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Stuttgart has a brewery named Hofbräu.
This is not to be confused by the more common Staatliches Hofbräuhaus in München.
The local pico-brewery, Liquid Garage, makes a Czech pilsner named "Czech, 1, 2, 3," which tickles my taste buds the same way as the unobtanium in the USA Stuttgarter Hofbräu.
It could be time playing tricks on me, it has been 33 years, but this is nice.
pretty sure there is still pile of vomit somewhere near panzer from too many hofbrau...panzer guy
ReplyDeleteto this day i still miss the brats and brochen from the cart guys before getting on the train in stuttgart to get back to panzer...panzer guy
ReplyDeleteHey Angus;
ReplyDeletenow you peaked my interest.....that was my favorite beer, the beer of choice for us in my company at Echterdingen.
There are so many excellent small breweries in Germany. It is a shame that only a handful of them are exported to the US. Even if you go to specialty stores that carry a large selection you can only find a small sampling of what you can find over there. However, it is a lot better than it used to be. Living in a good sized city helps an awful lot too compared to the podunk $#!+#013 I grew up in where selection is still poor but better than it was back in the 1980s when I started to enjoy beer (and could eventually legally purchase it).
ReplyDeleteIt was really bad when I was a kid. In those days up there you could only buy 3.2 beer at grocery stores. If you wanted anything stronger than that you had to go to a state run liquor store. There was only one per county except the biggest counties which sometimes had two. Those stores were about the size of a typical convenience store, except not convenient because they were only open 8-5 Monday-Friday because state employees didn't work evenings or weekends. So no competition and high prices and not great selection.
By the 1980s you could buy wine and full strength beer in grocery stores, but still no distilled spirits.
Since then (after I moved away almost 23 years ago) they've actually made some big strides. In some ways things are even better than here -- you can buy liquor at 7/11, grocery stores, Wal-Mart, Sam's Club, etc., instead of having to go to a package store and hours you can buy are better. But the state still controls liquor wholesaling so selections are still more limited than they are in populous areas (the whole state up there has about 1/2 the population of a real city like Dallas or Houston.
The re-birth of the local brewing industry in many parts of the country has been nothing short of amazing. Just here in the Austin area there are a couple dozen small breweries. And while I wouldn't say everything that comes out of small breweries is great, it certainly has a lot more variety and personality than what the mega breweries do. I remember back in the 1980s before the "craft brew revolution" started it looked like all the independents would be swallowed up or forced out of business. Even bigger brewers were being bought up or merging into bigger and bigger megaliths. And while the big guys have continued to merge (Miller and SAB (South Africa) and then Miller & Coors and AB and one of the big European companies), the big guys have in some cases had to try to compete with the smaller brewers in making some brands that have a little more personality. In most cases I don't think they've succeeded, but maybe they've stemmed some of their market share losses a little.
Anyway, bottom line is... some of the small breweries really turn out some awesome products. One of the closest of these to me, Willard's, made an Octoberfest that placed #2 among domestically produced ones in my annual taste-off this year. Pretty impressive given that the tastings this year were more than 30. Willard's compared favorably even to many of the German imports. Only Altstadt out of Fredericksburg (a town near here steeped in German tradition (and the home town of Admiral Nimitz and the eponymous WWII Naval History Museum)) beat them out for US Fest Biers.
Anyway... if I ever make it back to FL, Liquid Garage sounds like a worthy visit.
Damn... Forgot to sign in again... Wish it would start remembering me again...
ReplyDelete