On familiar ground

The trip to Germany was originally planned and booked for April 2020 and I spent the months running up to it fervently hoping that this Covid thing will prove to be a damp squib and we'd all be back to normal by spring. That didn't happen but the plan stayed in place, the refunds were carefully stored and at the end of March 2022 I was finally setting off. One enhancement compared to two years ago is that it's now possible to fly directly from Dublin to Nuremberg, and that's what Dr John and I began with.

The dismal weather didn't encourage much exploring, and I reckoned the best place to begin was the Altstadthof brewery restaurant for a sausage lunch. I'd had their flagship beers on a previous visit, so started on the current seasonal, Ostergold. As the name implies, it's a blonde colour and is 5.3% ABV, hopped with Cascade and Opal. Expecting a fairly plain lager I was surprised first by the spicy banana aroma. The flavour is almost like a weissbier, with hints of nutmeg and clove before it finishes dry, like the lager it presumably is. Into this the Cascade adds more than a hint of dankness, bringing a big old urinal-cake effect to the picture. It's certainly characterful, but a bit busy to be the kick-off beer for an afternoon session.

We went across the street to Hütt'n for the next round. The beer I picked from their diverse range was listed as "3 Kronen Rotes Rauchbier" and I think it's the one actually called Stöffla by Brauerei Drei Kronen in Memmelsdorf. In fairness to the description it is a deep murky red colour, 4.9% ABV, and with a big bacon aroma. The modest strength hides a hefty foretaste full of maple syrup and pork crackling, though it all tails off quickly, with a slightly watery finish. Nevertheless, this successfully delivers the basics of good rauchbier, harnessing the meaty smoke taste just right.

Around the corner on Tiergarten there are a couple of Augustiner-branded pubs and John insisted on stopping in for an Edelstoff at the cleanly-appointed miniature beerhall Zur Schranke. Can't argue with that. I realised that I had never tried Augustiner Dunkel, so that was what I picked. The standard Augustiner approach to precision and quality comes through very clearly in this chestnut brown number, with its subtle flavours of hazelnut and liquorice, expanding to cola nut and weedpatch nettles. Though richly textured it is extremely drinkable and lacks any of the overdone caramel or inappropriate herbal bitterness that plagues second-rate dunkel.

On the way out of town we stopped in at a new (to me) brewpub near the station. Bruderherz is very much in the modern style with bright windows, exposed brick and a penchant for cocktails. Not a brass Stammtisch sign or sprig of dried hops to be seen.

From the brewery in the basement, I began on Mia, the lager. It's a very kellerbier kind of thing: 5.2% ABV and a pale hazy yellow, the flavour bringing celery and asparagus to a grainy unfiltered malt base. Traces of bubblegum esters shoot through in the finish suggesting the lagering time or temperature isn't quite what it should be. It's a rough and ready beer; what I'd expect from traditional German brewpubs, though not so much from somewhere as slick as this operation appears.

But tradition seems to be a concern at Brudderherz, so they have a Nuremberg rotbier on the roster as well. Roter Lui has a lot in common with its stablemate, being the same strength and giving out much the same grass-and-celery noble hop flavours. It is a fairly clear red shade, though there's still that rough and unfinished grain quality too. What it adds uniquely is a caramel angle, and this extra malt complexity is more able to balance the hops than the pale lager does. I think they've made a better fist of the city's native style than the "official" brewers at Altstadthof.

What about the big guys, though? Tucher is the local macro and a couple of days later I had a chance encounter with a rotbier they had made on their pilot brewery. Tucher Rotbier is 5.5% ABV and a murky orange colour. There's a sourness to the aroma which I found offputting at first, until I noticed the similarity to Flanders red. Well that's OK then. The sweetness in the foretaste was surprising, then: a quite jammy strawberry quality laced with almond paste. That threatens to make it difficult, but luckily it's still a Bavarian lager and has a clean grainy finish and even a little noble-hop celery greenness. It took me a while to get my head around it, and I doubt I could drink it in quantity, but it does what does well. I'm up for exploring the style further, if anyone has recommendations.

But back to the journey, and the second venue was Bamberg, for a mix of familiar haunts and new experiences. On the first evening I dropped into Café Abseits, a highlight of my previous visit and somewhere that used to have an excellent menu of new-wave German beers. I guess that didn't catch on because it's all very traditional now. With my schitzel I had a Huppendorfer Vollbier, from a brewery 20km to the east of Bamberg. Though only 5% ABV it's very voll indeed with a clear amber body and a heady waft of brown sugar in the aroma. There's a little balancing red cabbage in the flavour but otherwise it's all about the malt, to the point where it may as well be a dunkel. If you like your lager sweet with a dose of caramel, this will suit you; otherwise it may seem like a sticky mess.

Not far from Abseits is another pub with a varied beer selection, Drei Linden. Here I had the Pils from Brauerei Hönig in Tiefenellern, another of Bamberg's neighbouring towns. This one's 4.8% ABV but again brings plenty of malt weight into the picture, with golden syrup as the centre of the flavour, plus a hint of butterscotch just upsetting things slightly. Luckily there's a lot of hop to balance all this -- rocket and white pepper in particular, for a spicy sort of balance. Although the strength matches that of a Pils, and the hopping is nicely assertive, this feels much more like a Helles to me. It's good either way.

I'll have more on the new developments in Bamberg's brewing scene tomorrow, but The Establishment are still going strong. The local macro here is Kaiserdom and, having never tried their beers or even seen them on tap, I made sure to pick up a bottle of Kaiserdom Pilsner for a later train journey. It's a rather plain, by-the-numbers, affair: 4.9% ABV and pale green-gold in colour. There's little sign of the promised herb and spice, no more than a brush of basil. It could be that, in other parts of Germany, it trades on Bamberg's reputation for beer, but I can see why it's seemingly unloved in its home city. It's a pilsner in need of a proper kick.

Beers from the pilot kit at the Weyermann maltings is one of Bamberg's fun little novelties. A recent addition to that sequence is Isaria 1924, an amber coloured lager which gets its name from a heritage variety of barley they're trying out in it. 5.3% ABV, it has a sweet and bock-like foretaste, though finishes dry. I thought I detected a modicum of smoke in it too, but there's no smoked malt in the recipe so it's either ambient pick-up or my imagination. The hops are an unfamiliar trio of Diamant, Aurum and Tango, but it's not very hop-forward so I can't tell you anything about how they taste. What did strike me was a similarity to beers brewed with the Irish heritage barley Hunter: there's a very familiar rich and wholesome cakey sweetness. Perhaps that shouldn't be surprising. Anyway, this is more interesting than excellent, but I guess that's what these Weyermann carpet-sample beers are supposed to be.

Though I paid visits to several of the classic Bamberg inns, Fässla wasn't among them. It does a good job of getting its beer out and about, though, and I found the dunkel, Zwergla, in the hotel vending machine. The aroma of this 6%-er is a strange mix of porridge and wet grass, causing further confusion by introducing milk chocolate at the beginning of the foretaste. This is followed by grain husk and the high-bitterness of cocoa powder. It's a bit all over the place and exhibits a serious lack of chill, certainly when compared to the Augustiner. It didn't force me to reconsider Fässla's absence from the itinerary.

Top of that itinerary was Keesmann, which had been closed last time I was here. Whereas most of the classic inns, including Mahr's across the street, are dark and rambling, this has a bright and airy dining room, making great use of pale wood to add light. I wasn't familiar with Josephi, Keesmann's bock, so ordered one of those. This is copper-coloured and very heavy; 6.9% ABV and bringing thick sugary caramel seasoned with noble-hop herbs and spices -- fresh spinach and white pepper were detectable in amongst the dense malt. This is another one that tastes darker than it looks. It's good, though, and makes excellent use of the high gravity to drive flavour complexity. Herren Pils remains the brewery's best work, and now I know it doesn't get any more superior when consumed at headquarters.

What prompted the whole trip was the Spring 2022 meeting of the European Beer Consumers Union, hosted by the local chapter in Bamberg. They put together a sizeable sightseeing (ie drinking) programme and I was a little unnerved to see Klosterbräu on it. The beer at Bamberg's oldest brewery-inn was one of the great disappointments of the 2014 visit -- why would we want to go back to that? It turns out that the 2014 Klosterbräu was in terminal decline and its owners sold up three years later. In stepped Daddy Kaiserdom who set about upgrading the onsite brewery, fixing the wonky recipes and adding some new house beers.

Because it's Bamberg, I guess they felt obliged to add a rauchbier to the roster. Klosterbräu Rauchbier is distinguished from the city's more famous examples by being an opaque black colour. This gives it an intense dark-malt richness on which the generous smoke flavour sits. Kippers and chocolate is not a flavour combination I thought would work, but it's what you get in the foretaste and is delicious. While it's fizzy, there's pleasing density, suggesting more than its modest 5.3% ABV. A little herbal mint complexity appears in the middle, and turns more intesely smoky, tarry even, as it warms. I was immediately on board for New Klosterbräu.

That meant I was brave enough to try one of their pre-2017 beers next: the flagship Schwärzla. In 2014 this was dull rather than actively unpleasant. Now I got a masterpiece of complexity, smelling of dark chocolate and dry coffee, proceeding to a herbal liquorice bitterness and rounding out to a plum and raisin wintery fruit effect. It paired beautifully with the snow falling lightly on the street outside. I tend to be a bit of purist about Schwarzbier so I'll deem this one a style by itself rather than an off-kilter example. Regardless, it's delicious, and another reason to put Klosterbräu back in your Bamberg good books.

I love a happy ending, and that's the end of part one. Next, we'll see some more radical changes to Bamberg's beer than just a few recipe tweaks.