Good luck with that

A. Look at these poor oppressed Germans suffering under the Purity Law. The poor things have never tasted a Vanilla IPA or a Pumpkin Ale.



B. Despair not! Beer geeks are here to show you the way to the brave new world. Don't all rush at once. Join us in a gloomy tent and sip soapy beer from plastic cups. This could be your future, if you dare. Come on then, what are you waiting for?

Comments

  1. Meh!

    You've taken a (pretty bad!) photo out of context. As these things go, I think this was a nice little piss-up arranged by a small brewery that seems to make interesting beers, along with a handful of other small breweries that are doing something outside the norm for German beers (as well as a few who were completely in line with the other couple of thousand breweries). I had a grand auld time with the locals! More power to them!

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  2. Oh, I meant to take it out of context. I don't want to pick on Festival der Bierkulturen (or I would have linked to your post), as you have assured us it was great and mostly free from twattery. I do want to have a go at beer geekery in general; it's very damaging to the renaissance of American beer culture and I don't think it has anything positive to offer in Germany.

    In an odd mirror-image of the hollow pledging of allegiance to the Reinheitsgebot practised by (the marketing departments of) major breweries, there seems to be a school of thought developing who have also made a fetish of violating the Reinheitsgebot and think that weird experimental beers are the way to break the stranglehold of the mass-market "TV-Beers". I think they are deeply mistaken and the Reinheitsgebot is actually a massive red herring. Localism, ecology, taste are what will get people drinking better beer.

    If I am tilting at windmills and there is actually nobody who really thinks like this, so much the better.

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  3. You have point when it comes to extreme geekery. I'm not sure there's some sort of movement developing here in Germany that purposely sets out to violate the gebot though. I get the sense there's a handful who are, but not as the primary goal, rather they're doing something a little different because of the taste. Sometimes this breaks the holy law, but in stupidly subtle ways, like using spelt in a bottom fermenting beer, which breaks it, when if it was top fermenting it'd be ok. WTF? Not exactly weirdly experimental, so why do it? I guess they thought it might taste nice.

    Anyway, That these happen to be small breweries with a limited sphere of influence, mostly brewing for the local area fits nicely in with your model. I like that too, and most of what I drink when not being geeky about it is local (Pinkus Müller). Actually, some of the guys I was talking to said that's what's important to most Germans. Not sure I see that playing out in reality, but I like the sentiment.

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