Monday in the land of breweries

Merkendorfer Kellerbier

One of the disconcerting things about travelling in Franconia, aka Oberfranken, is realising just how many of the place names I instantly recognise without ever having been to the vast majority of them. It comes from seeing them in the listings at Untappd, of course – and becoming familiar with all the many ways that visitors can misunderstand them...

A common one is that beers often have the name of their home town as a prefix, and foreigners assume that’s the brewery name. Or they mix up breweries of the same name but located in different towns. Scheßlitz? That’ll be Drei Kronen – the one I’ve not been to, but which often gets confused with the one I have, which is Drei Kronen Memmelsdorf. Drosendorf? That’s one of the two Brauerei Göller, And Schammelsdorf is of course Brauerei Knoblach. I think we saw all of those names on our way out on Monday morning, and we weren’t on the way to any of them!

Paradiestal

Instead we were after one of the other things Oberfranken has in spades, which is lovely countryside. Paradiestal, or Paradise Valley, is a popular hiking trail just off the A70 autobahn between Bamberg and Kulmbach – confusingly, it also has an autobahn Parkplatz (a motorway rest area) named after it, but this is not the start of the hike. That instead lies in fields and is rather awkward for the visitor to locate, unless of course you are sufficiently non-German to be willing to drive through fields along tracks marked “Farm traffic only”, or are local enough to know that the real route is to go the other way off the autobahn then backtrack through the village of Stadelhofen. But I digress, as indeed did our route.

"The Watcher"

Anyway, once you make it, finally locate the trail map and head off across the fields and into the woods, you are rewarded first by green valleys alive with flowers and butterflies, and then by the fantastical rock shapes for which the trail is reknowned. Carved out of the limestone by wind and water, they stand sentinel around the valleys, or lure the visitor up to explore lofty pinnacles or spooky caves.

Although we kept to the shorter 7km loop rather than the full 11km, we were still tired as we headed back to our start point. Fewer weird rocks, but still plenty of nature between the wheat and maize fields, and along the line of ancient apple trees. Finding a place for lunch had been a bit of a challenge – it’s still fairly common for places to take Mondays off (“Montag Ruhetag”) and the Corona crisis has made it worse. Some bierkellers and biergardens currently only open from Wednesday and some only do Friday-Sunday.

Fortunately I’d spotted a name I know well – Merkendorf – and found that one of the town’s two breweries, Brauerei Hummel, was open for beer and food. (The other, Wagner Merkendorf – one of at least four Wagner Bräu’s in the area, hence the need for the town name as a qualifier – takes Mondays off.)

Unlike last night’s dinner venue, the Löwenbräu Keller in Buttenheim, this wasn’t a verdant Bierkeller. It was the brewery yard, laid out with tables and benches – and with the usual-for-Corona one-way system and 1.5m-apart queuing lines taped out on the floor. (Table staff are all masked everywhere here, and guests must wear face-covers while moving around or queuing, but can take them off once seated.)

But it had a bit of greenery around, including a large shady tree, a play area which the kids loved, and the food and beer were hearty and – with one exception – excellent. I had the pork belly, roasty, salty, chewy and delicious, accompanied first by a classic hoppy-bitter and faintly toasty Kellerbier and then by Räucherla, their lovely smoky Rauch-Märzen. My one disappointment was ending with their Cowboy Schwarzbier – so sweet and gassy that I couldn’t finish it. Still, the brewery ‘shop’ was open, they’d sold out of the Rauchfestbier but we have Pils, Märzen and Festbier-Hell to try later – I’m sure they will make up for it!

What's wrong with Bavarian Pale Ale?

It’s getting so that, when I see the words Bayrisch Pale Ale, I reach for my sink plug. Bavaria is famous for several beery things, but precisely none of them is Pale Ale.

I can see why they try – a crisp American Pale Ale is what most traditional German brewers seem to think of when they “Hmm, we really ought to do something about this Craft Bier fashion.” That or possibly an American IPA – but mostly APA.

It’s partly because Sierra Nevada Pale Ale has been readily available there for a good few years now, so it has come to epitomise Craft Bier for many Germans. Of course, SNPA was just as enlightening for pioneering British brewers back in the 1980s, the difference perhaps being that they already knew how to brew ales, they were just trying to make them less old-fashioned.

To be fair, in a few parts of Germany ale is understood to a degree. I don’t count Cologne here, mind you, as modern Kölsch is a warm-fermented lager, nor do I count Hefeweizen, which bears only technical similarities with ale. But knowledge has survived in a few of the Alt (old-style, ie. top-fermented) traditions – and of course there are now many brewers who have trained abroad, in places where ale never died.

So I’m not dissing all German Pale Ales, not by a long straw. It’s just I can’t remember when last I had one from Bavaria (or nearby) that was any good. Just recently, the ‘not good’ list has included Hohenthanner Schlossbrauerei Bayrisch Pale Ale, and Perlenzauber German Pale Ale from Herrnbräu in Ingolstadt (yes, that Ingolstadt, the home of the Einheitsgebot), but there’s been others.

The commonest fault is vegetal or cooked sweetcorn notes, which means DMS. This is a big giveaway as far I can see, because while it’s a fault in ales, a bit of DMS is part of the character of many lager styles. It suggests to me that these are experienced lager brewers working off their patch and getting it wrong.

It’s ironic really. Most ale brewers I’ve spoken to acknowledge how hard it is to make really good lagers. Perhaps there are Bavarian brewers who believe that lager is therefore the pinnacle of the art, and that ale should therefore be easy by comparison.

Or perhaps they imagine it’s like making a Hefeweizen, just with a different yeast and without the wheat... That might explain why there’s so much loose yeast in there that if you want a reasonably clear pour, you’re going to have to leave 15% or 20% in the bottle. For Pete’s sake, either give it a light filter, or if you do want to bottle-condition, use a properly sticky yeast for it!

OK, rant over. As ever, please feel free to recommend good Bavarian ales – or even to disagree with me! – in the comments below. Cheers!