Freiburg, Beer on the Edge of the Black Forest
It had been ages since I’d been to Freiburg. Good wine was the order of the day back when an old friend studied law here in the 1990s. But now I was back to pay more attention to Freiburg’s beer scene before venturing into the Black Forest for some beer hiking.
Close to Switzerland and the Alsatian region of France, Freiburg is a city of gabled roofs and brownstone buildings famous for its delicately wrought Gothic cathedral and its brooks (Bächle) that crisscross the Altstadt. The Münsterplatz, which wraps around the cathedral, is a bustling square lined with stately buildings and home to a farmers’ market held every day except Sunday. Shaded courtyards and narrow cobblestone lanes provide respite from the crowds and also from the summer sun in this, Germany’s warmest city.
The heat is one of the historical reasons for those Bächle burbling through town in their narrow stone channels. Once used to extinguish fires and provide water for livestock, the channels were constructed mainly as a form of cooling. Even if these valiant brooks may not be as effective against today’s temperatures, the sight and sound of them are refreshing, enough to cool you off by dint of suggestion. But watch your step as you wander through the Altstadt after a few beers. Local lore has it that if you accidentally step into a Bächle, you’ll marry a citizen of Freiburg!
About Freiburg
Situated between the Rhine and the western edge of the Black Forest, Freiburg was incorporated in the early twelfth century and developed into a commercial and ecclesiastical center. The town grew wealthy on silver mining — until there was no more silver. But Freiburg had also cultivated learning on the strength of its silver returns, gaining renown for its university.
Founded in 1457, Freiburg’s university is the fifth-oldest university in Germany and among its most illustrious. A host of luminaries in the humanities and social sciences have taught or studied here, including Hannah Arendt, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Edmund Husserl, Rudolf Carnap, Max Weber, Martin Heidegger, Friedrich Hayek, Herbert Marcuse, and Friedrich Meinecke. (The list is enough to make any humanities-inclined person’s head spin.)
Where there’s a university, there’s students. And Freiburg has seen to it that they don’t go thirsty. There’s wine aplenty — Freiburg is in the heart of the Baden wine-growing region, and you’ll find numerous Weinstuben if you’re into the fruit of the vine. But there’s also plenty of beer to help students digest all that philosophy taught in the lecture halls.
Martinsbräu
Martinsbräu, a Hausbrauerei (brewpub) that opened in 1989, is a good place to start your beer explorations of Freiburg. You’ll find it down an alley off a busy street that passes through Martinstor, one of Freiburg’s medieval city gates. Martinsbräu serves classic German styles, but also bills itself as a “craft beer” spot, with monthly releases that span IPA, stout, and even a Brut IPA. Who knew that was still a thing.
The interior has that familiar “new wood trimming and white walls feel” of late twentieth-century German Hausbrauereien. A common fixture in these brewpubs is the small copper brewhouse in plain view of drinkers and diners.
When these brewpubs first appeared on the scene across Germany and Austria, the highly visible copper kettles served to “pull back the curtain” on the brewing process — a kind of design trope meant to say something along the following lines: “We’re artisanal, and you can see how we brew the beer that ends up in your glass a few meters away.” In a word, this visual language signifies how these brewpubs were and are different from the industrial-scale breweries that had come to dominate the German brewing landscape in the postwar period.
The interior of Martinsbäu is fine and good, and it’s a nice place for a beer. But if al fresco is in the forecast, make for the terrace on the cobblestone lane out front. Umbrellas and roll-out awnings provide the shade, and ivy creeping up the brownstone walls of the brewpub provide the requisite greenery.
After all this talk of Hausbrauereien and the semiotics of copper brewhouses, you probably want a beer. Martinbräu’s mainstays are an unfiltered Pils and a Hefeweizen.
The colour of autumn honey and liquid caramel, the Hefeweizen brings baking aromas of butter creamed with brown sugar, vanilla, and cloves, along with orange marmalade and light caramel. Creamy with a touch of residual sweetness, this satisfying beer adds spiced cream of wheat, light toast, and banana custard on the palate.
Even better is the unfiltered Pils, which is of a piece with other unfiltered Pilsners I’ve had at Hausbrauereien across Germany, including Watzke in Dresden and Zum Stiefel in Saarbrücken. This wonderful Pils combines aromas of freshly crushed grain, country bread, neutral honey, and floral white wine in a beer that manages to be slender but full of flavour at the same time. Crisp and refreshing, the beer’s deliciousness lies in its uniqueness. It’s the kind of expression you won’t get from breweries that filter their beers crystalline.
Hausbrauerei Feierling
A Hausbrauerei that opened its doors in the same year as Martinsbräu, Feierling is on a lane near the Schwabentor, the medieval city gate with a fresco of St. George slaying the dragon. It’s also a few paces west of Augustinerplatz, a square popular with Freiburg’s students.
Feierling may only have opened in 1989, but they preside over a stately old beer garden just across the way from their brewpub. Perched above street level and concealed by a green lattice fence, the garden makes you feel like you’ve stepped outside the city. The white beer garden furniture adds a dash of uniqueness, as does the whitewashed Ausschank building with its mint-green archways, its bistro-style lighting casting a cheerful glow into the beer garden evening.
Feierling brews one beer only in the summer months: Inselhopf, an unfiltered (naturtrübes) Kellerbier, a perfect beer garden sipper. (They brew a Dunkel during the cooler months.) With honeyed malt, freshly mown meadows, sourdough bread, and a refreshing mineral character, Inselhopf’s got all the Kellerbier goodness you could ask for. It also dances on the palate, which is no mean feat, considering all that country bread, cream of wheat, and peachy yeast waltzing together. When the music stops, you’re left with creamy carbonation and smooth but crisp bitterness, the slightest hint of hop spice joining the ensemble near the finish.
For variety’s sake, Feierling has Brauerei Rogg’s Hefe-Weisse on the menu, a classic Weissbier from the Black Forest that deserves wider notice. Elegant yet complex, Rogg’s lemon-gold affair is in the same league as Gutmann, Andechs, and other breweries that begin with A, S, and W. It’s a harmonious blend of ripe banana, banana custard, clove, vanilla, and allspice, all mixed together with brown sugar and vanilla. There’s also plenty of honeyed wheat and freshly baked country bread on the palate, along with just enough green apple acidity for balance.
As for food: the Landjäger tasted like it came straight out of Aldi. Opt for something else on the menu, or try another of Freiburg’s abundance of inns and taverns.
Kastaniengarten Greifenegg-Schlössle: When the Weather’s Warm
One of the region’s oldest beer gardens and one of its most beautiful, Kastaniengarten is an excellent find. And it was hard to find. Take the lift up to the Schlössle (chateau), or wind your way up the Schlossberg. Either way, you’re rewarded with a captivating view of Freiburg’s rooftops and its cathedral spire piercing the evening sky. To the south you have a view of meadows, vineyards, and the Alpine foothills. Despite my own problems finding the place, the garden was packed with families and lively groups of students enjoying the view.
Along with the usual beer garden victuals, Kastaniengarten serves a regional twist, Flammkuchen. Popular in southwestern Germany and Alsace, Flammkuchen is a flatbread cooked in a wood-fired oven, smothered in crème fraiche, and topped with onions and ham.
Fürstenberg, a brewery with deep roots in the Black Forest region, is on tap. It’s certainly not bad, and it will do the trick in a beer garden, even if it’s on the generic side.[1] But any quibbles you have about the beer will melt into the thin air of that view of the cathedral’s silhouette against the twilight sky.
On Your Way Out of Town
Ganter is a Freiburg mainstay, but their beers are mountain passes away from my favourite beers in Germany. Both the Pils and the Urtrunk are bracingly crisp and bitter, well beyond the point of distracting astringency. And they’re pricey, among the most expensive I’ve seen in Germany. The food also demands its purse full of coins, though the quality is not worth the princely sum.
On the plus side, Ganter’s Ausschank (brewery tap) is right on the Münsterplatz, and the terrace in front of this Wirtshaus has a fabulous view of the colourfully tiled and turreted Historisches Kaufhaus, an early sixteenth-century merchants’ hall. In that sense, you could consider a beer worth the price of admission just for the comings and goings on this vibrant square. (Always a silver lining somewhere when it comes to beer and the places we drink it.)
Once you’ve visited the other places I mention above, grab a quick beer at Ganter on your way to the train station, then head to the Black Forest for some beer hiking.
Related Posts
Rothaus: Beer and Hiking in the Black Forest Heights
Beer Gardens in Baden-Württemberg, Germany’s Southwest
Dresden, Beer City on the Elbe
Berlin Calling: Beer in the Capital of Germany
All images by Franz D. Hofer.
© 2023 Franz D. Hofer and A Tempest in a Tankard. All rights reserved.
[1] Founded in 1283 by Count Heinrich I von Fürstenberg, this brewery once produced beers that were allegedly the favourites of Bismarck and Kaiser Wilhelm II. The brewery was acquired from the House of Fürstenberg in 2005 by Brau Holding International, a Heineken-Schörghuber conglomerate that includes the Paulaner Group (Paulaner, Hacker-Pschorr, Thurn und Taxis, Hopf in Miesbach, and others), the Kulmbacher Group (Kulmbacher and its subisidiaries such as Mönchshof, Würzburger Hofbräu, Scherdel in Hof, and others), and the Südwest Group (Fürstenberg, Hoepfner in Karlsruhe, and others). I don’t recall ever trying Fürstenberg before 2005, so I can’t say whether or not the merger affected beer quality. In terms of size and influence in the Black Forest region, Fürstenberg’s opposite number is the state-owned Rothaus, which continues to brew distinctive beers.
Franz – Have you ever sampled Eichbaum in Manheim?
I haven’t had it in Mannheim, but I’ve had their Hefeweizen at a beer garden in Stuttgart. 🙂
Kind of surprising that these three spots (Martinsbräu, Feierling, Kastaniengarten) are the same three that I frequented when living in Freiburg from 1989-91. Kind of disappointing that Martinstor is still adorned with that very tacky McDonalds sign.
Yeah, that sign … I well remember it from my first trip to Freiburg in the early 90s. As for those breweries and beer gardens, the fact that they’re still around is testament to the staying power of the “Hausbrauereien” that emerged in the 1980s and 1990s to challenge the dominance of Big Beer and its drive toward homogenization. I’m always cheered to see these places in Germany and Austria. Interestingly, unlike German and Austrian “craft beer” brewers, these brewers drilled down on indigenous styles, which seemed to play well with drinkers thirsting after beer brewed by someone they could talk to at the brewpub. With the popularity of “craft beer” waning in Germany and Austria, the Hausbrauerei recipe is one that these younger brewers might do well to emulate: Instead of bemoaning the “lack of stylistic choice” they perceive to be afflicting the German beer scene, and instead of denigrating German beer as “boring,” they might instead attempt to brew more flavourful examples of these styles as a means of building a bridge to less typically German styles of beer. It’ll be interesting to see how things play out. Unless “craft” changes course, my money is on places like Martinsbräu outlasting many of the newer craft establishments.