Berlin vs. Stuttgart beer fest?

On 3/29/2007 8:19 AM bruce snipped-for-privacy@my-deja.com fell asleep at the keyboard, and awoke to find this:

They're quite different, actually. The Cannstadter Fest is much more like Munich's Oktoberfest, with a similarly limited selection of beers on offer. The Berlin Fest is like a giant version of the "Bierbörse" fests held in different cities throughout Germany, and has a *lot* of different beers on offer; you could spend the entire weekend just sorting out the top ten percent and still have a lot to drink.

Depends on what you're looking for. Oktoberfest clone, minus the touristic hype? Go to Stuttgart. Want more variety than you've ever seen in one place in your life, plus the probability that you'll find a beer or three you've never had before? Go to Berlin.

It doesn't seem massive - it is massive. It's set up as a very long beer garden along a wide pavement/sidewalk on a busy main road near the city centre; nearby are plenty of examples of DDR-style "luxury" apartment blocks, updated and now sold on the private market. By "very long," I mean just that - it's the equivalent of a mile (or

No. But a lot of them are. Some stands pour bottled beers. There's one stand from a shop in Hamburg that has over 100 different kinds.

But there are also plenty of beers served "vom Fass."

The German selection isn't exactly lacking either :-)

Another thing - all the stands charge deposits on the glasses. No plastic cups here; you get brewery-logo glassware everywhere. When you return the glass, you get your deposit back. Or you can build up a fair little glass collection if you want to pay for them.

As the day progresses, the festival becomes ever more popular, and that puts tremendous pressure on the loos. Lots of men seek relief in nearby bushes, and yes, that means they're soaking the ground just a few metres away from where you might be enjoying a beer and maybe something to eat (did I mention food stands, too?). The festival organisers haven't quite yet sorted out (after nearly a decade!) that perhaps they need to set up twice as many loos as they've done in the past.

Also, towards evening, the festival gets noisier as the music gets going in the evening. And did I mention that it can get rather crowded?

Go anyway.

My impression in Berlin 2 years ago was that there were very large numbers of beers, but they were essentially all the same: the pale lager, the black lager, the wheat. Sure, here and there one could find interesting oddities (the hot meads for instance) but the German beers were overwhel- mingly alike.

Pierre

Yes, the Cannstaedter Volkksfest is like the Oktoberfest in Muenchen - designed for the locals (and you'll find the Muenchener resent the foreign invasion, regardless of how much they earn from it), so you'll get local beers.

And blame the Reinheitsgebot for the poor selection of beer styles (German brewers brewing for the German market must still adhere to it).

I haven't been to that one, but there are many more "Fests" of that type in Northern Germany, although beer is not always the central point. I bet many of the beers are imported too (see above).

snip

That's the German packaging law in action - they don't just talk about environmental protection, they try to do something about it. You'll find it applies to plates too.

The Donauinselfest in Vienna regularly causes complaints to the newspapers from angry residents for the same reason.

Par for the course.

Absolutely! o

Thanks for the replies. Berlin sounds interesting. Its a pity it's not spread out over a few more days. But they would have to close down the main road from East to West! The only logical thing to do is to go to both of them... Bruce

OK the brew laws discourage German brewers from using some of the weirder ingredients (fruits, raw grains, spices, etc.) but that still leaves open almost any ale variety of beer; plus malted ingredients from wheat, oat, rye, spelt, etc (& perhaps also many odd fermentation organisms such as brettanomyces / lambic style beasties - as the original didn't mention yeast?! - I think I may be pushing that though!)

I say that the beer laws 'discourage', rather than 'prevent' innovation/diversity because, if memory serves (from a posting elsewhere by knowledgeable beer chap Jaime Jurado) some German brewers do use verboten ingredients to brew unusual beers - in the case Jaime mentioned, it was hemp - it's just that they're not allowed to describe them as 'bier' in Germany!

I suspect the lack of beer style diversity in Germany is more a mix of rheinheitsgebot & a cultural thing - few UK brewers toy with non-UK beer styles in terms of *authentically* producing Belgie/German/Czech lagers & wheat beers or USPAs, Imperial Double IPAs, etc; though things are perhaps moving (Freedom, Meantime, Foxfield, Cain's, SamSmith's, Cotswold, Scots lager brewers, etc).

Our focus on UK-only styles is IMO is linked to our pride in & love of UK beers, plus a hangover from the days when lager in the UK largely meant awful UK-brewed stuff, which led there to be a general feeling amongst UK beer fans that lager was universally bad (from Carling to Budvar) & also perhaps that as real ale & some of its particular styles nearly died out & perhaps still has problems, why should we look abroad for beers (or styles?) when our own beauties may still be under threat? cheers MikeMcG. (who currently brews a beer based on a black lager grist, fermented with an English ale yeast & hopped with US-variety Cascades, grown for the first time in Kent!)