JOHNGERMANY, A GREAT BEER NATION

Andreas even gave me a copy of his book on Vienna lager (so I will have to go to Vienna to see if there is any Vienna lager in Vienna). He also bought me two examples of Berliner Weisse to try. A very nice evening indeed. Ben is a PhD candidate at VLB Berlin and was eager to pick my brains. This took all of five minutes.

Then onto Köln the home of Kölsch of course. Needless to say, I did try one straight away in my hotel, but I had an horrendous train journey due to a German train strike! I really needed a beer. The first thing you notice when you get out of the station is the magnificent cathedral. It is quite a sight and I recommend you get a look around it. I had not planned any beery visits, but we did try a number of bars and had a pleasant stay in Köln.

I had planned several beer-related trips in Nuremberg and Bamberg though. I had contacted Markus Raupach who I met whilst judging beer in London. Markus lives in Bamberg and had kindly offered to organise a few things for me.

The first thing he arranged was a trip to Tucher Brewery in Fürth. We met the good folks from the brewery for lunch first and a few beers. I was delighted that they like London Pride too and a great love of British ale. I must admit I did enjoy their beer too. It was an old brewery in Nuremberg and very good looking it is too. They experiment with barrel aging there and I was delighted to try some from the barrel. Luckily their beer was easily available near our hotel, so I tried some of their beer in the wild as well. The next day we travelled to Bamberg. What a great trip that turned out to be. We met up with Markus and a group of trainee beer sommeliers in Bamberg before walking up to the historic beer cellars for a tour.

This is where breweries would ferment beer and store it, the cellars were also used in the second World War for shelter and some factories were also relocated there. Absolutely fascinating.

We then had a brewery tour given by the retired head brewer Martin (I know how he feels). The highlight of the tour was the tasting directly from the tank which not only brought back memories for me but was the best beer of my holiday. We finished by having dinner together before catching our train back to Nuremberg. Lastly, we travelled the short distance to Munich for the last four days of our trip. Munich, although a very famous beer city, was to be just a tourist experience with no beer events. Well, I had agreed to that before we had even taken off for Berlin and sometimes being a tourist is nearly as good as being a former head brewer on tour.