Intellectual Ferment of a Different Kind
Breweries, beer gardens, beer halls
The scent of hops wafting through the air. The cookie dough fragrance of mashing grain. These are the first telltale signs as you make your way from Munich’s main train station a short walk away that you’re getting close to the Augustiner Bräustuben on …
~Freiburg, Tübingen, Stuttgart, Ulm~ Baden-Württemberg is a panoply of delightful beer experiences. Just across the Danube from Bavaria, Ulm is one of Germany’s more underrated beer destinations. The university town of Tübingen, where Goethe once studied, makes for an ideal beer stop en …
Florence on the Elbe. A jewel box of baroque and rococo architecture. Onetime capital of Saxon dukes, electors, and kings. A skyline of spires and domes. And the city where Schiller composed his Ode to Joy. With its pleasant location on the Elbe and …
Salt was once white gold in the region spanning southern Bavaria and northern Austria. Like Salzburg and Hallstatt, like Bad Reichenhall and Traunstein, Berchtesgaden was built on a mountain of revenue from the salt trade. Founded in 1102 as an Augustine monastery and raised …
Secluded Forests and Rolling Hills in Franconian Switzerland Bamberg is the epicenter of Franconian beer, but hidden gems await the wanderer willing to plunge into the verdant landscape of Franconian Switzerland, a region that owes its name to its scenic landscape of rolling hills, …
Beer before hops, Or, What Is Gruit? Gruit conjures up images of medieval goblets and mysterious mixtures of herbs and spice. Gruit is also a reminder that the ale Europeans drank right up to the dawn of the early modern era was worlds …
~Or, what do Melville’s white whale, a cathedral in Prague, and Weihenstephan’s Vitus have in common?~ I’ve been drinking Weihenstephan’s lush and expansive Vitus for years now, especially when the weather turns cool. I can’t get enough of that subtly spiced honey and …
We arrived in Murnau to a golden autumn afternoon perfect for wandering through this landscape famed for its light and colours. Since all good beer hikes need a certain beverage to make them what they are, we made straight for the shimmering Staffelsee lake …
~Travel has picked up again, and beer gardens in Bavaria are in full swing. If you’re traveling to Germany in the near future, chances are you’ll end up in a beer garden at some point. Here are some tips on how to make the …
~Three short hikes punctuated by lunch at Brauerei Mager, a beer in the Bruckmayer beer garden, and dinner in the courtyard of the Brauerei Hufeisen.~ A rare day it was when I woke up on that glorious May morning in the “before times” after …