Author: Chris

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New beergeek.TV Episode – Franconia

“Franconia” is the latest Year in Beer episode of One Pint at a Time.

Boasting the largest concentration of breweries in the world, almost 300, Franconia is a beer traveler’s dream. From the famous breweries of Bamberg to the small family-run village brewhouses, the Franconian beer experience never disappoints. Add in a great beer festival and Franconia might be the ultimate beer destination.

For the Year in Beer, we check out a few of the breweries and attend the Bergkirchweih Beer Festival.

For all the episodes of One Pint at a Time go to beergeekTV.

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Three Crazy Days

The last three days of our trip were quite a crazy whirlwind of beer drinking, travel and punk. We finished the Year in Beer portion of our trip on Tuesday and drove to Cologne to meet up with Ute and Wolfgang for the first of three Flogging Molly shows on successive nights.

In the course of the three days, we got to meet a lot of new people and catch up with some old friends. Oh… and there was plenty of beer.

YiB-5We arrived in Cologne around 3pm, [By the way, avoid driving on A3 between Würzburg and Frankfurt until sometime in 2010] quickly dropped our bags off at our hotel, and walked the 30 meters to Früh am Dam. Früh is one of the more well-known Kölsch breweries and after a long day of travel, 10 or 12 small glasses of beer are just what were needed. Our group of six managed to down 40 glasses with Wolfie and myself accounting for the lions share. Check out the hash marks on the coaster.

Kölsch drinking tip: when you don’t want another, put a beer mat on top of your glass.

By the way, the Flogging Molly show was great . It was the first time we had seen them in Europe and we were blown away not only by the band, but also by the enthusiasm of the crowd.

Wednesday began bright and early since we had a 10am flight to Munich. Nothing like getting back to your hotel room at 1am and having to be at the airport at 8am the following day.

A little Munich travel tip: the airport has it’s own brewpub, Airbrau, in the central area, complete with a biergarten. We chose this as an opportunity to grab a quick beer before we boarded the S-Bahn into the city. We were also joined by a friend of Ute and Wolfie’s, Tina.

Typical of Bavaria, Airbrau had a Helles and Hefe Weizen, both of which were quite enjoyable.

The bonus was the biergarten; something I didn’t realize that was there. It was a beautiful day in Munich and the beer, the company, and the sun helped in the recovery from the long day and night before.

In the city center and feeling recharged, it was time for us to show our German friends around Munich. None of the three Germans we were with had spent much time in Munich. Due to time constraints, we got to do about one percent of what we wanted to show them.

First stop was the Weisses Brauhaus, the Schneider Weiss beer hall right off the Marien Platz. Besides the great Weiss beer, the main reason we wanted to go there was so that Wolfgang could do battle with the waitresses who can, at times, be a little snarky. But after years of waiting for this moment, our waitress was very nice and we had a pleasant time sitting in the sun and enjoying beer. Actually, the waitresses are more or less nice all the time – just at night and when it is really busy, they can be a tad short which is hard due to the language difference.

But soon it was time to get serious, and in Munich that means ein maß – beer by the liter. So, we headed around the corner to Hofbrauhaus and started the party for real.

Yes, the Hofbrauhaus can be touristy, but that is mainly at night and on the weekends. On a sunny weekday afternoon, it is very pleasant sitting in their biergarten drinking beers with your friends, new and old.

Finally, it was off to the to the Flogging Molly show. The venue, located on the Isar River had, of course, a biergarten. So, the liters began flowing anew. And even better, we weren’t kicked out after the show so we got to hang out in the biergarten again and talk to some of the band members.

After another late night, it was off to Vienna on Thursday morning. But this time, we were taking the train, so not only did we not have to be at an airport way too early, but also the four hour train ride gave us an opportunity to get more sleep.

This was our first trip to Vienna and we only had 24 hours. I will say straight out that we didn’t see many of the sites, except doing a quick Clark Griswold-esque tour of the city center.

But we did get to two of the Viennese brewpubs. And I have to give credit for the two we visited for stepping outside the lager box and actually brewing some ales as well.

The first, 1516 Brewery is located in the city center, a short distance from the Hofburg – the imperial palace. I stuck with the lager styles… a Lager and a Pilsner. I wanted to try their their Bavarian Dunkel, but didn’t get a chance. They also brewed a dry-hopped Irish Stout and served Victory’s Hop Devil on tap. By the way, 1516 is looking for help and speaking German is not a requirement.

The venue Flogging Molly played, the Open Air Arena, was pretty cool. It was an old slaughterhouse converted into an almost-too-hip concert venue with five or six different stages. Scattered throughout the complex of buildings are some cool bars serving a number of different Austrian lagers.

We visited the second brewpub, 7 Stern Bräu, the next day before we had to fly to Frankfurt. Located near the Neubaugasse U-Bahn stop, 7 Stern has good food, a nice biergarten and some excellent beer.

I tried their Helles, Dunkles and IPA. The Dunkles was the star of the bunch, but I have to say the IPA was surprisingly good. Not the 75+ IBUs that we come to expect on the West Coast but well-balanced and hoppy.

They also brewed a Chili beer, which I tasted and found a little too spicy. I don’t like my beer to burn going down.

I would like to thank Ute and Wolfgang for being the great friends they are and for introducing us to some new friends… Tina, Stefan, Annie, Simon, Klemens, Felix, Lucas, Bianca… I certainly hope I didn’t forget anyone…

 

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A Holy-Day in Germany

YiB-5The first order of business on Monday was to head back to Bamberg. The problem was that Monday was a holiday – and a religious holiday at that. Unlike the States where everything is open, a holiday in Germany means everything is closed (except for restaurants we later discovered). By the way, I think the holiday is Pfingstmontag.

So, it was with a bit of worry that we approached Maisel Brau and much to our relief we saw a sandwich board out front – they were open.

But where were all the people? It was another beautiful, sunny day – a holiday and the biergarten was practically empty. Perplexed, we had a beer, Merideth a Pils and myself a Kellerbier, and decided to head into the Aldtstadt and to Bamberger Biertage.

We really weren’t sure what “Bamberg Beer Days” was about, but we figured that there would be beer and maybe that was where all the people were. What we remember about Bamberg from last June was that it was wall to wall people. But when we started walking from the parking garage to Maximillian Platz, where the beer days was being held, it was like walking through a ghost town. Still no people.

We found the plaza and it was completely empty. There were scores of empty tables and each Bamberg brewery had an empty booth. We finally saw a sign and the fun didn’t start until 4pm – four hours away.

But all was not lost. There was a booth selling bottles of beer and we were able to procure four bottles for our beer tasting after assuring the woman we were not going to be drinking them there. And on an interesting note, the beer we purchased was the one we lost last year in the broken bottle disaster at LAX.

Undaunted, we decided to do the only thing one should do on a religious holiday – visit a monastery. Of course, this one had a brewery, Altes Klosterbrauerei. Why else would we be there? Funny thing is that I’m not even sure of the name of the monastery.

After an unexpected long-ish walk up a hill, we found all the people we had been expecting in Bamberg. Granted not everyone was there to drink beer, rather they were there to view the ornate monastery buildings and maybe even buy something at one of the cheesy shops selling every manner of religious object.

But a number of people, like us, found the pleasant beer garden above the cathedral. The brewery only had two beers, a Pils and a Dunkel, but you really didn’t need much more choice than that.

We ordered a couple beers and grabbed a seat overlooking the cathedral. It is hard to describe the peaceful feeling of relaxing in a beer garden; basking in the sun, enjoying the tranquility and a beer. To me, this sums up beer travel in Germany.

 

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We’re Back in Germany

YiB-5It is good to be back in Germany. This is our seventh visit to Germany and we have never been disappointed in our travels through this country. While we have only added two new breweries to our list so far, it hasn’t been for a lack of trying.

We arrived Friday late morning after two uneventful flights. Our plan was to go to a brewery in Ochsenfurt, have some lunch and then head on to our final destination of the day. We found the brewery just fine but they didn’t have any attached restaurant like I thought they did. Undaunted, we walked into town and had lunch at a small restaurant and did get to enjoy the brewery’s beers. Unfortunately, the brewery doesn’t make the list.

We spent the first night in a small town called Neuhaus at Hotel Zum Löwenbräu which is a brewery hotel. The brewery hotel is one of mankind’s greatest inventions and we have found the ones in Germany to be the nicest and least expensive places to stay. Plus, you’re guaranteed good German food and beer just a few paces from your room.

While we were enjoying dinner at the hotel on Friday night, we were wondering where all the people were. Neuhaus was a small town and the place we were staying was the only restaurant in town. On our walk the next morning, we discovered the Löwenbräu Felsenkeller, their beer garden in the the forest. It looked really cool and we figured that was where everyone was the previous evening. So, if you are ever in Neuhaus, check out the Felsenkeller.

After our walk on Saturday morning, we decided to head into Bamberg to get two of the breweries that we had missed last year. Admittedly, I could have done a bit more research, but I assumed that if we get there at noon, everything would be fine. Wrong. One didn’t open until 2pm and the other 5pm. And what we thought was funny was that on Sunday, both opened at 11am.

Denied beers in Bamberg, we headed down to Erlangen to get settled before the Bergkirchweih on Saturday night. Up the street from our hotel is the Kitzmann brewery and unlike every other place we had been to that day, it opens at 10am. So at 3pm, we enjoyed the first beers of the day and the requisite German food consisting mainly of pork.

Then it was on to the Bergkirchweih Beer Festival. The woman at the hotel desk gave us a good luck warning when we told her we were in Erlangen for the festival. Last year, we went on the last weekend. Yesterday it was the first weekend. And as you can probably guess, it was a different experience. On the last weekend, the Berg is pretty mellow; the locals are probably beer-ed out, granted a concept hard to attach to Germans.

However, the locals were going all out yesterday. And it helped that the weather was perfect; between 75 and 80 degrees.

We arrived around 5pm and easily found a table and got our first liter; we were sharing at first since it was going to be a long evening.

After talking with a German family from Bayreuth who had joined us at our table, we walked around and reminisced about the places we were just 11 months ago. We sat here… that’s the tent where the mean waitress gave us the over-salted radish… there is the oxen roasting place… It’s odd to be nostalgic about such recent events but it was on our trip last June that we embarked on our beergeek.TV adventure. So, it was interesting to be back, remembering how green we were less than a year ago.

While the festival was manageable during daylight, once it got dark, the throngs arrived and the Berg became this one big mass of drunken people.

Merideth did engage in that German tradition of drinking liters of beer and going on fast, whirling carnival rides. Someone did puke on Merideth’s ride, but it wasn’t her.

Tomorrow is Mother’s Day, so I assume the Berg is going to be mellow… at least until the sun sets.

 

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New beergeek.TV Episode – Seattle

YiB-4“Seattle Revisted” is the latest Year in Beer episode of One Pint at a Time.

We’ll be the first to admit that we were skeptical of Seattle’s lofty beer reputation. We’ll also admit that it was mainly due to a lack of knowledge about the extent of their beer scene.

We knew we needed to blaze a non-tourist path to really experience Seattle’s beer culture. That’s why we enlisted the help of our friend, Chris Devlin, to show us a local’s perspective.

For all the episodes of One Pint at a Time go to beergeekTV.