Boak and Bailey » bavaria

Some interesting Oktoberfests in London

Boak — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 21:36:23 +0000

A ferris wheel at a beer festival in Bavaria

While the main event is underway in Munich, there are a couple of interesting options for Londoners.

Wholefoods Market in Kensington is matching beer and sausages on Wednesday 8th October from 17:00-21:00 (more details);
Zeitgeist is doing another festival from 9th-12th October, featuring draft altbier, Franconian rarities and other wondrous brews. (Read about the first one or find out more details about this one)

And this is without mentioning the Oktoberfest Pub in Fulham. I’ve never been, so perhaps I’m being judgemental, but from their website it looks awful. Is it connected to the Bavarian Beer House, who are also putting on Oktoberfest fun?

London Drinker has details of other beer festivals coming up.

Bamberg revisited

Boak — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 20:59:15 +0000

You don’t need us to tell you about the pubs in Bamberg. I’m sure you’ve all “been there, done that”, and if not, you’re planning to.

That said, I don’t think you could ever “do” Bamberg. If you stuck to just “doing” the brewery taps, you’d miss out on lovely cosy pubs and idyllic beer gardens in and around the town. Then there are all the pubs with brews from nearby villages, then day trips to places like Buttenheim, Forchheim, Eggolsheim… then the hundreds of pubs in surrounding villages.

We don’t want to bore you with all the beers we had in Bamberg this time round, but here are our top five drinking experiences, in no particular order.

1. Lunch at Griefenklau Greifenklau

You don’t hear much about Griefenklau Greifenklau – I don’t think I’ve seen their livery outside of their outlet on Laurentziplatz. We suspect the locals want to keep this one to themselves. It’s a fair hike up a hill, but definitely worth it, as the beer garden is beautiful, with great views across the wood to the Altenburg. It’s a very mixed crowd, from grandparents with children to business people. The beer is very fresh and satisfying. Possibly not the most complex in town, but with a garden like this, who cares?

A similarly beautiful spot is the Spezial Bier-Garten on Steinwartstrasse (listed in the Bavaria Lonely Planet guide). You can’t beat this place for the view across town, especially at twilight. The beer itself is very subtle –- you only notice the smoke flavour when it warms up a bit. And they don’t do the full range of Spezial beers — you need to go to the outlet on Obere Koenigstrasse for that.

2. Mahrs Brau Ungespundete

This was the first beer of the holiday that made our eyes pop out and caused us to make ‘mmmmm’ noises (perhaps we’re getting jaded?). It’s copper coloured and extremely fruity, with peaches, cherries, cloves and liquorice. There’s a good hop flavour as it goes down, which balances the roastiness and oakiness. They also do a lovely weizen, which is (without being advertised as such) a bit smoky.

3. Reacquainting ourselves with Schlenkerla

We’ve been drinking Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier Maerzen from bottles in London during the last year or two and, although we always enjoy it, it sometimes seems a bit one-dimensional. Not as fresh as it is from the tap, where the crazy smokiness is just one flavour beautifully balanced with a lot of others. We sat outside under a tree, listening to a university orchestra rehearsing in a nearby building, and sighed with contentment.

4. Discovering Keesmann Stern-la

Keesmann are another brewery we’d not heard much about. Their beers are on the commercial side — a bit ‘cleaner’, maybe — but we were very impressed by Stern-la. It’s an unfiltered lager but was very clear in the glass and a dark golden colour, with a lot of sweet malt flavour. We’d expected something as rubbish as, say, Ingolstadt’s Ingobrau and it’s always a treat to be pleasantly surprised.

5. Afternoon session at Klosterbrau

You know how much difference a pleasant waiter can make? Our waitress on the sunny afternoon we spent here was great. “Nice beer?” she asked with a smile as we swooned over the seasonal bock. “Yes!” we said. She smiled and looked delighted. “All is well with the world,” we said to each other several times. Although the bock might have had something to do with that, too.

Notes

As is usually the case, Ron‘s guide to Bamberg pubs is a great place to start researching your own crawls. Links have been included where appropriate, but neither Keesmann nor Griefenklau Greifenklau seem to have a homepage. UPDATED. Griefenklau don’t have a homepage but Greifenklau do.

Who makes those lovely German beer glasses?

Bailey — Wed, 02 May 2007 18:44:24 +0000

On the recent Boak & Bailey tour of Bavaria, we were, as always, dazzled by the cosmetic beauty of every beer we were served. It helps that the beer always has a creamy, frothy head, several inches in height, but most of the impact really comes from the glasses and stoneware it’s served in.

Pils always comes in something delicate – a wine glass shape, or a tall flute. Wheat beer is always served in a towering, elegant… well, vase. Bock or double bock usually comes in something with a stem – like Rastal’s “traditions goblet” pictured above (more on Rastal in a moment). There are al kinds of unwritten rules we British will never understand, I’m sure.

And the glasses themselves… squeaky clean, beautifully designed, and beautifully decorated. I wanted them all, but didn’t really trust myself to get them home.

Most of the glasses we drank from were made by Rastal (who go into some detail about their production process here) or Sahm. Sahm really believe that the shape and design of a glass affects the taste:

The selection of the proper drinking glass is of decisive importance for allowing beer to unfold its own, very individual taste. Whether you choose a goblet, a tumbler or a tankard, the glass always has to match the type of beer on offer.

In most cases, a beer glass is chosen primarily for aesthetic reasons, function tends to take a backseat. In the meantime, studies of the Institute for Brewing Sciences at the Belgian University of Leuven prove, that the tasting impression is reasonably influenced by the glass design.

I think it’s partly that being able to get your nose into the glass helps with tasting, but really, it’s just a mind-game. It just seems that, if the brewery respect it enough to dress it up, then it must be good beer.