German Beer
Despite the best efforts of the Romans -- and creditable efforts, that have produced creditable results, notable a good Dornsfelder '02 and a Spätburgunder, Germany is a beer country. Not that the 30.000 breweries produce a lot of variety. It's pilsener, weisse or schwartzbier, and that's it. (Or maybe they do produce a lot of variety, but in that case they collectively fail to a) get it into the supermarkets or the Getränkehallen, and b) advertise it. I've seen six different telly ads for beer, and it was all for lager-type stuff.
Not that the pilsners aren't bloody good stuff, and so are the hefe weisse (either light or dark), and the schwarzbier. The ubiquitous Czech doppelbock was good, too.
In fact, I've have had only two bad beer experiences in Germany -- maybe three if you count the drunk three-some in the train from Göttingen to Gotha -- one was with a certain gold-leaf coated pilsener called Braugold (gold is always a warning sign on any bottle). A nasty, sweetish, cloying brew.
The other was in Gaststätte Reichshof in Steinbach-Hallenberg. We had just walked about fifteen kilometers, around the Arnsberg, down to the Dörmbachstal, to the Grosse Hermansberg and the Knüllfeld. There we should have encountered a cafe, but it was closed (as usual, someone we met later told us). Then we continued over the Kieferle to the Erbstal, and down into Steinbach-Hallenberg. Gaststätte Unter Dem Linden was closed too. Urlaub. So we continued, and arrived at Reichshof.
Despite not looking all that open for business, it was, and we went in... A family of five was waiting for lunch. A few old Steinbach-Hallenbergers were chatting over a glass of mineral water.
Having walked that far in a reasonably hot sun, we were thirsty. The kind of thirst that makes anything wet taste great. Right?
We ordered beer and cola. After a quarter of an hour we received luke-warm cola with half an ice-cube per glass, and two lukewarm beers. The beer was poured in glasses still containing a generous quality of the dirty water that had been used to nominally clean them. The beer was, furthermore, flat. I guess it was tapped from a keg that had been open for too long. I suspect -- but too much had happened to it to be sure -- that it wasn't that good a brew to start with. Not Werner's, as advertised on the image above, I guess, but perhaps something else. The place contained a strange plethora of brewery give-aways, although the majority tended towards something to do with dragons from a brewery with "Schloss" in its name. It's not that I don't want to name the guilty party, I'm just not sure that it was the brewery's fault... The food the other party got presented looked quite horrible, too. Even worse than the food we had in Hotel Wagner.
But on the whole, I miss the German beer. Even Grolsch is a bit bland -- fortunately, our off-license now carries Pilsner Urquell, even though that isn't as bitter I remember it used to be. Brands I particularly liked were: Leikeim and Hasseroder. Warsteiner is a bit watery. Tucher Bajuvator is a nice Czech doppelbock; Eisenacher Export and Schwarze Drache are really nice, too. Padeborner is nice and fresh, Bitburger is a bit weak. And I think I've forgotten about ten brands that were nice and hoppy, with a clean taste and an appealing fragrance...
