So, i found myself with a free week off work and had a quick look at flight prices, berlin came up at £36 return so after a quick sign off from the wife it was booked. Ive just got back so thought id do a quick write up in case any of the beer info is useful to anyone! Word of warning, theres only a bit of craft beer in there! Day one We flew into Schoenefeld in the afternoon,can't believe this place is still open, they're actually building new little bits here and there and there's also now some kind of alpine hut looking place straight outside arrivals which has a biergarten serving Augustiner, I knew there would be an airport express train in very shortly so we didnt stop for a beer this time. Arrived into alexanderplatz and as i've said before, the rules of life clearly state you cannot pass through alex without having a beer in alkopole, same lovely staff working there as always and a nice cold pint of kindl jubilaums pilsner. After onward travel to the hotel and dumping bags it was straight back out and an s bahn ride up to wedding where we started with a visit to eschenbrau, in a funny location this one, brewery/distillery and bar are in the basement of medium rise housing block with the entrance being in the central courtyard which i guess could make it a bit hard to find if you're unsure. Anyway, a dunkles was had and it was........ok, had a nice bitterness but lacked a bit of malt body i thought. We popped round the corner next to zum schinken, a raucher kneipe which was pretty busy and therefore pretty smoky, nice place though, nice welcome from the locals and a fresh schultheiss, i can't pretend schultheiss is an amazing and exciting beer or anything but it fits in well here and does a job. After that it was another short u bahn ride back towards the north end of mitte, first stop was quelle eck, nice little pub this one, the hostess told me that their beer tap is the oldest one in berlin dating from 1912, obviously i have no real way of verifying this so she could have been winding me up, it looked bloody old though and more importantly, it worked, they had a couple of beers on but one that caught my eye was a pils from brauerei hoesl which the hostess told me is in franken, it was a really nice grassy pils i thought. A five minute walk out of quell eck and we were at schwartzwald stuben, ive been in here a couple of times and quite like it, its food and beer are all from the schwarzwald area which means i went for a rothaus pils, it was on top form. Another five minute walk around the corner took us to sophie'n eck, a bit of a pub/restaurant affair with plenty of seating available at the bar for people like us just popping in for one, i went for a jever, nice and dry, i know some people think this beer has been toned down lately, they may be right but i still think its a great pint. Just round the corner is a cool little bar calle hackbarth, its got a nice V shaped bar that matches the shape of the building, a few beers to choose from on tap in here, i went for the andechser helles which made a nice subtle change to the pilsners i'd been drinking previously. We then got on a couple of trams that took us over into the bottom end of prenzlauer berg and into a corner bar called zum leibarzt, a nice enough local eck kneipe, my palate, brain and legs were probably somewhat jaded by this point so i didnt really think much about beer choice, it was a berliner pilsner that ended up going down my neck, it was definitely beer flavoured, i know that. Another very efficient tram took us back down to alex where a well earned doener was consumed before a nightcap in where else but alkopole, duckstein this time, still can't quite make my mind up if its good or just mediocre, while i was pondering that a dutch man told me he was very rich and was here on business and insisted on telling me the ins and outs of the recruitment business, he was probably a used car salesman from pankow.
Day two Day two started with the really important business of getting some gifts for the wife and kids and a stroll round the various rip off stalls in the faux oktoberfest that was set up in alexanderplatz before heading underground for the u bahn to eberswalder strasse, one of the things that always stays with me about berlin by the way is the smell of the u bahn, i love it, its like mix of the grease and dust of the trains and doener and bread, beautiful. Anyway, as it was lunchtime we stopped off at one of my favourite imbiss, konnopkes for the classic berliner dinner of currywurst mit pommes und brotchen and of course a little schultheiss We then headed up to moabit as i'd never spent much time round here before, firstly we had a look round the Arminius markthalle which is a really good place to eat and drink as it happens, we sat at the little bar of the brewbaker brewery and tried a couple of beers including the bellevue pils, an unfiltered and quite heavily hopped pils, pretty nice. brewbaker brew a range of different beers and i guess you'd call it a craft brewery if you were that way inclined, i'd call it a pretty solid little brewery in nice surroundings Mooching around moabit we came across quite a few traditional little eck kniepen, amongst them was drei maedel eck, a lovely little schultheiss boozer staffed by a nice granny with some good jokes and zur quelle, also a schultheiss pub but has jever on tap too, some cracking characters in this place, including a guy with a bandaged and bloody arm and only about three teeth who was really keen to show off a new door stop he'd just bought which had an alarm on it which went off if someone tried to kick your door in, im guessing he owed money somewhere. We fancied a proper sit down meal at this point so walked the short distance up the road to paulaner am spreebogen which is basically a recreation of a bavarian bierhall on the bottom floor of a massive office building, a bit plastic i guess but seemed to be doing a roaring trade with the office workers, the food was good and the paulaner dunkles was pretty tasty and made a nice change from pils. A couple of u bahn rides later we were in charlottenburg and into gasthaus lentz, nice little place with a bit of a canteen/cafe vibe rather than a pub, a decent beer list from which we chose an andechser hell and a koenig pils. A five minute walk back past the s bahn station is mommsen eck "haus der 100 biers"!!!! quite a big place this and has a nice old feel about it, they do indeed have a menu of 100 beers, these are all bottled and there are some interesting things amongst them as well as some absolute crap like carlsberg, on tap they have around 10 beers i think from memory, i went for the flensburger pils, a nice, slightly herb, north german pils, lecker. On the way out of this end of town we had to change trains at friedrichstrasse so i thought it would be fun to check out a pub called berliner republik, this place is right on the river side and is a bit quirky in that it has probably around 10/15 beers on tap but the prices of each beer fluctuate all night based on a kind of stock exchange system, there are big tv screen up everywhere showing the prices and the movements, i think the prices were set every 5 minutes or something, it was a bit of fun anyway and we managed to come out on top with an aktien bayreuther zwickel and then a sion koelsch, both of who's prices continued to rise after we had had them. As is normal for this stage of a day/night out, i was feeling a little fatigued so details remain somewhat sketchy on beers and tasting notes but we managed a couple more beers in two of my favourite prenzlauer berg pubs, metzer eck and cafe prenzlau, god bless old henry for keeping this place going, i do remember him giving us some old looking menthol sweets as we left, just what you need after a night on the beer.
Day three After a lovely little lay in we had serious touristy stuff to do this morning, i'd booked us in for the free tour of the reichstag roof and dome, well worth it for the great views of berlin, even the audio guide was pretty useful and entertaining and did i mention it was free? bargain. In the afternoon we headed out to gropius stadt, a sometimes maligned area that i happen to quite like, some cracking architecture on show and some proper down to earth pubs. After a good long walk round the tower blocks and open spaces we called in to brinks treff, a typical estate boozer, bet you cant guess the beer in here, yep, schultheiss, this place has one of the biggest tv's i have seen in my life, i bet its a good place for watching the bundesliga games A bit further on and past the lipschitsallee u bahn station is bier insel, they love their darts in here, they have four electronic boards lined up against the back wall, all of which were in use while we were in. We received such a warm welcome in here from the hostess, and all the other customers for that matter so i cant recommend it enough, they had a special offer on paulaner hefe weizen so we had a couple of those bafore bidding our new found freinds good bye. It was off to the kreuzberg/neukoln area for the rest of the evening, starting at the sudstern brauhaus, there was a group having some kind of brewery tour as we walked in, the brewery is tiny though so i cant think that it takes too long, i was struck straight away by the "craft beer" menu on the bar, thats the vibe they seem to be going for in here, I wanted something on tap first so went for their helles, my first complaint is that a "large" beer in here is only .4l which i think leaves you feeling a bit cheated when you look at the prices, my second complaint was that the beer tasted like it had half a pack of butter in it, maybe we caught them on an off day because ive heard people say good things about it in here but the beer i had was just not good enough, we left after one. A short walk up to hermannplatz leads you to another brinks pub (owned by the same people as the one in gropius stadt) this one is a bit more luxurious and has a much wider beer range, i went for the rothaus pils as i do really like that beer, it didnt disappoint. After a pretty poor currywurst at manni's on hermannplatz we went in search of some down to earth boozers in this rapidly gentrifying neighbourhood, we found them in the form of herthaner (as the name would suggest a hertha berlin supporters pub) which was nice but full of blue and white tat, weser eck which was nice but the smokiest pub of the trip and lenau stuben which had a plastic tree in the middle of it and a couple of really good vintage pinball machines. The last pub in this area was a bit of an odd one, bohmischen dorf, i'd heard they had tank pilsner urquell so thought it was worth a look, they did have it and it was pretty good to be honest, but, the pub really could do with turning some lights on, it was nearly pitch black in there with only a couple of red lights on the walls, now, im all for dark and cosy but when you have to take a torch to find the toilets its a bit much. So, all that was left to do after that was have one last night cap in alkopole before heading back to the hotel and home in the morning. All in all another great trip to one of my favourite cities in the world, as you can probably tell i do tend to favour the old eck kneipen when im in berlin these days although i did try a couple of the craftier options out this time, next time im over maybe ill just go full on craft and not touch a schultheiss at all, we'll see
Great stuff. Really recalls a lot of Eckkneipen (and the concomitant culture) you can still find throughout the old GDR if you know where to look. Good fresh (inexpensive) beer and food -- the Doenerladen and Wurstbuden in Berlin are hard to beat -- and hanging with the old-school locals. Reminds me of when I used to stop in Saalfeld while commuting from Bamberg to Erfurt and drinking in the Bahnhofskneipe there in the station. Awesome beer from Jahn's Brau right across the border in Franken and great Schinkenknacker with a roll and butter. All for just a few DM. Good good stuff...takes me back. Thanks for posting.
Really interesting because it shows that there still is live besides gentrified hipster places.Yay for that. No, Brauerei Hösl is not in Franken, it's in the Oberpfalz. In Mitterteich, where still is actual Zoigling going on And Brauhaus Südstern is operated by Thorsten Schoppe, who is kind of known as the "Bier Pate" of Berlin. He also brews and owns Schoppe Bräu, is involved in several recipes like Vagabund Brauerei, and gives brewing courses. I always found it kind of weird. Seeing that his beers aren't even that good. But well...
thats interesting because i had a schoppe brau beer last time i was in berlin and i didnt think that was very good either so it makes sense! there are definitely some great traditional pubs still in berlin, quite a lot to be honest, but sadly there are areas such as neukoelln where they are being replaced with wine bar type places, 2 in particular that i last visited a couple of years ago had changed when i went this time round. basically, if you follow the people who have been displaced due to gentrification from some of the more central areas you will find the real gems, such as bierinsel as above
It has sadly been a while that I visited, but... I was always amazed that you even in places like Kreuzberg or Friedrichshain could find working-class "Eckkneipen" with locals and without IPAs But I only can imagine they are becoming harder to come across. What at traditional Berliner Kneipen always kind of annoyed me though was the beer selection. Not being a Pils fan, I was always relieved when they had Kindls Schwarzbier, Märkischer Landmann, on tap. I basically almost never saw Bürgerbräu Rotkelchen in those places though, which is a pretty good amber lager which I'd love to have on tap one day..
i love rotkelchen, the only place i have seen it on tap in the last 5 years was in their old brewery tap in friedrichshagen, a great pint. i know what you mean about the lack of choice in the kneipen, as you say, most have either landmann or kostritzer and most have a couple of bottled weissbiers too. i did quite well this trip to get a bit of variety in, although it was still pils heavy
you know what, i did actually seriously consider going there but being as out of the way as it is and seeing the prices they charge i honestly couldnt justify giving up half of my day to visit, maybe next time eh
Very nice trip. You visited some of my favourite places in the North (i.e. Wedding & Moabit). At the Schinken, you might have been the 1st tourist this year. Same for Dre Mädel in Moabit. When you go to Neukölln next time, visit Mahlower Klause. And when in Wedding, go to Brüsseler Tor (early), Ufercafe (late) and Blaue Mühle (after midnight), I will be around.
When it comes to Schoppe: He is no longer active at Brauhaus Südstern. He is know responsible for the brewery at the Pfefferberg in plush Prenzlauer Berg.
Great read Gavin. I will be there next month, will be cold and dark then. What pass do you use for public transport? Any recommendations for the citypass? I will be there for 6 days.
bruesseler tor was on my list to visit actually but i never made it, next time definitely, and i will let you know! ive noted your other recomendations down for future trips too, cheers!
since i was just there for 3 days this time i just used 3, one day transport tickets. you may want to consider the berlin card, these make sense particularly if you are going to be going to some of the museums and attractions as you get discounted entry with it. if you wont be taking advantage of these discounts youre probably better of with a standard 7 day ticket, group versions of these make it even cheaper if there is a few of you. drop me a message if you need to know anything specific or any tips etc, happy to help if i can. cheers
