We arrived at the Hauptbahnhof on Friday, a bit past noon. Since our check-in wasn't until 3:00 pm I decided to take the family over to the Augustiner Keller. They had advertisements up for their Heller Bock (Maibock, I presumed?), so it came as a disappointment to me when the waitress said they didn't have any. Sad Face. Oh well, we "settled" for an Edelstoff. Sadly, I either had horrible allergies or a mild cold. Perhaps the latter, because this didn't taste super. I'm going to chalk it up to illness, because I've had this beer a bunch and really like it. After lunch, we headed past the World's Largest PO Box (winky winky) on the way to our hotel. From there everyone took a much needed nap and I snuck out to do some beer shopping. Much more on this later. After we all awoke, we headed out for dinner where not much of beery note happened. Then I returned to my room and broke into my stash... [End Part I]
Friday evening I dug into the first part of my stash. It was a mistake for a few reasons, the first of which being I just wasn't admitting to myself that I wasn't feeling up to it. Not just the allergies/cold, but I had a pretty greasy, large, and mostly terrible meal and should have left well enough alone without piling one liter's worth of Bock Beer on top of it. And did I forget to mention the expiration date? Because I forgot to check the expiration date, that is for sure. April 21st of 2014! April 21st, a full month past expiration! Ah well, I figured Bocks didn't have too much to lose so I went ahead and popped it open. Like I say, I just wasn't thinking clearly. I'm glad I was able to try it, but I just wasn't up for it. I won't rate it here for all the reasons stated above. I'd love to try it fresh, not ill, and with dinner instead of after dinner. I think my opinion may change. On Saturday we walked a bit around the English Garden, stopped at the Chinese Tower but only for a light snack - no beer. Then over to the Hofbräuhaus, but again no beer, just taking in the scenery. For dinner we went to a great - great - burger place called Holy Burger. I got the beer I'd never heard of before - Augustiner Klosterbrau Mülln's Märzen. I was busy chasing my boy around when it was brought to the table and when I (finally) sat down die Frau said, "I had a sip, it's delicious." Right she was. Perhaps the cold was lifting, but I ordered a second and watched the first half of the Champion's League finals right there at the burger joint. That was a good time. Then I went back to my hotel room for the second half of the Finale, and cracked open: Hoppebräu's Vogel Wuid IPA. This is every bit a WOW beer. Made in Bavaria (has anyone heard of Waakirchen???), 6.5% ABV, 85 IBU and one of the best tasting IPA's I have had. I would buy this by the case quite happily if I lived anywhere near Waakirchen. Very floral and hoppy aroma without being overly bitter in taste. Really great. Look 'em up. Perhaps that set me up for a bit of a disappointment with: Camba Bavaria's Pale Ale. This actually grew on me quite a bit, but fell short of WOW status that Vogel Wuid attained, and was in that respect disappointing. Still, I'd happily get this one again. [End Part II]
Sunday was a bit more mellow. Packing and traveling and unpacking and no drinking. However, I'll post some more goodies this week. I have two traditional German beers in the fridge now and two non-traditional German beers set aside for later. I will most definitely give them a proper review. The two non-traditional beers look like this: [End Part III]
Will have to look for the Vogel Wuid IPA from Hoppebräu... a little Google research doesn't reveal a homepage, though they seem to be on Facebook. It seems to be a brand new "micro" craft brewer from a young guy named Markus Hoppe. From the FB page: Vogelwuid geht's weida :-)) (Vogelwuid is here again.) ~ Hoppebräu Vogelwuid IPA ~ Mit den Hopfensorten Magnum, Amarillo, Cascade und Mandarina Bavaria, 6,5 % alc., IBU 85, unfiltriert und unpasteurisiert, einfach sakrisch guad. (With Magnum, Amarillo, Cascade and Mandarina Bavaria, 6.5 % alc., IBU 85, unfiltered und unpasteurized, simply damn good.) sakrisch guad is Bayrisch slang/dialect for "Damn good." I gotta find this beer, though it's not listed on any of the website where I usually order beer. Damn, did you get your paws on Pax Bräu's Cissy IPA? Wow! It was brewed in April and is still pretty damn fresh, so you should get the full aroma/flavor profile. I had 1 of the 2 already from which I got shipped in the mail from the Bierkalender monthly package. It was damn good, WOWOWOW good... though a little flat. Drink it with someone special.
I hope you can find it. Worth seeking out IMO. I'd love to hear your thoughts. Yeah, I'm so happy about this. Although I will admit I wasn't thinking about sharing...
You've got 2 1L bottles of 7.2% beer. I HOPE you don't drink that alone. I love how the German (Saphir, Hallertaller Perle) & C-hops combine with the Pils, Münchner and Rauch malt.
OK, back to the stash. This one came highly recommended by the staff at the store where I bought all of these wondrous goodies (Cissy included). Giesinger Maibock. A few things to notice first - the tape on the label (the salesman said something about how they can't get their labels on properly, lol); the 29.05.14 "best before" date. Hmm. Perhaps there was a reason this came so "highly recommended". Egal I will give it a shot. This beer is really quite bad. Perhaps it did not reach its presumed expiration, but I could not finish it. I gave it to die Frau without prejudice and asked her how it was. "That was bad," was the response. I agreed. @Bierman9 and @danfue have had mention of this place in the past. How did you guys find these beers? I was not impressed. I am not going to review it here out of mercy/the sense that perhaps this beer was somehow off. I very nearly did not post about it at all, but you all, my dear friends, deserve to know. I'd give it another shot, but I don't know. Consider me a skeptic of Giesinger for now. Onto (hopefully) bigger and better: What do you know, Augustiner's Heller Bock! A whiff at the Biergarten but success at the Getränkemarkt! 7,0%ABV and a well-within-reason Best Before of Sept. 2014. You know what? Not loving this one, either. 3.00/5.00. Hope you all are having better luck than me tonight. Cheers...
“Hope all you are having better luck than me tonight.” Matt (@mjtierney2), it appears that Tony hasn’t got you to adopt the phrase y’all yet!?! Cheers! Jack P.S. Matt, I am also sorry to hear about you less than good luck. I will be celebrating Memorial Day later this afternoon/evening with some tasty homebrews. By making your own beer you sorta make your own luck!
Jack, as you well know, I grew up in "youse" territory! "Y'all" doesn't roll off the tongue easily for me. Enjoy the homebrew, enjoy the holiday. I'm knocking back one of my Pilsner Urquells so I can finish on a high note (so to speak).
If you haven't been already, you owe it to yourself to drink this stuff at the source in at the Kloster in Salzburg. One of the best bier drinking experiences of my life! Can I ask what shop did you find this in Munich?
Certainly! I knocked this back at Holy Burger in Munich, not too terribly far from the Hauptbahnhof. I will sadly not make it out to Salzburg before my time here is up, but I'm glad I came across it. It's a 4.8% Märzen, and I believe the highest rated in its style on this website, if I read that correctly.
Well, double-bummer for you. I have been by their current brauerei ( a garage-like set-up) but have yet to try their stuff. I hope it's a bad bottle; they must be doing something right, as they are doing up a new brewpub as we speak... I will have to do some "research" for the team this September.... I am bewildered a bit... I added Giesinger almost 4 years ago, and no reviews of any of their Biers.... Also, please try St Jakobus fresh vom Fass.... Mmmmmmm!!!! Lastly, when is Cissy available? Gots to try that one!! Prosit!!!
I'm hoping it was just a bad bottle as well. The staff seemed to really be enthusiastic about it so I'll give Giesinger the benefit of the doubt. Hopefully your experience is better than mine. I'm sad that I never got to Forschungsbrauerei in my time here. It never seemed to fit into our schedule, and now that I'm heading home soon, I don't know that I'll make it back. Can't do it all, I guess. Re: Cissy, @boddhitree seemed to suggest above that it is released in April? I don't know, so perhaps he'll confirm.
I have never been to Austria, and we don't get too much Austrian beer here in Heidelberg, so the 4.8% did surprise me a bit. I'm not complaining though, it was good!
I refer back to this post. click on the "here" and you'll see the doc. in Google Drive, where you can download it yourself. Basically, all the beers on this Bierkalender are brewed once and only once a year, then shipped out to those like me who have an Abo, or subscription. We get 2 1L bottles a month of the beer listed in the calendar. In other words, a great business model for him to pre-sell a good portion of his wares before they're even produced. The rest are sold wherever he can sell them. His only year round beers are the Vollbier and the Weizen. So yeah, it was brewed in March, released on April 6 (that's what it says on the bottle), and should stay fresh for at least 6 months. I've already drunk 1 of the 2 1L bottles, and though it was a tad flat (maybe due to the flip-top), the flavor was great. I'm saving the 2nd 1 to see how it ages, probably drink it next year around this time. The aroma was WOWOW: lots of .... well just click here to reread my review of it from last year. It tasted 95% the same.
I remember I mentioned them somewhere here, but I'm not sure in which context. Fact is, I've never been to that place. The last time I was in Munich (2009 I think), they were not even set up yet. Sorry to hear the beer was disappointing. I think I liked them from what I saw (without having tasted one of their beers) because it's a new brewery in Munich (!) that does not affiliate itself with the craft boom.
How readily available are the Forschungsbrauerei beers in bottles? I know they sell them at the brewery, but they almost looked like hand-fills when we were there last summer. I was paranoid to bring one back.
I sent them a message on Facebook asking where to find their beers and they sent back a detailed list of about nine bottle shops, mostly a short distance from their brewery. I think it must be 1L bottles only, though.
