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beer reviews Franconia pubs

Wuerzburg part 1 – Distelhaeuser @ Alte Mainzmuehle Gasthof

We’ve been to Wuerzburg before, and thoroughly enjoyed the place, so we scheduled a stopover this time round. We’ve drunk in most of the places in Ron’s guide but we had a couple of aims this time. Firstly, to visit the Wuerzburger Hof brewery tap, and secondly to revisit one of our favourite restaurant-pubs, the Alte Mainzmuehle.

This is situated right on the old bridge, overlooking the Main. It’s more of a restaurant than a pub, but it’s not stuffy or formal. It’s worth mentioning because the food is a cut above what you normally get in pubs, without being pricy or pretentious. You can get hearty German food or lighter alternatives.

They have a full range from Distelhaeuser on tap. The Landbier is extremely refreshing – it’s not very carbonated, and has hints of liquorice, despite being pale. The “dinkel” is golden-brown, with a thick body and hints of chocolate. We think it’s a bit stronger than the rest, possibly slightly bock-y, and they only serve it in 0.5l krugs. We’d assumed that “Dinkel” was a funny regional variation on “Dunkel”, but in fact it’s German for “spelt”, and is indeed made from that grain. It’s lovely, complex stuff.

The Weizen is wonderful – as well as the usual banana and clove, there a hints of pineapple and peach, with more hops than usual. Not sweet either, which is great.

The pils was a pleasant surprise – we were expecting this to be more boring, but it had a good sulphurous nose, a fruity-spicy-malt flavour (peach, fennel) and a lovely bitter finish. Clean, yet complex, with a long aftertaste.

We’re intrigued by Distelhaeuser. They’ve obviously moved beyond the quaint village Hausbrauerei stage, given they have a number of outlets in Wuerzburg, but they’re clearly keen to maintain Franconian traditions (having a Landbier, for example) and rant against mass production on their beer mats. The Dinkel beer shows a willingness to innovate as well.

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beer reviews breweries Germany pubs

A visit to Speyer

Speyer is a nice day trip from Heidelberg, particularly on a rainy day. There’s a huge cathedral and a great Technik museum where you can climb on old Russian Antonov transporter planes and look close up at a bewildering array of fire engines, limousines, trains and submarines.

On the beer front, there’s the Domhof Hausbrauerei just behind the cathedral which serves up some rather bitter and interesting brews. The dunkles is very much like a Duesseldorf alt, albeit one of the less distinguished ones (Schloesser?). It’s got a bit of sweet crystal, but not too much. The helles reminded us of Young’s bitter, but fizzier – really rather refreshing when we got our heads round it. So, darker beers, on the bitter side, and worth the trip.

They don’t seem to get many English tourists, though, especially those under 50, so we attracted some attention from the locals who were trying to guess where we were from and why on Earth we were there…

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Generalisations about beer culture Germany Nice places to drink in... pubs

Drinking in Heidelberg

Anyone who tells you that Britain has some kind of monopoly on binge drinking and rowdiness obviously hasn’t been to this borderline twee university city. Perhaps it was the football, or maybe the warm weather, but the local youths were certainly full of beans as they barreled around the old town knocking back tequila and chanting:

“Jawohl, jawohl – ich liebe alcohol!”

Which is not to say that it was remotely threatening. Rather charming, in fact. They were probably singing the same song at the university of Heidelberg in the 19th century. At least these days they don’t cap a session in the pub by dueling and scarring each others faces.

We spent a couple of lunchtimes in local brewpubs which, again, we found through this website.

Vetters is the best pub in terms of atmosphere and we were impressed by their relatively adventurous approach. Their seasonal special, “Heidelberg Frisch” is a Koelsch-style “obergaeriges” beer served in 200ml stick glasses – something we’ve never seen outside Cologne before. They also offer a ludicrously strong barley-wine type beer, Vetters 33. This has an original gravity of 33%, pours black with a brown/yellow head (saffron!?) and tastes mostly of treacle cut with vodka. Not that nice, in itself, but a refreshing change from the endless premium pilsners…

Scheffel’s Kulturbrauerei is a bit snooty inside, though it has a nice garden, where we took this picture. Their range includes a remarkably good kellerbier which, once again, reminded us of an Alt, or perhaps of a Belgian special. It was amber coloured, bitter and with a lot of orange flavours. The krauzenbier was good, too – very light, almost Hoegaarden like, with grapefruit and lemon flavours. We thought it might be missing a bit of malt flavour, though.

There are plenty of other pubs in Heidelberg – Unterer Strasse (parallel to Hauptstrasse and the Neckar river, up near the Marktplatz) is a good place to start, with a range of places from young and trendy to old and trad. There’s a place where you can get a range of Hoepfner brews, although unfortunately not their porter.

Notes

Vetter im Schoeneck is on Steingasse, just off the Marktplatz leading down to the Neckar. Kulturbrauerei is on Leyergasse, parallel to Steingasse about four streets east. Both are handily listed in the Lonely Planet guide to Germany.

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breweries Germany pubs

Mainz Pt 1 — Eisgrub

We’re still struggling to get internet access but here, from the cosy Wi-Fi enabled Cafe New York in Bamberg, are a couple of quick posts.

Mainz is not a beer destination, but we knew that before we came. It does have loads of great pubs in the Altstadt, but they’re pretty much all focussed on the local wine. But if there’s more to your life than beer, then Mainz is a nice place to base yourself to explore Rhineland villages etc (though Koblenz is probably more cutesy).

The beer is mostly mass-produced nationals: Radeburger, Bitburger etc, and Binding from Frankfurt (rather dull, we thought).

Eisgrubbrau, a brewpub on Weissliliengasse near the Altstadt, is therefore the beer geek’s first port of call. It’s a very cosy place, with lots of little rooms. The food’s good, and the beer is pretty good for a modern brewpub. They do a dunkles-pils, which has a chewy stout-like body, roasted malt and toffee flavours, with some sour notes too. We preferred the Helles-Maerzen, which was very malty and ale like. Toffee, seeds and cereals.

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Germany pubs

Mainz Pt 2. — a Bridge too Far

We were tipped off the existence of a second, out-of-the-way brewpub in Mainz by this website.

Brauhaus Castel is in Mainz-Kastel, on the other side of the Rhine and technically in another state (Hesse, rather than Rhineland-Pfalz). We walked, enjoying the beautiful sunset over a river full of huge cargo barges, and the sound of Greece vs Russia on the air from the open air screens by the river.

It took a while, once we’d detoured around the, erm, ‘grey’ bit on the map.

If you take on this trek yourself, head for the middle stretch of the Otto-Suhr Ring where it meets Boelckestrasse and turn right past KFC, the Beate Uhse out-of-town erotic superstore and some open country, and you’ll find the pub nestled in a quiet corner off the main road.

It’s got a great atmosphere. Perhaps a bit kitsch inside, but with some nice trellises and plants outside that create a far more Arcadian feel than the industrial-estate surroundings might suggest.

The beer? Not so good, to be frank. The dunkel reminded us of our homebrew (not always a good thing) and had too much crystal malt. The EM Special (a European Championship seasonal) was a bit sweet, boasting “light hopping” on the menu. The wheat beer was the best of the bunch, with lots of banana aromas and a nice punch of bitterness.

We can’t, in all honesty, recommend trekking out here, but if you’re stuck in Mainz for any length of time, or are just an incorrigible ticker, it’s worth a visit.

Our top tip: the much more convenient and just as idyllic beer garden in the grounds of the Roman museum by the river (on Grosse Bleiche), where we very much enjoyed the Erbacher Pils. It looks like another dull regional lager, but knocked our socks off with a lot of bitterness and tons of what might almost have been Goldings aroma. We were surrounded by grand, red baroque buildings and serenaded by a scarily proficient youth orchestra. And, what’s more, a proportion of our spend went to maintaining the museum.