Hey guys sorry for any delay, but I am sure the timescale is irrelevant.. So, two weeks ago, my wife and I drove over to a town in Franconia - Northern Bavaria if you will.. The town is called Bamberg. If anyone has heard of the name they will obviously know of the concentration of breweries within the town limits, higher than virtually anywhere in the world.. even the local maltings has a brewery !
We were there for the Sandkerwa - the church patronal festival, but it involves all of the local breweries - and get this ! a lot of the breweries from the outskirts - within around a 45 minute drive away.
We arrived Thursday afternoon from Luxembourg, a 3-4 hour drive(sorry guys German speed limits applied - ca 115mph all the way) took us there. We stayed in the IBIS in the centre of town, our preferred chain. This was a 10 minute amble from the Sand Strasse, where the festival was taking place. We had arranged to meet up with a few people from around the world, CA-USA and UK - various places. So we met up with Fred Waltman and his dad from CA, in the Schlenkerla tap - using SMS as a contact medium - I seem to have this knack of finding vacant tables….. so we dined and drank both the Schlenkerla Maerzen and the Smoked Weizenbier they do - slightly less smoked than the draught beer, so excellent.
After our meal, it was time to wander off down Sand Str. noticing that the Mahrs stand was only a few steps away - good, their OO was a beer to die for - by OO, it’s the Ungespundet, or unfiltered, zwickel or what ever you like to call it, always better than at their brewery tap - tried that last year. We followed on to the church whose festival it was, and on the corner was the Spezial stand, with their excellent Maerzen and, for us, a new beer - a wiezen, damn good it was too, sorry for the expletive…. but necessary. My favourite of the festival was the hausbier from Stegaurach, well what a beer! worth any trip - well from here anyway.
This festival included probably 30 different local breweres, all good, some better than others, but, I have to say, even the more mundan ones are leagues ahead of the commercial brewers.
Friday saw the arrival of Matt, a Brit on a mission, he samples beers he’s never drunk before, so as our CA friends Fred and his dad were off on a bike ride for the day - to outlying breweries, of course, we suggested to Mat we could drive out of Bamberg to a few inacessible microbreweries. First was a trip to the local maltings(with brewery), their shop was only open for 3 hours, so we had to get there with dispatch, we did, as for which breweries we visited afterwards, well not sure but …..oops! it was a good day, ending up for a paltry few beers locally - at Sand Str. of course. Saturday we finally had a complete reunion, our friends from London had arrived. We, as they say, ploughed the field down Sand Str. but Mahrs Brau was, as usual a gem - good beer, fabulous staff. We had a methodology of procuring refills second to none. Normally you would catch the wait staff’s eye for more beer, not here, the staff would recognise empty drinking vessels accompanied by a note(cash) and in about 30 seconds arrive with refills - now that’s what I call service, everyone else seemed to have to wait for a good 10 minutes for service.
By this time in the procedings, the fill sign was on it’s way up on the ‘ol liver’ so we called it a day, well we had been bashing away for nearly 10 hours……
Sunday was a little quieter, but in the same note. But you know haow festivals go, you get to a point over the days where you really don’t want any more….. it took me 4 days to get there !!! no worries mate!
Our return to Luxembourg on Moday was no dry day either. As I was driving, I stayed dry, save for some ‘EnglishBeer’ as the germans call it - fizzy water… We had three of our English friends in back of our compact Mercedes, we had arranged to drop them at Nuremberg for their flights back. We decided to do a few more out of the way breweries en route, so having left at 10AM, we stopped at 3 more breweries, as usual, my secretary(wife) took copious notes, but have been lost in the turbulence of time… or was it the inbriate clouds. Needless to say, the beer was exemplary in each of the establishments - even though all I had was a taster. We finally got to Nuremberg at around PM, bit what a tour.
Can’t wait for next year, and the Mahrs Brau again….
