Intellectual Ferment of a Different Kind
Breweries, beer gardens, beer halls
An Upper Bavarian Idyll Rays of sunshine pierced the clouds above the marshlands of Murnau as the train trundled along the Loisach valley. As we dipped into the basin that cradles Oberammergau, the sun emerged in full splendour, illuminating the tusk-shaped Kofel that …
Beers I Like A few weeks back I wrote about the cultural dynamics that influence our taste, while also giving an account of what has shaped my own tastes in beer. I followed up with an exploration of the kinds of beers I …
Accounting for My Tastes in Beer It’s axiomatic that we drink what we like. But what shapes our tastes? And how do we account for our tastes in beer? In the first part of these reflections, I considered taste on a general level before …
In between evenings of losing myself in my annual “big book” (Don Quixote this year), I’ve been reading Terry Theise’s What Makes Wine Worth Drinking: In Praise of the Sublime. Theise makes a compelling case that people who write about wine or who sell …
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 …
Prelude I was up at daybreak and on the trail early for this, one of the most fascinating and challenging beer hikes I’ve ever done. I’d arrived in Bad Schandau from Dresden the previous afternoon, spending the rest of that short but sunny November …
The rush of cool mountain air was bracing as I stepped off the train on the banks of the Schluchsee. A short bus ride later and I’d be in front of an old beer wagon laden with barrels, the coral-coloured Rothaus brewery rising up in …
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 …