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When lootcorp announced this month’s Session topic, I knew I had to write my first Session post. I’ve followed The Session for a while but have never felt inspired to write a full post in time to make the first Friday deadline (you print journalists have it rough). However, since my entire love affair with beer is the result of a deutsches bier and an experience in Germany, this topic deserves my attention.

So, as I mentioned in my February 2007 review, my obsession with beer started because of Franziskaner Heffe-Weisse. My friend Adam and I made our first overseas trip to Dessau, Germany 10 years ago this December. I was not yet of legal drinking age here in the States, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t know what beer tasted like (college will do that to a young man). My fraternity even had an affinity for good beer, so I’d had Sam Adams and Newcastle before. I was not just a Bud or Bud Light guy. But I’d never had a truly memorable beer experience, or a truly memorable beer for that matter. Until Dessau.

Just before New Year’s Eve, Adam and I went out for a few drinks with our friend Martin and his father, the pastor at the local Congregational Church (I think). We walked down to the local pub and proceeded to have our first legal drinks. We had more than a couple of those Franziskaners that night, and it was a wonderful social experience. Arguing life’s bigger questions, half-drunk, with a pastor who speaks just enough English to get his point across, and leaning on his 20 year old son to translate those things which he could not, and being treated like adults, this is the best of what a good beer can do for people. Social lubricant and language barrier breaker, that night in a pub thousands of miles from home introduced me to the wonderful world of beer, and as such, Franziskaner Hefe-Weisse remains one of my favorite beers to this day.

Since that trip I’ve tried more than a few deutsches biers and even fallen in love with the wonderful brews of Germany’s western neighbor. I’ve tried a few weissbiers rated higher than Franziskaner, but never found one to dethrone it in my book of great German beers. Few things beat a nice zesty wheat beer on a hot day (just don’t put any fruit in it, please!), and Spaten-Franziskaner-Bräu brews one that’s hard to top. Oh, and if you can’t make it to Munich, check out their website. It has a nice little virtual tour of their brewing facility. This has to be one of the best English-language European brewery websites out there (among breweries where the native language isn’t English, at least).