Categories
Poland

Impressions of Gdańsk: piwo, pierogi, the past in the present

“We must go back to Poland some time soon,” we’ve been saying for about 20 years. In our late teens and early twenties we spent a lot of time there.

Jess learned Polish at university alongside her history degree – the last gasp of a Cold War scheme sponsored by the Foreign Office which nobody had yet got round to cancelling – and then taught English there for a year.

As our interest in beer grew, we got distracted by Germany, Belgium and Czechia. We also gave up flying which put Poland that little further out of reach.

This year, though, we decided the time had come and planned a trip via Berlin, whose shiny new Hauptbahnhof points conveniently eastward.

Specifically, we chose Gdańsk because Jess spent a month there in 1998, polishing her Polish in a local school. For 25 years she’d been saying “You really must see it…” Now, at last, we were returning together.

A Polish intercity train in strong sunlight at Frankfurt an der Oder station.
Frankfurt an der Oder.

Things spread out and thin out as the train barrels through Brandenburg and rushes through what was once Prussia. It’s a big country, a neverending plain.

Into the borderlands the atmosphere changes: please have your passports ready, security officers may board the train. The German train crew disembarks and passes the incoming Polish crew on the bridge across the platforms, ships in the night.

Trucks are backed up on the bridge across the Oder, the wide river that now marks the Polish border, but really signals that you’re entering a zone where history has created places with two identities, no identity, repressed memories.

A beer hall decked out with Oktoberfest tat. Copper brewing equipment is in the background.
Brovarnia Gdańsk.

We kept saying to ourselves, “It’s not about the beer.” But the problem for us is that it’s always about the beer. When we were last in Poland, we had the stamina for recreational vodka drinking, but not these days. And with all that history swirling in our heads, with the ghosts of Prussia and of Danzig ever present, we thought we’d find something worth drinking.

When Jess was last in Gdańsk it was full of Germans – old people shipped west in 1945 and 1946 making a sentimental return, and their children. Back then, local businesses pandered to them with Danziger theme brewpubs and lidded mugs of German-style beer. While that post-Iron-Curtain moment seems to have passed there are still a couple of German-style breweries in town, both attached to international hotels, so that’s where we started.

Brovarnia Gdańsk is at the Hotel Gdańsk on the waterside. It was dressed for Oktoberfest when we visited, with staff in Dirndls and Lederhosen, blue and white bunting everywhere, and oompah music on loop. It still felt like a hotel bar, though, or perhaps a chain restaurant. “This is going to be one of those places with a hazy pale beer and a sticky dark beer,” said Ray, eyeing the copper brewing kit visible beyond the counter, “like you get in Hamburg or Stuttgart or Frankfurt.” And, yes, it was pretty much that. What saved the day was a Black IPA, of all things – a classy, interesting beer that combined chocolate, biscuit and pine with aplomb.

A giant concrete cube with no windows on a street corner. There are cars parked all around and a woman is walking her dog.
An air raid shelter from 1943 when Gdańsk was Danzig.

Gdańsk has too much history and not enough shops, that’s the problem. Trying to buy a tube of toothpaste is more of a mission than it ought to be, but you’ll stumble across fifteen national historical monuments on the way.

The local supermarket is that way, past the colossal concrete air raid shelter built in 1943, round the corner from the Polish Post Office where some of the first shots of World War II were fired, not far from the shipyard where the Cold War began to end.

The city itself is a war memorial. At the end of World War II it was 90% destroyed, an apocalyptic rubblescape. The new Soviet-controlled authorities debated what to do and, at one point, someone suggested leaving the city centre as a vast ruin, to remind the Germans of what they’d done. Except it wouldn’t be Germans who would have to live here but, rather, Poles from the east whose own cities had been absorbed in the USSR. So, instead, Gdańsk was rebuilt not as it was in 1939, but instead to recall the days before 1793 when it was part of the Kingdom of Poland.

A shot glass of dark liquid on top of a paper menu describing Jopenbier in Polish.
A shot of Jopenbier.

PG4 Brewhouse, in the basement of the Central Hotel, was much more convincing as a beer hall. It is also one of the few places in Gdańsk where the shameful place name Danzig can be seen in writing. It’s set up for corporate hospitality and tourists dinners with English the default language, and the staff seemed confused that we didn’t immediately want to order pork knuckles or schnitzels. But it is suitably dark and cosy (basements are best) and we weren’t the only people there to focus on the beer.

There’s an impressive menu of house brews – eight in total, in a range of styles, including some we’ve never seen anywhere else. Starting with a Pils to calibrate, it was clear that, if not perfect, it was a cut above. It was hazy, of course, in true international brewpub style, but satisfying, and served with a decent head of foam.

Gdańsk Rubin was their take on a Dunkel and a highlight of the menu, being drier and more complex than some German examples. We picked up suggestions of rye bread and liquorice.

The wheat beer was on the dark, amber end of the spectrum, with some toffee notes to go with the banana. We found it extremely convincing and assumed it was a conscious attempt to clone Schneider Weisse.

Having tried all of the standard beers that were available, we got into the local and historical specialities.

Tafelbier was an homage to “a beer consumed every day in Gdańsk” in the mediaeval period. International brewpubs always have a yellow one and a brown one; the most enterprising will also find space for one in between. That was Tafel, which struck us as being similar to some modern takes on Vienna beer we’ve encountered, poised between light and dark. It also had some intriguing herbal notes.

Things really started to get interesting with Krollinger, a sour beer fermented with three different yeasts, including Brettanomyces. It was not boring, if not quite as intense and complex as the menu description implied. What it resembled most closely was Berliner Weisse, and there was even the option to have it with a shot of wormwood or raspberry syrup. In summer, perhaps, it would have gone down better.

Finally, there was Danziger Jopenbier – the main event. It’s a historic style associated with the city, brewed to some kind of original recipe, and selling at 16 Polish złoty  (£3) for a 50ml shot. In presentation, it was treated much like a liqueur or a sherry and reminded us of both Riga Balsam and Pedro Ximinez fortified wine. It was extremely sweet and sticky, completely flat, with a funky, leathery, pipe tobacco stink. A curiosity, then, rather than something to session on. But the menu says that “it was used to aromatise and enhance others beers” and we couldn’t resist trying that, using it to turn the wheat beer into a convincing Doppelbock.

A plate of boiled salmon pierogi with a pot of dill dip.
Pierogi at Mandu.

The international brewpub style is so 1990s. Nowadays, it’s all about the international beanie hat tote bag pot plant horn-rimmed hygge lo-fi ambient craft beer street food scene.

There’s a hip pierogi restaurant for which you have to queue, and the queue is full of people posting videos to TikTok and Instagram. When you get inside, you can watch expensive cars pull up outside, their chiselled owners clutching tiny dogs against their designer sportswear. They sweep in and are seated at once. Sophisticated global citizens, of course, but they still need their potato dumplings. (And what dumplings… the pinnacle of the art.)

The Montownia Food Hall could easily be in Birmingham or Berlin except, this being Gdańsk, it’s housed in the vast concrete chamber of what used to be a U-Boat factory. There’s food in the styles of Japan, Thailand, Hong Kong, Mexico, India, Greece, Italy, Ukraine and Craftonia (avocado toast). Blinking devices summon diners when their food is ready, their piercing beeps overlapping and constant.

The main feature of the food hall is a long looping bar where stylish bartenders sling shots and cocktails at urban professionals and couples on date night. There is beer but it’s not why anyone is here. The separate craft beer stand by the main entrance looks the part with its keg taps in the back wall and fridges full of cans, as if it was shipped complete from Bermondsey in a freight container.

A blackboard listing lots of different Polish craft beers.
The menu at Pułapka.

German-style brewpubs are one thing but we also wanted to visit some craft beer bars. Partly because we wanted to explore the full range of local beer, and partly because we knew if we didn’t someone online would ask us why not.

Pułapka calls itself the best craft beer bar in Gdańsk. On our visit, on Sunday evening, there were 13 different beers on tap and more in bottles and cans.

What excited us most, at first glance, was the presence on the menu of two different beers in the historic and revived Grodziskie style, from two different breweries. With our ongoing pondering about what a healthy beer culture looks like in mind, the presence of local or national speciality styles feels like a win.

Perhaps if we drank Grodziskie every week we could grow to love it. As it is, we found both of these examples rather challenging, with an overwhelming peaty, medicinal smokiness. Lapsus by Warsaw brewery Palatum was more balanced than Piwo w stylu Grodziskie by Trzech Kumpli, apparently a contract brewing outfit based in Tarnów.

The rest of the menu consisted of beer styles we did know, and could latch onto, which is how we know that something wasn’t quite right with, of all things, the gas. A dry Irish-style nitro stout with no head? A German-style lager with no foam?

As the bar filled up with arty, alternative youngsters we observed that what was really selling well was New England IPA and West Coast IPA. Everybody wants to drink what feels most foreign and exotic, we suppose.

A cafe with stock photos of smiling people on the walls, looking a little dated. There are plain tables and chairs in front.
A milk bar in Wrzeszcz.

“Langfuhr was now called Wrzeszcz, but who can pronounce that?” asks Oskar in The Tin Drum, Günter Grass’s great novel of Danzig-Gdańsk, referring to the suburban satellite where Grass himself grew up. A walk to Wrzeszcz is educational, taking you out of the sentimental and psychological safety of the reconstructed Old Town and into the real world of dual carriageways and retail parks.

On the schlep along Aleja Zwycięstwa (Victory Avenue) you’ll pass a Soviet-built T34 tank intended as a memorial to Polish troops who helped take Gdańsk at the end of World War II. There’s also a somewhat bleak park with a haunted feel that, yes, turns out to be the former site of a church and cemetery.

Push on, push on, and you’re in the neighbourhood – a bustling but unpretty town centre with trams and traffic, bakeries and junk shops, and a surviving example of a proper Polish milk bar.

Grab a tray, fall into line behind the students, the pensioners, the mechanic in his grubby hoody, and give your order fast and clear when the time comes. No pierogi today, love, but we’ve got a lovely chicken schnitzel. Soup? Russian salad? Chips? A big heap of bulgur wheat? Two bowls of soup and two plates of Naleśniki pancakes cost not much more than a single pint of beer in town.

There’s a plaque on the unassuming tenement block where Günter Grass grew up. The council workmen pouring tar on the road don’t seem especially interested. In the park nearby there’s a bronze statue of Oskar Matzerath, drum on his lap, hands raised to beat it with sticks that aren’t there.

A flight of grey steps leading down to a basement. A sign on the bars by the door reads "Dobre Piwo! Good Beer!"
The entrance to Labeerynt.
A bar with illuminated signs for Svijany Czech beer and Delirium Tremens from Belgium.
Inside Labeerynt.

The other craft beer bar on our list was Labeerynt on a backstreet in the old town. Though the basement entrance looks like a test, or a trap, it was the pubbiest place we found during our visit. With low, red-tinted light, greebling on the walls, and a selection of private corners and cubbyholes, it felt like somewhere you could settle in. Bar service rather than hovering waiters completed the effect.

A huge hanging sign advertising Czech brewery Svijany boded well for the quality of the beer, if not its localness. As the cheapest and apparently biggest selling item among the 14 beers on the tap list, we figured this would be a good place to start. Watching the bartender carefully manipulate the multiple taps and levers on the font to create the right amount of foam, with the right texture, increased our confidence further. And it did, indeed, taste great.

After that, as we dotted through the menu at random, we didn’t have a bad beer. Some were more to our taste than others, but all seemed well made and well kept, and were served with appropriate care.

The standout beer of the visit – of the entire week in Gdańsk, in fact – was Coffeelicous Special by Piwo Podziemie, a 6.3% chocolate coffee vanilla milk stout. It might sound like a bit of a novelty beer but it was surprisingly easy drinking with all of those flavours in perfect balance. What might have helped, of course, was that it was served from a “pumpa” – that is, an English style beer engine. If it wasn’t cask conditioned, it was a good imitation.

An old red brick tenement block on a cobbled street with shipyard cranes at the end.
Ulica Stefana Jaracza.

Lost under the flyover, trapped between railway lines, penned in by redevelopment work in progress, you turn a corner and find a ghost town. A block, a few cobbled streets, of old Gdańsk, of old Danzig, how it must have looked before the war. Not reconstructed, the real thing, with soot staining the brickwork and bullet holes in the apartment block walls.

An elderly woman in a red coat passes, battling a lazy dog, and for a moment you wonder if she’s slipped through from another time.

The old Imperial Shipyard grew up in the 19th century and is now mostly deserted, its colossal brick and concrete sheds derelict. In Britain, there would be barriers and keep out signs. In Poland, where the Wild East begins, you’re invited to wander among the ruins, with a gentle warning that if you fall over and hurt yourself, you’re not to go running to them.

Broken windows, spilled oil, chunks of metal and stone embedded in the ground… It feels like the set of Andrei Tarkovsky’s film Stalker.

Who’s that, over there, that shadow? Someone other ruinophile with a camera and hiking boots admiring a rusting fire escape. Well, what about that shadow? The tall one, with the skeletal shape? That’s an art installation, made from rusting cogs and pipes – a battle droid frozen in place.

The water that runs beside it is the Martwa Wisła – literally the Dead Vistula.

A view of a beach through a plastic gazebo. There is tall grass in the foreground and a pier behind.

After a day or two, the marketing began to get to us: maybe we did want a Żywiec (Heineken) after all. It had never struck us a great beer in the past but everyone else was drinking it. And the craft beer revolution has changed Żywiec, too: as well as the standard pale lager there’s also a dark lager, a wheat beer, a pale ale, and an IPA.

Getting a glass of Żywiec was easier said than done, however. The first place we tried to order one had run out. The second place we found it was in a seaside bar in Gdynia at 9:30am when, even applying holiday rules, we didn’t quite feel up to it. We finally got our Żywiec at the other end of a coastal walk, in Sopot, to go with a seafood lunch.

It was exactly as we remembered it – sweet, bland, a little fizzy, like a less impressive version of Carling. That was that itch scratched.

A statue made of large chunks of stone or concrete. In the background are the masts of tall ships.
Joseph Conrad in Gdynia.

We do like to be beside the seaside, tiddly-om-pom-pom, even when the sea in question is the Baltic, littered with cargo ships and tankers, with colossal Gdańsk shipyard cranes on the horizon.

Gdynia feels quite familiar if you’re British: fish and chips, ice cream parlours, amusement arcades, novelty knickers for a pound from a vending machine near the prom.

At first glance, given the context, there’s what appears to be a typical Eastern Block statue of Lenin guarding the entrance to the harbour. Except it’s not Lenin – it’s Joseph Conrad, the seafaring Polish lad who became one of the greatest writers in the English language. Suffering no loss of dignity from the seagull standing and shitting on his head, he stares sternly towards Sopot, the next resort along.

Promenading towards Sopot you pass a vast concrete, chrome and plate glass box stuffed with shiny brewing equipment – the Gdynia Port Brewery. It looks out over the beach like a bunker or fortification.

Sopot itself is quainter and cuter and a little snootier than Gdynia: think Lytham St Annes or St Ives. You have to pay to use the bog in Sopot and there are patissiers selling dainty Parisian tarts instead of the typical hefty wedges of pale yellow cheesecake. There’s a craft brewery on the high street, of course.

Reconstructed red brick baroque buildings along the waterfront in Gdansk.

What we failed to find in Gdańsk was a proper boozer. In Berlin, now, under the guidance of the Krennmairs, we know our way around some Eckkneipen. In Brussels, we know how to sniff out neighbourhood cafes. And in Cologne, we’re enjoying exploring the Veedels.

But in Gdańsk we simply didn’t see any ‘normal’ bars or pubs. It might be that they’re hidden on backstreets away from respectable eyes. But based on Jess’s experience 20+ years ago, it’s more likely that they simply never existed.

Next time, finding one or two, if they are there, will be our mission. If you have any tips, comment below.

Categories
Germany

Impressions of Köln: expansion pack

On our recent visit to Cologne we mostly ignored the Altstadt beer halls in favour of neighbourhood places, and found quite a different vibe.

We’re referring to this post as an expansion pack because it’s an extension of the one we wrote a year ago setting out our thoughts and feelings about Kölsch beer and Cologne drinking culture.

When we wrote that, a lot of people replied: “But you didn’t go to Lommi!”

And we said, relax, this won’t be our last visit to a city with which we’re increasingly enamoured.

The back bar at Lommi with nick-nacks, tea towels, postcards, glassware and so on.

Lommi, or Gaststätte Lommerzheim, is an unlikely Cologne landmark. It’s on the wrong side of the river, in Deutz, a few streets back from any main road, surrounded by apartment blocks.

The building is out of step with its neighbours, being older, darker and more decayed. Forbidding signs warn of a broken step and issue instructions about queueing. Signs advertise Dortmunder Aktien Bier (DAB) – which, of course, the pub does not sell.

We’re going to call it a ‘pub’ because that’s what it feels like. We entered nervously, expecting to be directed by a waiter, or barked at, but instead found ourselves in an alleyway full of smokers who wouldn’t look out of place in Bridgwater or Bolton.

Eventually, we drifted towards the bar where nobody stopped us taking stools overlooking the service operation. And it’s what we’d call a machine.

Being a small place, with a small staff, it has to operate efficiently. So, glass washing is a big deal.

Our seats were in the splash zone for a big double sink with constantly trickling warm water (left) and cold water (right).

Dirty 200ml glasses would pile up on one side and every now and then a waiter with a spare moment would start washing them by:

  1. Grabbing two by their bases.
  2. Slamming them into the warm, soapy water.
  3. Working them up and down on two round wire brushes fixed in place.
  4. Dunking them in cold water.
  5. Stacking them to dry.

By our reckoning, they were able to wash 50 or so glasses in about a minute and a half. The secret being, perhaps, the knowledge that these apparently dainty, thin-walled glasses can take rougher handling than one might think.

The filling of the clean glasses was also highly efficient: they’re thrown or dropped into a Kranz (a circular tray with holes to hold glasses) which is then held under the tap of the wooden barrel and spun as golden Kölsch gushes in.

They kept bringing us beer and we kept watching the floor show as the pencil marks multiplied on our beer mat bill.

One waiter never smiled. The other never stopped laughing. After a while, we began to wonder if this was a coping mechanism, because he laughed hardest when the customers were being most obstructive and obtuse.

An older man with the air of a cowboy (perhaps a long-distance truck driver) alternated glasses of Kölsch and cigarettes in the courtyard.

Two burly lads ordered a Halve Hahn (cheese and a  bread roll) and methodically dissected it so they’d both have a small cheese sandwich.

As the crowd thinned and the conversation became louder, and more sloppy, the laughing waiter passed through the bar with a plate of snacks. “Frikadelchen?” he shouted, waving their aroma over each table with a sheet of A4 paper.

Categories
Germany

Impressions of Berlin: a tale of 5 pilsners

Our first visit to Berlin in more than 20 years was marked out by pilsner beers, but that doesn’t mean they were all the same.

Our first drink in Berlin wasn’t even German, it was Czech.

Kohlenquelle in Prenzlauer Berg has the original golden lager from the tank, Pilsner Urquell, served in jewel-like handled mugs.

When we turned up in the early afternoon, after the advertised opening time, the bar was still shut. It looked shut down, in fact, with graffiti covering its shutters and ivy obscuring its windows. 

When it eventually opened, it felt a little hungover – quiet and bleary.

It’s a funny name, Kohlenquelle. As the official Pilsner Urquell website explains, it was a coal bunker in its days on the eastern side of the Berlin Wall. It was converted to a basement bar in 2000 and got its Pilsner tanks in 2016.

The furniture and bar fittings feel simultaneously junk-shop hipster and somewhat Ostalgic – two aesthetics that fit together well. The bar counter, in particular, looks as it was pulled from a working men’s club c.1973.

It seemed odd to come to the German capital to drink Czech beer but then Czechia is closer to Berlin than Bavaria is. And for 40 years, politically speaking, even more so.

It tasted as it always does: bitter, rich, and weedy. And its shade of gold really is golden, or perhaps even coppery.

Categories
Generalisations about beer culture Germany

The Way of the Wegbier in Berlin

It’s normal in Berlin to drink a bottle of beer as you wander between pubs… or wander anywhere, for that matter.

We hadn’t been in the city long before we noticed just how many off-licences there are.

Or, rather, convenience stores that just happen to be piled high with crates of beer.

In Berlin, they’re usually labelled as ‘Spätis’, from Spätverkaufsstellen, meaning ‘late shopping outlet’. It’s a culture that originated in the former Communist East.

Our favourite, glimpsed from a tram, had stolen Spotify’s branding and was called, of course, Spätify.

Alongside dirt cheap mass-produced or local beers there are also exotic imports from Bavaria. Tegernsee Helles from Bavaria, for example, at €2 a pop.

But there’s nothing remotely pretentious about these shops. They also sell Monster energy drinks, chocolate bars, ice cream, vapes, and bog roll.

That the beers are being sold to drink on the go is underlined by the presence on the counter of a bottle opener.

Hand over your cash, knock off the cap, and you’re away.

And that’s exactly what people do. Visiting some Kneipen with Berlin-based friends we lost sight of one on the subway. He reappeared 30 seconds later with an open bottle of Sternburg Export which, he told us, cost €1.

“Back home, people look askance if you‘’’re carrying an open bottle of beer in the street,” he said. “In Berlin, on Saturday night, they look askance if you’re not.”

There’s an old Berlin joke about this, as Evan Rail quoted in an article for VinePair back in 2019:

“Someone said that the police stopped a person to check his papers on the Oranienburger Strasse… It turns out he was a Canadian tourist. And the police stopped him because he was the only one who didn’t have a Wegbier, so he looked suspicious.”

Nor did it take us long to start noticing empty bottles on pavements, and the men who make a living collecting them for the deposit.

Even in the shadow of the Brandenburg Gate they dodge between American tourists filling tattered carrier bags, clink, clank.

When our pub-crawling companion – otherwise a very tidy, law-abiding sort – finished his Wegbier, he placed the bottle carefully on the ground near a bin.

Why make the professional scavengers dig around in the filth?

And it’s not as if it will be there long.

It’s a very efficient system, exploitative as it might be.

Wegbier isn’t the preserve of rebels and youngsters, either.

One weekday afternoon we watched a smartly-dressed thirty-something couple escorting their small children along the street.

Both parents were carrying open bottles of lager as casually as someone in Britain might carry a to-go cappuccino.

What if you can simply decide not to be drunk?

What if you can drink constantly, without a Teku glass in sight, and retain total responsible respectability?

Though it didn’t come naturally to us, we decided to try to fit in. We popped into a Späti for a between-pub pick-me-up and, overwhelmed by choice, also went for Sternburg Export.

It’s not the most exciting beer in the world but it doesn’t need to be when you’re swigging straight from the bottle on a busy street in one of the most interesting cities in the world.

Under the glow of traffic lights and kebab shop neon it felt positively glamorous, or delightfully seedy. It adds a swagger to your step.

Looking down into the gutter, we laughed. The road surface was studded, of course, with hundreds of rustling bottle caps pressed into the tar. And a layer of fresh bottle caps had already begun to form, like a tide line.

“We should do this more often,” we said.

Then, on our last morning in Berlin, we saw another bottle of Sternburg swinging past in the street.

Glancing up at its owner we saw a face that looked as if it had been hit by a brewery dray. Yellow eyes, bloody nose, bruises, and a look of forlorn befuddlement.

Perhaps, after all, it is good to pause.

Maybe we can just enjoy some fresh air on the walk between pubs.

And keep Wegbier as a treat when we’re in Germany, doing as the Germans do.

Categories
Beer styles Germany

Investigating Festbier

We’ve generally found German-style Festbier (festival beer) alluring in theory and disappointing in reality.

Its appeal is twofold: first, it’s a seasonal rarity; and, secondly, it’s a traditional part of German beer culture.

The disappointment is that its base characteristics are not things we look for in lager, being:

  1. strong
  2. heavy
  3. sweet

The words we most often jot down when we’re drinking it are those classic cliches ‘cloying’ and ‘sticky’.

Simon Clarke has a more positive spin on the same flavours, though: “That sweet malty breadiness makes it totally ‘steinable’…”

As Andy Parker of Elusive Brewing put it in a post on BlueSky:

“I love the sense of occasion and tradition of finding and drinking them more than the actual beers, which are all very well made of course…”

But it’s generally hard for a British drinker to really get to know Festbier, unless they spend a lot of time in Germany, at the right time of year.

Andreas Krennmair, author of Bavarian Brewing in the 19th Century, and Louise Krennmair live in Berlin and are Festbier fans. As Louise says:

“It probably helps if you live in Germany or are drinking it in Germany as you get the atmosphere, and fresher beer. My favourite is probably Schönramer Festbier which comes out at the start of December and we drink it at a bar in Berlin on New Year’s Eve at Frühschoppen.”

Andreas says: 

“What makes it enjoyable for me is the fact that I can have that beer only once a year for a few weeks, so it’s always a surprise what a particular beer is going to be. If you remember what it was the previous year, differences, even if they’re subtle in the grand scheme, are noticeable. Is it more or less bitter? What about the hop aroma? This is sweeter than last year, where does that boozy taste come from, etc.. In terms of Bavarian beer (excluding Franconia), I think it is the epitome of what a good pale lager can be – if it’s brewed well, of course. And, most importantly, what makes it stand out for me from other seasonal beers or brewed for festivities: it is still very sessionable, a bit dangerous with ~6%,so you always have to pace yourself…”

A pint of slightly hazy yellow beer with the Moor Brewing logo on the glass.
Moor Brewing Festbier 2023.

Testing our prejudices in 2023

Festbier seems to be more available in the UK now than it has been in the past, which gave us a chance to drink a few different examples and test our prejudices.

As Bristol is now something of a lager-brewing city, we were able to find a couple of local examples.

Lost & Grounded brewed a Festbier for the Oktoberfest event at its taproom earlier in September. It had the benefit of tasting extremely fresh which added a layer of interest and complexity. Though in many ways a textbook example – dark golden, 5.6% ABV – it was also distinctly bitter, and therefore better balanced, at least to our taste.

As ever, though, we started to find it a little heavy even by the end of the first round, and had to take a break with their flagship Keller Pils. By contrast, Keller Pils tasted even more delightful: light, spritzy, flowery…

When we went back to the Festbier for another go, it still impressed us, but we noticed a certain boiled sweet sugariness that confirmed our previous views of the style. It’s authentic, and correct, but almost reads to us as an off-flavour.

Moor Brewing’s take on Festbier, at 5.8%, seemed less successful. To the standard sweet heat it added a layer of haze and chewiness. There was some spiky apple there, too. Perhaps this is what you’d find if you drank Festbier in some Franconian village? We’re glad to have tried it but it feels like an odd outlier.

By way of calibration, rather wonderfully, we were also able to pop to our nearest supermarket, a branch of Lidl, and buy a gift box including multiple bottled German Festbiers.

On the one hand, this really highlighted the importance of freshness as a characteristic of the best German beers. Several tasted papery and ancient, battered about by the chain of logistics that got them from brewhouses in Bavaria to a retail park in Brislington.

On the other hand, it also underlined a point made by Louise Krennmair: “There is more to Festbier than Oktoberfest.”

Wildbräu Kirtabier was dark, orangey and syrupy, almost like Spingo Special.

Teisnacher 1543 was well balanced with just a dab of welcome rustic character.

Irlbacher Gäubodenvolksfestbier read to us as something like a strong pilsner: pale, powerfully bitter, and our favourite of the bunch.

More interesting than enjoyable

The fundamental problem is this: much as we enjoyed exploring and pondering on Festbier, nothing we drank pleased as much as Lost & Grounded Keller Pils, or Augustiner Helles.

What is the problem Festbier is designed to solve?

A need for something special to mark an occasion. The desire to loosen up. And perhaps to add interest in a beer culture that prizes consistency and tradition over novelty.

And what problems do we, Jess and Ray, have? We’re uptight lightweights enraptured by the consistency and tradition of German beer culture.

Festbier is not built for us.