Beer tourist venues: Europe

Brugge, Liederkerke, Liege, Namur, - well, get Webbo's latest Belgian Beer guide and start at page 1 really!

I get the impression that these smaller Belgian towns will be similar to Gent.

I've also heard many mentions of Bamberg in Germany. But is this a specialist "rauchbier" place for enthusiasts only, I wonder?

Bruce

Liederkerke ?????????????

Cheers, Gunter

Belgium: Brugge, Hasselt (Hasselt is nothing like Gent or any other typical Belgian town - great selection of local & (inter)national beers, great food, great shopping & nightlife, ...), Ieper (aka Ypers). Perhaps even De Haan and Knokke.

Netherlands: Maastricht

Austria: Innsbruck (yes, Austria!)

So? Not every town has a 15th century cathedral with a pub in its crypt! Some of them have their own breweries. Believe me, in Brussels it's never a case of "if you've seen one small town, you've seen them all".

No, it also has other beers. Again there is a Camra guide, produced by John Conen IIRC.

Yes, it holds perhaps my favourite bar in Belgium...

thanks - I was racking my brains when writing my first post trying to come up with Hasselt. Some wonderful bars there.

Indeed. Sadly the eastern, or atleast the NE, part of Belgium is usualy overlooked. I'm biased of course, I live only a few km outside of Hasselt.

Probably because most of the invaders (er, visitors) are coming from the West (across that wet stretch) and run out of steam before they've gone particularly far inland? Spoiled for choice within a mile or two of the coast and never recover. :-)

We need some floods.

John Conen's guide is useful and worth buying, but not a CAMRA guide. He publishes it himself. Good starter for the English-speaker, but if you read German, Boris Braun's two guides to Franconia are also worth getting.

Liederkerke is a smaller town, and nothing like Gent. Why should others be? A visit to the Westhoek region, between Ieper/Ypres and the French- Belgian border, isn't a bad idea at all. Beer cuisine at the Hommelhof in Watou, overnight accomodation at the Hotel Palace in Poperinge, finding one's way to Westvleteren and its In de Vrede beer cafe...

Brugge is also so very much worth a visit, just to take in the town's atmosphere if nothing else, but you get De Brugse Beertje as a bonus: one of the country's best beer cafes.

Not even close. Two of the brewery-guesthouses there are known for Rauchbier. Only one of those two is known for serving only Rauchbier. There are nine brewery guesthouses in Bamberg, plus the superb Cafe Abseits for even more selection. A train ride south will also get you to Hirschaid, with its own brewery-guesthouse; Buttenheim, with two brewery-guesthouses about a 25-minute walk from the train station; and Erlangen, which has quite a few good pubs of its own, as well as a modern-style brewpub. If you have a car or are bicycling, there are even more places in the immediate vicinity around Bamberg to enjoy good, rustic, country-style beers; it seems like every small brewery- guesthouse has its own take on the word "lager."

If you, as a beer enthusiast, haven't been to Bamberg yet, you are seriously missing out.

Also, if you have time on the weekend of August 5th through 7th this year, there is an impressive beer festival in Berlin. If you read German,

Mechelen, Brugge, the Westhoek, all over the country really

Bamberg and its surrounding region!! And the international beer festival in Berlin, too. From Berlin, take a train to Leipzig for a day trip, and stop in at the Ohne Bedenken guesthouse to sample the Leipziger Gose. Berlin also has several brewpubs.

Regensburg, too: Spitalhof, Kneitinger, and Bischofshof all have great guest-houses, and if you like Regensburg-style bratwursts, the oldest bratwurst restaurant in Germany is in Regensburg, right by the Danube river. Day-trip from Regensburg to the nearby Kloster Weltenburg, and sample the Weltenburger Klosterbier at the guesthouse there, or stop in Kelheim to visit that small city's two wheat-beer brewery guesthouses, Schneider and Aukofer. Been to Passau yet?

Cesky Krumlov, Ceske Budejovice, Brno

You've given Austria a complete miss. Salzburg and Vienna, beyond being great touristic destinations, also have good beers on offer. Salzburg has its Stiegl brewery, with a brewery museum and on- premises Bierstube that is accessible only to museum visitors. The Augustiner beer hall(s) in the Mülln district is an absolute must-visit; the house lager is served by gravity dispense. There's also a great little brewery-guesthouse specialised in wheat beers, on the other side of the river from the Altstadt.

Vienna has developed a substantial and impressive beer culture, not just in its pubs ("Beiseln") but in a number of new-breed brewpubs, including the Siebensternbräu and the 1516 Brewing Co. Would you ever think of going to Vienna to taste an impressive well-made example of an IPA? If you're a German-language reader, Conard Seidl's various books on beer are recommended, and if Austria is on your future itinerary - and it should be - a current edition of Conrad Seidls Bier Guide would be well worth your while. The section on Vienna alone is worth the price of the book.

After 4pm (unless they've changed the opening hours)

But then there are other places to visit before that :-)

Sure - like the great little beer bar at the Hotel Erasmus.

All of this is well-covered in the new edition of Tim Webb's GBG to Belgium.

Beer guide and start at page 1 really!

I suppose you mean "De Heeren Van Liederkerke"? World class bar and restaurant indeed. But Liederkerke a drinking town? What else is in Liederkerke that is wordt the visit? (BTW: "De Heeren", is actually just outside Liederkerke, in Denderleeuw ! )

Gunter

bruce snipped-for-privacy@my-deja.com a écrit :

No, not just rauchbiers (with an "s", since we're talking pale or amber Lager, Märzen, Doppelbock or even Hefeweizen with smoked malt). Bamberg is a 70,000-inhabitant city with no less than 9 breweries. Only two of them (Heller / Schlenkerla and Merz / Spezial) brew smoked beers. The rest offer most types of lager, plus some weizens. On top of that, you'll find at Mahrs or Spezial, for exemple, a local version of Kellerbier / Zwickel (ie unfitered pale lager) called "Ungespundetes", a truly wonderful, very fresh-tasting, yet complex and subtle kind of beer. Definitely worth a go. Besdides, the city itself largely escaped bombing in WWII (unlike its neighbour Schweinfurt), and musters quite a few impressive examples of baroque arcitecture.

Cheers !

Laurent

I can't remember - I've never got past De Heeren!

That's right! Very confusing.