Categories
Germany

Lederhosen in Lidl, Beer for Breakfast: Some Reflections on Munich

We’ve been to Munich several times, but rarely for more than a couple of days, and not often together.

This time we went with the specific intention of really being in Munich — not jumping on trains to other nearby towns, or racing from one beer destination to another in pursuit of ticks and trophies.

We began by finding accommodation in the suburbs, partly to save money, but also because the best times we’ve had on recent trips abroad have been beyond the immediate centres of cities.

The neighbourhood we ended up in was one where people live, walk their dogs, drowse on benches, smoke behind school bike sheds, and use ten-foot plastic pluckers to pick plums. The houses were post-war but conservative (Bavaria is not a hotbed of modernism) with concrete lions on their gateposts and plastic elves in their flowerbeds.

Every corner had a political poster or two: BAVARIAN PARTY — CHOOSE FREEDOM! ÖDP — YOUNG, AND FIERCELY ENVIRONMENTALLY CONSCIOUS! The only AFD posters we saw in our part of town had been either torn down or vandalised, the candidates given square black moustaches with swipes of marker pens.

We drank our first beer in Munich at a pub-restaurant above the tube station, on the main road into town, as rain hammered the parasols in the empty beer garden.

Ayinger Helles beer.

Ayinger Helles isn’t from Munich, it’s from Aying, and after a twelve-hour train trip, tasted great.

The pub was somehow both a bit too posh (tablecloths and ornaments) and nothing special — limp salad, service on the SCREW YOU! end of brusque — but the beer was served with all due ceremony. The glass, a simple Willibecher, was so clean it sang at the touch of a finger, and had plenty of room for a crown of foam.

Look at the room through the beer and everything seems clearer than without. It certainly looks warmer.

A touch sweet, a touch of corn, almost watery, and yet… Yes, another, please.

After all, as everyone knows, several thin coats rather than one thick leads to a more even, consistent finish.

A good start.

Categories
News

News, Nuggets & Longreads 23 April 2016 — Takeovers, Spruce, Helles

Here’s what’s grabbed our attention in beer news and writing in the last week, from spruce beer to brewery takeovers, via brewery takeovers and, er, more brewery takeovers…

→ Let’s get AB-InBev’s acquisition spree out of the way first: Italian website Cronache di Birra broke the news yesterday that the global giant as acquired Birra del Borgo. Here’s the most incisive commentary so far:

→ Related: remember when we pondered what it must feel like to sell your brewery? Well, we’ve now been treated to two substantial pieces in which the founders of breweries absorbed by AB-InBev reflect on the experience. First, Jasper Cuppaidge of Camden Town was interviewed by Susannah Butter for the Evening Standard, perhaps expressing more insecurity than he intended or realised:

“Everyone has their opinions. We’re more craft than ever because that gives us the ability to brew more beer ourselves. The beer tastes as good as last week, if not better. Some people want to remain independent but it’s like, Mike there wears Converse, I like Vans. Everyone has their cool thing.”

Categories
Beer history Germany quotes

QUOTE: Dear and Doubtful, 1902

“But as English Bass is never quite the real article on the Continent, so Münchener is never quite the real thing in England. Whether beers have to be fortified or not for a voyage outside their own country they have a tendency to be both doubtful and dear. Bass is too ‘gassy’ on the Continent; Munich too biting in England… In its native beer-gardens Münchener is the prince of beers — brown and bland and soft, with a cream of froth like a beaten egg, a delicate flavour, cold, yet not icy, refreshing to the body, and comforting to the stomach…”

W.R. Holt, ‘Germans and their Drinks’, Daily Express, 04/09/1902

(Brown and bland — count us in!)

Categories
Germany videos

VIDEO: Oktoberfest 1969

British Pathé has finally got round to making its archive available on YouTube. This short newsreel about Munich’s Oktoberfest from 1969 is just one of many beer-related corkers.