Centuries ago, barley was malted with a lick of flame, turning it a dark color and giving it a singed, smoky flavor. As maltsters found ways to produce paler malts and eliminate the smoke, that flavor largely disappeared from beers, but a couple of Bamberg brewers still make their malts using this old method to produce smoky lagers. Bamberg is seen as the home and heart of Rauchbier brewing.

The Schlenkerla Tavern is where you’ll want to go to drink smoked beer. The tavern is run by Heller-Bräu Trum, but everyone knows the brewery, the beer, and the tavern by the name of Schlenkerla. Stepping inside is like walking into a bonfire: wood, flames, smoke, bacon. All around is wood, as well: dark wooden beams, wooden arches, wooden beer barrels, roasting and smoked meats.

Start with the brewery’s flagship Märzen. It’s a deep, dark purple-brown beer with a fat foam on top. The first impression from the aroma will inevitably be the smoke: think smoked ham and wood embers. The body is rich and smooth with deep smoky flavors, where it’s both sweet and has a perception of savoriness. It’s astonishing and powerful and, while it might not be to everyone’s taste, you should order a second just to be sure. And try it with food, as it’s one of the world’s greatest beer styles for food, adding an umami punch, especially to meaty dishes like sausages and steak.

Also in Bamberg is Brauerei Spezial (Obere Königstraße 10, 96052 Bamberg), the city’s other Rauchbier brewer and another like Schlenkerla that has its own maltings. Spezial’s smoked Märzen is lighter than Schlenkerla’s in color and smoke; it’s softly toasty, still dry and savory, with the smoke being sweeter and more immediately inviting. I prefer the Spezial Rauchbier over Schlenkerla’s—the Spezial version is easier to drink and more subtle. They also have some unsmoked lagers on tap.

By the end of your second glass of Rauchbier you probably won’t notice the smokiness in the beer anymore. Instead, you’ll have a feeling that the whole world is now smoky, that everything smells like the heady fragrance of roasting meat and billowing smoke. Very few beer experiences are so evocative and very few beer towns are so nice to visit.

The Lowdown

WHAT: Schlenkerla Tavern

HOW: Nuremburg is the nearest airport to Bamberg, which is less than 50 minutes by train from Nuremburg’s main station. Or it’s a two-hour train journey from Munich. The tavern opening hours are 9.30am-11.30pm, with hot food served from midday (www.schlenkerla.de).

WHERE: Dominikanerstraße 6, 96049 Bamberg, Germany

The post Visit To Schlenkerla Tavern, Bamberg Smoking Brews In Beer’s Most Handsome Town appeared first on TravelsMaps.Com ®.

Visit Markthalle IX (Eisenbahnstraße 42-43, 10997 Berlin) for exceptional HeidenPeters beers with delicious street food. The beers change often, but you can rely on some great hop-forward brews—just check the limited opening hours before you go. Nearby is Hopfenreich, one of the best craft beer bars in town, and you’re also close to Burgermeister, a very good burger joint in a converted public restroom beneath the elevated Berlin U-bahn tracks.

Go to Stone Brewing World Bistro & Gardens (Im Marienpark 23, 12107 Berlin). It’s a vast, barely believable brewing and drinking space in the south of the city, and includes some gorgeous gardens. San Diego’s Stone Brewing (see post 49) make all of their famous Californian brews here, plus a few local specials. You’ll also find good guest beer and an Americanaccented menu with a few German inflections. They offer tours daily, but check the times before you go.

Drink at the city’s many brewpubs, where you can sip traditional Helles, Dunkel, Hefe, or Pils, or find the latest liquid beer trends. I’ve always loved Eschenbräu (Triftstraße 67, 13353 Berlin) for their straight-up lagers; nearby is Vagabund who brew big hoppy beers on a small-scale kit—their taproom is fun and has good guest beers on tap; Straßenbräu (Neue Bahnhofstraße 30, 10245 Berlin), in Friedrichshain, has a large range of beers in its busy, bare-bricks-and-blackboards taproom; and look out for BrewBaker’s (Sickingenstraße 9-13, 10553 Berlin) and their range of Berliner Weisses (though they don’t have a taproom).

Gloriously—and especially on a sunny day because Berlin is unbeatable on a sunny day—you can buy bottles of world-class lager from corner stores for €1 and drink them on the streets. There’s something liberating about that, especially if you’re heading to a park to sit and chill in the warm weather (because day-drinking is also fine in Berlin).

The post Drink Craft Beer In Berlin Beer Things To Do In Germany’s Capital City appeared first on TravelsMaps.Com ®.

For me, it’s the malt that sets Bamberg’s beers apa more than anything else—and this is something you’ll find in many Franconian beers. Overlooking the Rauchbiers, the general pale lagers in the region are more amber in color than those from Munich; they have a rounder, richer malt depth and flavor, a fullness compared to Helles’s light simplicity— Mahr’s Brau’s Ungespundet is a great example of this; it’s a beer that’s full with toasty, sweeter malts, satisfyingly rich, yet still refreshing. The hops are all there, too, and indeed some of Bamberg’s beers stand out for their hop character, including Keesman’s Herren Pils, which is extraordinarily bitter, but otherwise malt is the hea of these beers.

Visit the World’s Oldest Brewery

AND DRINK CLASSIC GERMAN WHEAT BEER

In Freising, 25 miles (40km) north of Munich, there has been a monastery on the hill of Holy St Stephen since the year 725. While beer was probably made there before 1040, this was the year Weihenstephaner officially received the rights to brew beer commercially, allowing them to claim that they are the world’s oldest continually operating brewery.

It hasn’t always been easy for them: the brewery was completely burned down four times; it was destroyed or depopulated by three plagues, several famines, wars, and even a great earthquake, plus the secularization of the monastery in 1803 also caused problems, but through every catastrophe they rebuilt and moved forward and continued to make beer—although the fact that they’ve ceased brewing numerous times does allow other almost-as-old brewers to suggest that Weihenstephaner hasn’t necessarily been brewed continually.

The world’s foremost brewing school is based at the Technical University of Munich and shares Weihenstephaner’s campus, meaning that many of the world’s qualified brewmasters learnt their skills from this brewery. Today you can visit the charming campus, stroll around the leafy grounds, and see the large, yellow brewery on top of the hill. Plus, you can go to the restaurant and drink some beers alongside some hearty German food.

Brewing may have taken place there for a long time, but Weihenstephaner is definitely a modern brewery and the world’s foremost brewer of Hefeweizen—German wheat beer. Their standard Hefe Weissbier is the classic of its type: pale gold, handsomely hazy, with a thick whip of white foam on top, where its distinctive yeast gives you banana, vanilla, and a creamy texture; and it all finishes refreshing and light for the beer’s 5.4% ABV. Ideally, you should arrive early and have the beer with some weisswurst (“white sausage”), served with a pretzel and mustard.

Go to (what is probably, or arguably) the world’s oldest brewery and drink one of the world’s most famous beer styles.

The Lowdown

WHAT: Weihenstephaner Brewery

HOW: Open daily from 10am www.weihenstephaner.de WHERE: Alte Akademie 2, 85354 Freising, Germany

Are There Other Contenders for the Title of World’s Oldest Brewery? 50 miles (80km) north of Freising is Weltenberg Abbey, in Kelheim, a postcard-pretty monastery on the bend of the River Danube. (By the way, if you’re in Kelheim, then this is also home to Schneider-Weiss—like Weihenstephaner, this is another of the world’s great Hefeweizen brewers.) There’s been a Benedictine monastery at Kelheim since 620 and they have brewed beer commercially and continuously there since 1050 (probably making them the oldest monastic brewer in the world). They have a restaurant and beer garden where you should drink their Asam Bock, a rich amber lager with soft, mouth-filling malts, a sweet bready depth, and a long, dry finish.

It’s hard to beat the experience of enjoying beer outside during the Berlin summer.

The post Visit to Bamberg: the Ultimate Beer City appeared first on TravelsMaps.Com ®.

Today the Kellerwald has 24 kellers, or “cellars,” within 820ft (250m) of each other. Most of the cellars date back to the 18th century, but the oldest is from 1609. The underground spaces still exist, but it’s the areas above ground that attract people to drink there. A handful of beer gardens and bars are open all year round, serving local beers (though there are far fewer open in the winter). However, every year, for a 10-11 day period centered on July 26th, they all open for Forchheim’s Annafest, with 600,000 people visiting. (Good fact: there are 32,000 seats at Annafest, which is also the same number as the population of Forchheim.)

Annafest is a huge folk festival where every bar serves an Annafestbier —a strong, pale lager similar(ish) to Oktoberfestbier. There’s music, food, and lots of fun, all in this unique environment on a hill above Forchheim surrounded by trees and above a network of beer cellars. Think of it as a small Oktoberfest and definitely one of the world’s best drinking festivals.

But don’t just go to Forchheim for Annafest… Forchheim has four breweries: Greif, Hebendanz, Eichhorn, and Neder. They all have restaurants or bars, although the opening hours can be a little unusual (sometimes closing from 2pm, even on a weekend). The Kellerwald is always open, especially in the summer, but it’s best to check opening times first. Another fun fact: in Forchheim, they are able to say that they go up to the cellars to drink beer, as they’re cut into the hills above the town—though this also means, of course, that they have to walk uphill to get there.

The breweries make a range of beers, but they often only have one on tap. At Greif that’s a bright, golden Helles, while in Neder it’s an Export, which is pale and rich with malt and spicy hops. They all typically have a fuller malt flavor than the beers of Munich, something more bready, or more amber in color, and then also more bitter— something generally characteristic of Franconian beer.

Why Annafest? The name comes from Saint Anna, Jesus’s grandmother. The Church of St Anna is near Forchheim and on July 26th, the day of St Anna, people would make a pilgrimage to the church, stopping for beer in Forchheim on the way. The first version of Annafest was held in 1840. You can read more about Annafest here: www. annafe st-forchheim. de.

Some Franconian Beer Knowledge…

• This is a part of the world where breweries often serve beer in krugs or steinkrugs (meaning “stone mugs”). But if you can’t see how much beer is left, then how do the bar staff know if you need another one or not?

• If you have a krug with a metal lid, then leaving the lid open means that you want another beer; if you leave the lid closed, then the barman will know you’re still drinking.

• If you don’t have a lid, then when you want another beer you need to lay your empty krug on its side. If you want a small beer—or schnitt, which is basically the half you have when you’re leaving—then you need to try and balance the mug on its handle.

• And if you’re ready to leave, then place your beer mat on top of your mug.

As well as being famous for beer, Forchheim is filled with historical gems and several buildings date back to the 14th century and beyond.

The post Visit to Forchheim’s Annafest THE WORLD’S LARGEST BEER GARDEN appeared first on TravelsMaps.Com ®.