Augustiner Lagerbier Hell in US?

It's probably a matter of quantity brewed too, they're not a big brewery like Paulaner-HP or HB.

Glad you added the footnote about the 2 different Augustiners.

 

Paulaner is at 2,000,000 bbl, Augustiner at 1,350,000bbl, and Haufbräu at 284,000 bbl.

Looking at their wiki pages.

 

Haufbrau? Who 'dey?

Seriously, with as much exporting they do, the HB number is hard to believe.

So what's your answer to why Augustiner doesn't export more?

 

I just sent an email to Augustiner asking if they have any plans to add packaging dates or codes to their export Edelstoff and Maximator bottles. I've gotten hosed a few times on six-packs that were clearly old and it drives me nuts. I'll post here if I get a response.

 

I have no direct sources, but I have to say I'm pretty skeptical at such a wide variance between the 2 breweries -- especially with as much HB that seems to be shipped to the U.S.

 

Yup, no dates = no purchase for me.

Please do.

Cheers!

 

You should get one--it may take several days to a couple of weeks. I sent one asking them to confirm what the numbers meant as part of their packaging code.

In some parts of the country, their beers do have a packaging code--it's on the bottom front of the label. It looks like this: L311081952 I forgot to take a picture of the bottles--I bought them in early January and they had been packaged in early November (L311081952) and late October respectively.

 

Have to agree with you - the cryptology of beer packaging date codes is frustrating. One of the best ones I have seen is Paulaner on their cans: at the bottom they have a fill-date and best-before date, as a clear date (day/month/year). I like that, very transparent.

 

Maybe I was day drinking.

Augustiner is the favorite in München.

 

I bought Edelstoff bottles that had dates. Make that letters and numbers. Nothing I could decipher though.

That looks like the labels I had.

 

Have you been to the Augustiner Braustuben?

Data from 2001ish. If you disagree take it up with Ron Pattinson.

https://www.europeanbeerguide.net/munibrew.htm

 

Because you didn't have one of these?

 

I just want to put in a quick vote for Augustiner Braustuben, that place rules.

 

Maro brothers liquors in Hainesport has the two beer they import here.

the liquor store by the Vincentown diner at the intersection of route 206 and route 38 (pemberton? Southampton?) did have them as well like a few years ago

Good luck.

 

Sure, but they haven't put the other breweries out of business and we already know they don't export a lot.

At least once, along with the Keller and the Hirschgarten -- but I've also been to a lot of other brewery's gartens and halls and saw the same amount of consumption.

Saw that too and I'm setting the Wayback Machine Mr. Peabody. 19 years is pretty much a lifetime. (Spaten at 1,900,000 HL -- bet that's nowhere near the same)

And I genuinely wasn't trying to start a row with my skepticism, I just find it hard to believe HB isn't on par with Augustiner these days, especially with the exporting they do. That said, I have seen other stats similar to Ron's that show Augustiner as one of the top beers all across Germany, but not so much HB. Still, 1,066,000 more barrels? I'd bet it's much closer these days... still investigating.

 

"Drink more... augustiner?"

 

Thanks for that info. I'm assuming the first three numbers after the "L" are a Julian date code and your beer was bottled on the 311st day of the year, which would put it in early November. I'd also like to assume it was November of 2019 and that your beer was only two months old when you bought it but... (where's that shrug emoji when you need it?)

 

That's correct--the first three numbers after the 'L' refer to the Julian day. I'm not sure what the next two are, but you'll note that the next two digits after those are '19' which I believe is for 2019.

The other packaging date was L296071903.

This is part of the email that was sent in response to my question:

"thanks for your interest in our Augustiner Bavarian beer! It's great for us to have fans also in the United States!

The Maximator bottle was filled at 07. November 2019 and the Edelstoff at 23. October 2019."

 

More importantly GVI's website: https://www.gviimports.com/

That first sentence (bold underlined) is incorrect, of course (likely due to the language difference) - Global Village Imports, LLC is a US licensed beer (and other alcoholic beverages) importer, and they have numerous US wholesale distributors that they supply with Augustiner and their other brands - https://www.gviimports.com/distributors

I find it pretty unlikely that they only date code some of the bottle labels.

Ah, is that how it worked? Haven't been up that way in probably 20 years or so, but whenever my buddy and I did a beer run to Shangy's we'd also stop down the road there to that distributor (called Liberty Bell at the time) and pick up cases of Augustinerbrau Maximator Dark for some incredibly low price (~ $20?). Learned about it from a post on a beer newsgroup from Lew Bryson.

 

Here it is ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Cheers!