Beer in Berlin: Weihanstephaner, Hackescher Markt

As well as Brauhaus Lemke, we were lucky to have Weihanstephaner near to our hotel in Mitte and we returned to it a couple of times during our trip.  Weihenstephan, north of Munich,claims to be the oldest operating commercial brewery in the world, with the abbey there having obtained brewing rights in 1040.  For over two centuries now the brewery has been owned by the state of Bavaria; it seemed appropriate to be drinking nationalised beer in East Berlin, albeit a Western one.

I’d heard of Weihenstephan before visiting its outpost in the German capital, but wasn’t particularly familiar with the beers.  I was pleased to find that, although the pub only served beers from a single brewery, it at least provided a range of styles.  In our week in Berlin, we didn’t stumble upon the type of beer bar you might gravitate to in London, Copenhagen or even Leeds, with a wide range of styles from different breweries.  In that context, finding 12 or so beer styles, or at least sub-styles, from one brewery was very welcome.

All of the beers we tried were very enjoyable, and (as far as I could tell from my limited experience) good examples of each style, from the Hefe and Dunkel Weissbeirs to the Pilsner.  The two most interesting beers we tried were the strongest: the Korbinian Doppelbock and Vitus Weizen Bock were both north of 7% and packed with flavour: respectively rich, spicy and malty; and packed with banana and tropical fruit flavours.

On our second visit we also had dinner at Weihenstephaner.  I had a posh version of Currywurst, which came as a delicious veal sausage smothered in spicy, brown curry sauce (fruity and more like chip shop curry sauce than a British Indian restaurant curry) and some roasted new potatoes.  Kate had a dish translated as a potato hotpot, which was a slightly thin broth which thankfully came with some tasty, thin, spicy Wurst.

The bar is also a nice setting to enjoy your beer.  A kind of upmarket Bavarian beer hall, upstairs is white, neat and ordered like a minimal restaurant.  Downstairs there are very many more seats in a maze of cellars under brickwork arches, which seems  more like a beerhall as I imagined it, but at the same time was civilised, chatty and not too loud, with families, groups of work colleagues and celebratory but restrained birthday parties all able to enjoy the same space.

Happily full of good beer and tasty German food, we experimented with a couple of different schnapps and wondered why our local attempt at a German beerhall wasn’t more like this, with a genuine appreciation of Bavarian beer and food, rather than catering primarily for the worst British stag-and-hen doings.

Conversely, although I enjoyed our week in Berlin a lot, it did make me pine for the best of Leeds and the variety of beers offered by English craft beer bars. North Bar, for example, provides the best of all worlds: the hygge of a Danish cellar bar or Belgian brown cafe, along with the conviviality of the best British pubs and a range of beers from across Europe, America and beyond.  Not that I want to go to Berlin to drink anything other than German beer, but there’s an equivalent in Berlin in terms of range, I’d be grateful to know for next time.

Beer in Berlin: Dicke Wirtin, Charlottenburg and Berliner Kindl Weisse

We spent very little time in what used to be West Berlin during our holiday, but did take the S-Bahn to Zoo station to see the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche, an iconic church mostly destroyed by air raids but whose surviving broken spire and entrance hall, containing some incredible mosaics, stands beside a modern functionalist church built between 1959 and 1963.  After a brief walk down the shopping street Kurfürstendamm, we turned up to Savignyplatz to find a beer.

Around Berlin In 80 Beers guided us towards Dicke Wirtin (the “Thick Landlady”, Google translate tells me, which seems to refer to a revered, Corrie-esque former landlady immortalised in photos and unflattering charicatures), a traditional wood panelled pub with lots of kitsch character. The front room was full of mirrors and high tables and a bar with large glass flasks of homemade fruit brandy above it.

The back room appeared to be a dining room, with a mannequin dressed as a Soviet officer guarding a corridor back to the kitchen and toilets.  Off the front room was a smoking room, which still made the bar smell a bit of smoke, which is difficult to ignore following the blanket implementation of the smoking ban in the UK.

Kate ordered a König Pilsener, as suggested by the book, which was a pleasant pilsner if not as bitter as it had apparently once been renowned for.  I decided that I couldn’t leave Berlin without trying a Berliner Kindl Weisse with grün, a woodruff syrup.  I was informed that Kindl Weisse on its own tastes a bit like a watered down lambic and that almost everyone has it with either green or red (raspberry) syrup.

It didn’t bode well that the green beer came with a straw.  It tasted very sweet, like a jelly sweet, with a fairly artificial taste.  If the original beer had much of an underlying taste, it couldn’t be identified.  I managed to drink it quickly before moving on to a small glass of pilsner.

I should note that Dicke Wirtin had soft rock ballads playing in the background including, inevitably, Wind Of Change by the Scorpions.  I don’t think I’ve ever visited a city in continental Europe – Prague, Rome, Madrid, Florence, Bruges – without hearing the bloody thing, usually from a busker.  However, at least it seems apposite in Berlin, if  no less clichéd and cloying.  The perfect song for a Berliner Weisse with a woodruff shot, in fact.

Beer in Berlin: Georgbraeu, Nikolaiviertel

As well as Zum Nussbaum (and a number of other pubs listed in Around Berlin In 80 Beers that we didn’t get to), Nikolaiviertel also has a large brewpub, Georgbraeu.

The pub is opposite a nineteenth century statue of St George and the Dragon, which has stood in two locations before the restoration of Nikolaiviertel in the 1980s. The inside is large in itself, but in summer would also give you the chance to sit in a beer garden next to the Spree.

For a brewpub, Georgbraeu only seems to have two beers: their pilsner and dunkel. I found both of them inoffensive but uninteresting.  The pilsner didn’t taste of much and the dunkel was the same with a bit of toffee.  Nonetheless the portions of Schweinshaxe did look huge and maybe, on a warm summer’s day by the river with friends, you might focus less on the beer.

Beer in Berlin: Zum Nussbaum, Nikolaiviertel

Nikolaiviertel is a small area of Mitte, near Alexanderplatz and Museum Island, which appears older than it actually is.  Like much of Berlin, it was flattened towards the end of the war, but in 1980s was rebuilt by the East German authorities for the city’s 750th anniversary, with Berlin’s “oldest” church, the twin-spired Nikolaikirche at its centre.

Opposite Nikolaikirche, now a museum rather than a working church, is a small pub-restaurant called Zum Nussbaum (Walnut Tree), which was built in 1985-7 based on the plans of a destroyed pub that once stood in another part of Berlin.

It’s a small three-room pub with around forty seats.  We were lucky to get a seat on a Tuesday afternoon, in the dark wood-panelled back room with small prints from the cartoonist and artist Heinrich Zille, who is commemorated with a statue and museum nearby.

The range of beers was limited to those from Berliner Kindl, but we both went for the recommendation in Around Berlin In 80 Beers: Postdamer Rex Pils, a satisfying bitter pilsner.  We had a tasty late lunch of Boulette (a kind of meatball/burger) and Bockwurst with potato salad.

Zum Nussbaum is a pleasant, cosy pub in a nice area.  However it was difficult to forget that this quarter was destroyed in the most tragic period in Berlin’s history and that this seemingly aged pub is seven years younger than me.

Beer in Berlin: Lindenbräu, Sony Centre, Potsdamer Platz

Potsdamer Platz is one of the many places in Berlin steeped in history and symbolism.  It was the most important traffic intersections in Berlin from German unification in 1871 until the Second World War, hosting department stores, hotels and beer halls.  It was so busy that in 1924 it gained one of the first traffic light systems in continental Europe.

The buildings in the area were almost entirely flattened by the end of the Battle for Berlin.  After the war the border of East and West Berlin ran straight through it, so that the Berlin Wall bisected it from 1961 to 1989.  Potsdamer Platz has since been rebuilt with a number of large buildings, including the Sony Centre, which includes parts of the old Hotel Esplanade amongst a cinema and film museum under a huge and striking roof.

Also in the Sony Centre is Lindenbräu, a three storey brewpub with a brewkit in the middle of the building.  After a morning exploring some of the interesting but thought-provoking historical sights in the area, a drink was welcome.  We sat on the second floor, by the closed roof terrace (it was a cold afternoon) and enjoyed the house Weissbeir.

The beer was refeshingly lemony and tart; very enjoyable for a style of beer that I’m not usually that interested in.  We didn’t stay for food but saw what others had ordered.  The speciality of many of Berlin’s brewpubs seems to be the Schweinshaxe, generous helpings of pork knuckle, and the examples we saw here looked excellent, with some very crispy skin.

Lindenbräu had a limited selection of beers, so I’m not sure it would be worth a special trip, but it’s a good place to refuel when you’re sightseeing around Mitte and the Tiergarten.

Beer in Berlin: Brauhaus Lemke, Hackescher Markt

Thanks to the book Around Berlin In 80 Beers by Peter Sutcliffe (not that one) we were quickly able to find a few good pubs near our hotel in Mitte for a drink on the first evening of our trip to Berlin.  Brauhaus Lemke turned out to be one of the best and we returned three or four times during the week.

Lemke is a slightly mediaeval looking, moderately large brewpub in railway arches near Hackescher Markt station that sells a small range of its own beers.  Whilst we were there they sold a pilsner, weissbeir, “original” and a special at any time.  The special on the first evening was a Zwickl, evidently a light unfiltered lager, which was pleasant but inoffensive.  On the second visit, and for the rest of our stay, the special a “Stout Doppelbock“, which was a tasty, raisiny stout with a nice dry hoppiness to balance the malt sweetness.

The beer we kept coming back to was the Original, a balanced chestnut brown beer with a fresh light bitterness. Like a lot of the pubs we visited, there was as much focus on food as there was on drinking, and the Original went well with all the dishes Kate and I tried, including Schnitzel, Goumetbratwurst, Nürnberger Würstchen and pork fillets.  There were beef and chicken options too, as well as Flammkuchen, a popular pizza-like flatbread from Alsace.

The food was reasonably priced and generously (although not ridiculously) portioned whilst the staff were helpful and efficient.  I understand that Lemke also has another brewpub in the west of the city and owns a number of other pubs, including Brauhaus Mitte near Alexanderplatz, which we didn’t make it to.