Munich Musings: Hopping mad about beer...

style="float: right; margin-bottom: 10px; font-weight: 600;"Thu 11th Oct, 2012

I love beer. I love drinking beer, but there is a difference between loving to drink beer and loving to get drunk. Of course, there is a time and place for alcohol induced merriment (and being from the island of Ireland, people assume this is 'anytime' and 'anyplace') but partying aside, I genuinely enjoy the taste of beer, discovering new beers and comparing notes with like minded thinkers (or drinkers). So where better to live than München!


Back home in Belfast, we have a term 'beer snob'. This term refers to anyone who forgoes big, bright 'Special Offer' stickers slapped on to cases of beer, in the search for a beer that will actually go down easily. This, in itself, is no mean feat as the 'fridges' in our off-licences (the only places alcohol can be bought off trade) are usually stocked tightly with very average, very fizzy, very tasteless, mass produced lager which miraculously always appears to be at room temperature. Sometimes you may be lucky to find 'special import' beers - the likes of 'Australia's favourite' Fosters, which is brewed and bottled in Edinburgh, Scotland, but more often than not, you are left with little choice; all of which taste like a watered down Radler.


Needless to say, at home, I am one of these beer snobs. I sourced an absolute gem of a specialist beer shop and from this point on, my snobbery was born. This was confirmed on one recent occasion with my rugby team. We had won a cup match away to a team in the Northwest of Ireland. As per usual, everyone had stocked up on drinks for the way home. As the bus was about to take off, boys were already tucking into their tins of Fosters when I realised I had left my beers in my bag. The bus stopped, I got off, collected my beers and was subjected to copious amounts of jeering and abuse as I walked down the aisle of the bus with a Thermos bag containing six perfectly chilled Erdinger Schneeweiss beers!


In Munich, however, I am just...well...normal. People here do not settle for sub-standard beer. It just doesn't happen and it is very hard to come across. There is an altogether different approach and culture surrounding the drinking of beer that oozes a sense of pride, ownership and appreciation. No-one blinks an eye at an elderly woman passing the morning with a newspaper and a Weissbier or at people less fortunate than ourselves in their train station dwellings sipping on the same quality brews as passersby, rather than the 9% ABV syrup 'special brew ' that is brewed and marketed solely for this demographic at home. A crate of beer here is just that; an actual crate containing twenty bottles of quality beer in half-litre volumes, not a box of twenty 275ml bottles - a result of a (justified, I must say) governmental mistrust in consumers to 'drink responsibly'. During a recent hospital visit in Munich I was asked if I ever drank alcohol. I said yes in a conditioned guilty manner, to which the doctor responded with "yes, but more than three bottles of beer a day", as if to say, "well of course, we all enjoy beer, but to excess?" The answer was no by the way. On the way out of the hospital I walked down the corridor and passed the hospital cafe and saw a man enjoying a beer and Brezen; the appointment was at 10:30 am.


Of course I am not saying people do not drink to excess in Munich, but it seems to share the same mature approach to drinking as many of its European counterparts - something that seems to have bypassed a certain generation in the UK and Ireland. Oktoberfest is a two week long festival of drunkenness; but the drunkenness is a by product of time spent in traditional dress with traditional food, traditional music and a rich and long established culture - not just for the sake of it.


A wise American writer, Ralph Waldo Emerson, once said "Life is a journey, not a destination". For me, a much less wise writer, this rings true for drinking too. Far too often is beer swigged, thrown around and spilled without so much as a second thought as to its beauty, wonderment or taste in a blind effort to reach the destination of 'drunk'.


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