Raise Your Mugs to German Efficiency!

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They serve Festbier by the pint in Germany? And it's strong? Huh.

So how _do_ they serve beer there? Are those giant mugs you often see in pictures of oktoberfest what they use generally?

-Miles

On 10/2/2009 7:42 PM Miles Bader ignored two million years of human evolution to write:

How _do_ they serve beer where? At Oktoberfest, it's served in the one-liter "Mass" glass mug, and it's served that way elsewhere in Munich and southern Bavaria, but it's not common across Germany by any means. You'll see beer served by the Mass at other brewfests in Bavaria, and a few beer halls too. Munich's Forschungsbrauerei (a small brewery and pub that isn't well-known to outsiders, thank goodness) serves only by the Mass after 4pm, and if you want to get confused in a quick hurry, a Mass of the St-Jakobus Blonder Bock will do that readily. Otherwise, at most bars and pubs, you usually have to specify a Mass if that's what you really want; the default order is usually a half-liter (Helles, Dunkles, Weizenbier) or 0.3 liter (Pils). That's generally true in just about all of Bavaria (including the not-so-Bavarian region of Franconia to the north). Get to other cities, and things change: 0.2 liter glasses of the local specialty in Cologne, 0.25 liter glasses in Düsseldorf, 0.4 liter "Prussian pints" in Berlin, and so on.

Drink up. Oktoberfest is just about over anyway.

On 10/2/2009 7:42 PM Miles Bader ignored two million years of human evolution to write:

How _do_ they serve beer where? At Oktoberfest, it's served in the one-liter "Mass" glass mug, and it's served that way elsewhere in Munich and southern Bavaria, but it's not common across Germany by any means. You'll see beer served by the Mass at other brewfests in Bavaria, and a few beer halls too. Munich's Forschungsbrauerei (a small brewery and pub that isn't well-known to outsiders, thank goodness) serves only by the Mass after 4pm, and if you want to get confused in a quick hurry, a Mass of the St-Jakobus Blonder Bock will do that readily. Otherwise, at most bars and pubs, you usually have to specify a Mass if that's what you really want; the default order is usually a half-liter (Helles, Dunkles, Weizenbier) or 0.3 liter (Pils). That's generally true in just about all of Bavaria (including the not-so-Bavarian region of Franconia to the north). Get to other cities, and things change: 0.2 liter glasses of the local specialty in Cologne, 0.25 liter glasses in Düsseldorf, 0.4 liter "Prussian pints" in Berlin, and so on.

Drink up. Oktoberfest is just about over anyway.