Salvator, Paulaner, and Strong Beer Season Atop Munich’s Nockherberg
Starkbierzeit and the “Fifth Season”
You’re rarely at a loss for an excuse to have a beer in Bavaria. You’ve got beer garden season in the warmer months, and Oktoberfest in the fall. You’ve got Maibock season in the spring and a slew of Bockbier tappings through late autumn and early winter, especially in Franconia.
But what about the dead of winter, that time after the Christkindl markets close and the beer gardens reopen? It’s a dark and dreary time of year, brightened in places like Cologne by Carnival. Munich has its own answer to Cologne’s “fifth season”: Starkbierzeit, or the Season of Strong Beer.
Paulaner’s Starkbierfest, a three-week bacchanalia fueled by Salvator beer, is virtually synonymous with Starkbierzeit.[1] For centuries now, the residents of Munich have streamed east over the bridges of the Isar during the Salvatorfest to partake of Paulaner’s renowned elixir. Once an eight-day affair that took place around the Feast of St. Francesco di Paola, today’s Salvatorfest atop the Nockherberg is associated as much with Lent as it is with the Italian founder of the Pauline order.
Lenten Salvation
Like any folk festival worthy of the name, there’s more to the fest than just good beer. There’s the story of the strong beer tapped since 1651 to celebrate Franz von Paola’s feast day on 2 April. The friars ostensibly went so far as to petition the Pope to allow them to drink their strong beer during the fasting season.[2]
And there’s the related connection between Lent and strong beer as nourishment, strong in the sense of richer and more wholesome: liquid bread, as it were.[3]
If that weren’t enough to turn Starkbierzeit into cultural history, there’s the strife between religiously affiliated breweries and the brewers and innkeepers who saw these friars — who, it’s worth adding, usually enjoyed certain tax-exempt privileges — as competition.
Last but not least, there’s the rituals that have sprung up around the festival, like the presentation of the first beer of the season to the powers that be, and the evening of political satire that has been an integral part of the festival since the 1890s.
A Wholesome Drink Fit for Princes and Minister-Presidents
Let’s rewind briefly back to the eighteenth century, a time that set the stage for today’s customs surrounding Starkbierzeit. Bock was all the rage in Munich since the Bavarian dukes founded their Hofbräuhaus to harness some of the magic of Einbeck. Yet the double bock brewed by the Pauline friars struck a chord in Munich.
As popular as this Lenten beer was beyond the Paulaner gates, it was catapulted into the realm of legend when Brother Barnabas entered the monastery in 1773. Barnabas had learned the trade from his father, a respected brewer in the Oberpfalz. He overhauled the recipe, which became known colloquially as Salvator.
Until Brother Barnabas’s arrival, the strong beer brewed by the Paulaner friars appeared only once per year during the festival commemorating Franz von Paola. Soon enough, Bavaria’s sovereign took note of Barnabas and his wildly popular beer, reevaluating the official position prohibiting the sale of Paulaner’s monastery-brewed beer, and granting the order the right to brew their strong beer year-round.[4]
From that point onward, Brother Barnabas ceremonially presented the season’s first Starkbier to the Prince Elector, a ritual still depicted on current labels of Salvator, and continued today when the director of the Paulaner brewery presents the Bavarian minister-president with the first Doppelbock of the season.
Rabelaisian Scenes Atop the Nockherberg
It wasn’t long before this solemn occasion became the stuff of satire. Already in 1858 the brewery invited folk actors and balladeers to what was quickly becoming a cultural spectacle.
By 1891, the Munich folk singer and comedian Jakob “Papa” Geis had delivered the first “Salvator address.” Taking the stage beer in hand, he delivered a raucous “sermon” poking fun at the political establishment.[5] A parade of well-known Munich celebrities has delivered the address in the role of Brother Barnabas ever since.
Bruno Jonas, who played the part of Barnabas from 2004 to 2006, observed that “anyone and everyone with something to say but with really nothing to say” shows up for the occasion. “Bavarians of all stripes come together with the who’s who of Bavarian society when the Starkbier is tapped, all exuding that quintessential Bavarian sentiment of liberality, tolerance, and generosity.”[6]
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Liberality, tolerance, generosity — and Doppelbock by the liter. What more reason do you need to visit Munich during the season of strong beer? And if that isn’t enough, there’s always Brother Barnabas’s exhortation to the Prince-Elector: “Bibes, princeps optime” (drink, best prince).
So there you go. Drink up, all you princes and princesses!
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Starkbierzeit runs from 6 March to 29 March in 2026.
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From Horse Races to Beer Steins: Oktoberfest Since 1810
Footnotes
[1] The Löwenbräukeller also holds a Starkbierfest. Some breweries, like Schlenkerla, release a Lenten beer.
[2] That the monks petitioned the pope is something that may well have happened. What’s less likely is the amusing story that has sprung up around the petition. It goes something like this: The monks sent casks of beer over the Alps to Rome. By the time the Pope tried it, the beer had spoiled. Tasting this swill, the Pope is alleged to have declared that anyone willing to drink this Lenten beverage was doing sufficient penance.
[3] Strong in a hearty sense. The beer was malty, sweet, and dense. Though a notch more alcoholic than run-of-the-mill Winterbier, it was nothing like the behemoths we drink today. For an informative chart listing starting gravity, finishing gravity, and alcohol percentages for Doppelbock brewed between 1850 and 2004, see Ron Pattinson, “Salvator,” Beer Advocate, Issue 61 (February 2012). Starting gravities haven’t changed much since the 1850s, though attenuation has increased markedly, likely due to advances in yeast management. Alcohol percentages have increased accordingly, from the 5% range in the 1850s to the upper reaches of the 7% range today. Salvator circa 2026 is 7.9%. I haven’t yet come across earlier brewing stats, but it’s safe to assume that the strong beer first brewed in 1651 and tapped right up to the dissolution of the monastery during the Napoleonic era was similar in alcoholic strength to the Doppelbocks of the nineteenth century, perhaps even lower.
[4] Astrid Assél and Christian Huber, München und das Bier (Munich, 2012), 67-68.
[5] See Andreas Koll, “An jedem Eck a Gaudi,” Bier.Macht.München: 500 Jahre Münchner Reinheitsgebot in Bayern (Munich, 2016), pp.89-97. Significantly, this annual ritual is a window onto the culture of “Old Bavaria,” onto how humour and satire inflected the relationship between Bavarians and their rulers and politicians. As the old Bavarian saying goes, children and drunks tell the truth.
[6] “Salvator Ausschank auf dem Nockherberg, 1951,” object text, Bier.Macht.München, (Munich, 2016), 314. The term Jonas uses in the original German is Liberalitas Bavariae.
Photos by Franz D. Hofer, except for:
Johann Wilhelm Preyer, Münchner Bockstillleben (1839), Münchner Stadtmuseum. Source: Ursula Eymold (ed.), Bier.Macht.München (2016), p.320.
© 2026 Franz D. Hofer and A Tempest in a Tankard. All rights reserved.