Intellectual Ferment of a Different Kind
Brewpubs, breweries, restaurants, liquor stores, events, home brew supply shops you won’t want to miss.
Every year of beer travel is special in its own way, and 2025 was no different. The past year is a mosaic of beloved places I hadn’t visited for decades, like Japan. Old friends like Munich for Oktoberfest or Bamberg for Bock. Cities I …
Bruges is of a piece with those other mid-sized European cities I hold dear, places like Bamberg and Salzburg. There’s something about these mid-sized towns. Grand as their architecture is, and as illustrious their histories, their winding streets and quiet plazas are still human-scale. …
How cool is this? A few weeks back, the good folks at Big Friendly, one of my absolute favourite Oklahoma breweries, emailed me with a pleasant surprise. They’d be releasing a Märzen in early November, the first one they’ve ever brewed. And not just …
~Wine Culture for Beer Garden Lovers~ Exploring Europe’s beer regions is a fine way to experience a place up close. The beer, the food, the taverns, the particularities of one beer region compared to the next: all of this provides a window onto …
An Unassuming Street Beyond the bustle of the Grand Place and past the tourists trying to catch a glimpse of Manneken Pis doing his thing, the unassuming Rue des Alexiens slopes gently upward toward the heights of the Sablon district. It was on this …
~If you’re in the vicinity of Bamberg this weekend, mark Thursday, 21 August to Monday, 25 August on your calendars!~ ~Update: 2026 dates for the Sandkerwa are 20 August to 24 August, and 19–23 August in 2027. Where the Altstadt Becomes a …
~Munich Beyond Oktoberfest~ The very sound of the word Munich is enough to conjure up fond memories for fans of German beer, memories of languid afternoons in beer gardens, of joyous and occasionally raucous beer festivals, of winter evenings in beerhalls drinking warming …
Forchheim is the gateway to Franconian Switzerland, a beer region with a density of breweries like no other. Yet if it weren’t for beer, you’d probably only know of Forchheim as a stop on the trainline between Nürnberg and Bamberg. But it wasn’t always …
~The Lay of the Land~ Munich. Beer gardens. And beer hiking. Three things I can’t get enough of. Put them all together and you have a ramble that takes you to some of Munich’s most beloved and most illustrious beer gardens. For years I’d …
Zoigl: More Than a Kind of Beer It’s been way too long since I posted about the Oberpfalz, one of my favourite beer regions in Germany. Sure, beer in nearby Franconia is the stuff of legend. And there’s no denying the sublimity of …