least get to choose between “red” and “white”. To make matters worse, the “beer” on offer is typically one of the big industrial blands (sic), so if you fancy a “beer” with “taste”, you are probably out of luck. There are some exceptions though: the main airline in Switzerland, cunningly named “Swiss”, actually serves up quite a decent local beer from Appenzeller land (a rural Canton in the north-east for the many geography buffs among you), which – at least for people who like lager – has a nice hoppy taste. For the time being, Swiss is also one of the few airlines that will let you have a can or two without charging you for it. Not sure if this justifies always flying via Zurich regardless of where you want to go, but it’s clearly worth bearing in mind.

Quite a few cans of decent lager taking off.

Another airline that takes beer a little bit more seriously than most is good old British Airways. Last time I flew with BA, I actually had the choice of no fewer than FOUR beers, though since three of them were predictable global tasteless lagers, there wasn’t really much of a choice. The last one, though, was one of the fairly safe British bitters, namely London Pride. Never a truly great drinking experience, but hardly ever a disappointing one either, Pride for sure might just probably be perhaps the best beer you’re ever likely to get served in, on or above the clouds.

Having said that, a bit of internet research reveals that, mirroring the situation on the ground, North American airlines seem to provide both the worst and best beers in the sky. Some of the biggest airlines (which I have flown with), which I shall refrain from naming and shaming, stick to the old “making love in a canoe” ones, whereas at least a handful (including Alaska Airlines and Virgin America, neither of which I have been on) have started serving craft beers – a round of applause is merited, I think. I clearly need to travel more.

So who’s the winner? Which is the world’s best beerline? I can't decide, so I'm just going to say that it’s the train. It may be slower, but this simply means more time to savour your beer – and best of all, you can buy a couple of great beers and bring them on board with you. Apparently, it’s more environmentally friendly too, although getting to Canada, Australia and Japan from Europe on the train remains a bit of a challenge.

On this lofty note I shall end this informative and highly entertaining blog post, and wish you all a lovely autumn (or spring, should you read this from the southern hemisphere). My advice to you for the coming weeks until the next post appears is to drink beerfully, fly high, train hard and don’t worry – be hoppy. As they say in Finland: Kippis!

Try Trier!

Every year, exactly 7 weeks after the predictably unpredictable holiday we call Easter, occurs another, slightly shorter holiday, which in English is known as Whitsunday. In Germany and some other countries that like their days off, the Monday following more or less directly after Whitsunday is a public holiday. The main reason for this extra holiday, regardless of when it happens to show up in any given year, is to drink beer. Therefore, my wife and I headed off to one of the few cities in Germany where I hadn’t been, which also happens to be the oldest, namely Trier, mainly because it is one of the few that rhymes with Bier – which is German for beer. With such a cunningly clucked out plan, what could possibly go wrong?

Well, for starters I had booked the train to get there. Despite the Germans’ reputation for efficiency, their train system seems to be riddled with delays, which caused us to miss a connection, get re-routed through an entirely different region and arrive nine minutes late. As a result, all the beer drinking of the weekend was delayed by nine minutes, though I am not sure if this made a huge difference.

Trier was founded by the Romans, those dodgy wine-drinking folks that spread their forums, amphitheatres and hot baths around most of Europe before imploding in their own orgies. It is situated on the river Mosel, which meanders its way through vineyards and pretty towns, before emptying into the great river Rhine. Unsurprisingly, Trier has a lot of history, and also some pretty passable Roman ruins that you can enjoy looking at if you’re into that sort of thing.

The "Black Gate" (Porta Negra), Trier's most famous Roman building

The best thing about sight-seeing is that it makes you very thirsty, so it wasn’t long before we set off in search of the first Trier Bier. Always trying to increase our productivity by doing multiple things simultaneously, we were also busy pondering the following question: if you, like me, like to try beers, are you then a beer trier? Whilst mulling over this we observed something slightly odd: no matter where we looked – east, west, north, south, up, down, left, right or anywhere in between, the beer on offer was called Bitburger. This is a beer I’ve had many times before, as it is one of the biggest brands in Germany. There’s nothing wrong with it – it can, in fact, be quite good at times – but it wasn’t what I had arrived nine minutes late for. I was, of course, aware of the fact that the town of Bitburg, presumably named after the brewery, is situated only a couple of dozen kilometres from Trier, but I hadn’t quite expected such outrageous dominance. So, I gave in and order one. It was refreshing, quite tasty and in many respects acceptably local. However, I wanted more.

As it turned out, a 10-minute walk past the amphitheatre, my favourite people in Trier had founded my favourite place in Trier back in 1998 – the exquisite little brewery known as “Kraft Bräu”, where they not only brew their own beer, they also allowed me to drink as much of it as I liked. This fantastic combination was hard to resist, and given the lack of other choices in Trier I thought why not, give me the beer menu (they had two) and let’s get to work. Their standard beers were the same as most places in Germany: a light Helles, a dark Dunkles, and a wheat beer. These were all very good – unfiltered and refreshing, just right for everyday drinking, especially on a hot day (it was a hot day). Then they had their “special selection” – a pale ale, an IPA, an outrageous IPA and a pilsner. Combined with a lovely beer garden, perfect weather, superb food and a relaxed atmosphere, this place was so good that we just had to come back.

Fantastic brews from Trier's only remaining brewery

Another feature of Trier is its proximity to one of Europe’s most anonymous nations, namely Luxembourg. A small super-rich country which has seemingly never offended anyone, and therefore stays out of the news and most people’s consciousness. However, a country is a country and if I have the chance to drink a beer in it, I surely will. Thus, we rented bikes and set off on the lovely cycle path along the river until we crossed a bridge which also turned out to be the border. Gone were all the signs with “Bitburger” written on them, replaced by signs saying “Bofferding”. This mysterious-sounding beer turned out to be… very drinkable. And that’s just about all there is to say about Luxembourg, because after we finished our beers we caught what must be one of the shortest international ferry journeys in the world (sixty-seven and a half seconds) back to Germany, thus avoiding crossing the same bridge twice. The cycle ride back generated just enough thirst to warrant another visit to Kraft Bräu, where the beers turned out to be even better now that the weather was even hotter.

Luxembourg! The country is considerably bigger than the beer mat.

The last day in Trier, just before the train was due to leave, we noticed that there were loads of people drinking wine, and we also heard a rumour that the Mosel Valley is world famous for its wines. As this was the only thing you could drink in Trier not made by Bitburger, we decided to try some. Oh well, we all make mistakes sometimes.

Waiting for the international ferry (sadly no duty free onboard).

Since everything was nine minutes delayed due to our unfortunate late arrival, it came as no surprise that our return train was also nine minutes late. The unfortunate thing about this was that we then missed our connection to the only train that ran on time in Germany on this particular day. We then proceeded to make our way home on trains that, at some time or another, had every possible delay between 5 and 105 minutes. Needless to say, this was great fun, and we made inappropriate jokes about all the world’s train systems except the Swiss one (which we only made appropriate jokes about) until we arrived back home sometime in the middle of the night.

In conclusion, Trier was a nice and interesting place to visit, but the dominance of a single pilsner-only brewery makes it a little bit boring in this respect. However, if you search you will sometimes find, which applies to both geocaching and breweries – and so it came to pass that both the beer blogger and his wife found what they were looking for. A couple of weeks later, we completed an epic journey from Copenhagen to Karlsruhe by bike and beer, so check out this blog in a few weeks’ time and perhaps you'll be lucky enough to find a summery summary. Until then: Zum Skål!