A few weeks back, I wrote about our trip to Germany with my grandparents. For all my beer followers, the post below is my long-awaited beer scene wrap-up.
A Saturday night in Augsburg and exhaustion was creeping up on us….16 hours earlier we awoke at 4am in London for a 6:30am flight to Munich. By 10am we had landed and by 12pm we were already stuck in a massive traffic jam on the autobahn. By the time the evening came around, my grandparents had settled in to get some rest. But Jim and I ventured on…
Our destination was a short walk from our hotel. Earlier in the day, we had spotted a tall yellow building alongside the Augsburg DB station and thought it looked remarkably similar to a brewery. Good guess, it was the Brauhaus Riegele! The Riegele brewery has only been around a mere 129 years! More amazingly, there’s been a brewery in the same location since 1386!!
Where: Augsburg. Near to the main railway station (Augsburg Hpf). See map.
Why you should visit: Weissbier!! “Created by Bavarian brewmasters…Bavarian Weissbiers are wheat-based beers brewed with top-fermenting yeast… first made in the early 16th century in the Bavarian Forest. When people think of Weissbier (“white beer”) nowadays, they invariably think of Bavaria—and rightly so, because the Bavarians not only put Weissbier on the map, they perfected it!” (German Beer Institute).
Like the feeling I get when I’m hungry and I lay my eyes on a juicy burger, my mouth watered from the time we landed in Germany and I visualized a German Weiss beer! For me, the beer style is refreshing, crisp and thirst-quenching, especially on a warm spring or summer day. I also recommend drinking a Weiss beer when you want to pretend it’s warm and sunny outside – a remedy that usually works for me when I drink it at my local neighborhood German beer bar, Katzenjammers, in London.
Overall comments: As we walked up to the Riegele brewhouse, I was immediately impressed by the sheer size and scale of the brew house and what was obviously a large and established brewing operation. Kegs and cases stacked up next to the brewhouse were piled up to the height of the roof!
Inside, we were awakened to the smell of beer and bratwurst. A souvenir shop next to the entrance was selling all kinds of beer memorabilia. Even in our fatigued state, we felt recharged as we took in the environment. Wide open rooms full of customers enjoyed some of the brewery’s 15+ house-made styles of beer. Friends and family communed together and celebrated the weekend. No one was excluded from the fun. We managed to stay at the brewery almost 3 hours – a necessary strategy in order to taste the many unique varieties of beer on site.
A MUST SEE STOP if you visit Augsburg!
May 22, 2013
Beer and Breweries, Beer By Country, Germany