Visit the Boak and Bailey's Beer Blog site

Our first visit to Berlin in more than 20 years was marked out by pilsner beers, but that doesn’t mean they were all the same.
Our first drink in Berlin wasn’t even German, it was Czech.
Kohlenquelle in Prenzlauer Berg has the original golden lager from the tank, Pilsner Urquell, served in jewel-like handled mugs.
When we turned up in the early afternoon, after the advertised opening time, the bar was still shut. It looked shut down, in fact, with graffiti covering its shutters and ivy obscuring its windows.
When it eventually opened, it felt a little hungover – quiet and bleary.
It’s a funny name, Kohlenquelle. As the official Pilsner Urquell website explains, it was a coal bunker in its days on the eastern side of the Berlin Wall. It was converted to a basement bar in 2000 and got its Pilsner tanks in 2016.
The furniture and bar fittings feel simultaneously junk-shop hipster and somewhat Ostalgic – two aesthetics that fit together well. The bar counter, in particular, looks as it was pulled from a working men’s club c.1973.
It seemed odd to come to the German capital to drink Czech beer but then Czechia is closer to Berlin than Bavaria is. And for 40 years, politically speaking, even more so.
It tasted as it always does: bitter, rich, and weedy. And its shade of gold really is golden, or perhaps even coppery.
Our first really traditional Berlin Eckkneipe (corner pub) was the Berliner Bürgerstuben. It also felt like a time capsule only without irony or nostalgia.
The predominant colour is red – walls, tablecloths, seat covers – and what isn’t red is wooden, or polished chrome.
It gave us chance to compare pilsners from two big Berlin brands: Schultheiss and Berliner. Both are actually from the same parent company, Berliner-Kindle-Schultheiss, which is itself part of the mighty Radeberger Group.
Our companions for this session included two brewing scientists and two knowledgeable Krennmairs. They got the business chat out of the way promptly: Berliner has had its ups and downs but is, generally, a decent beer these days. And Schultheiss is fine. (That’s our summary of what we think we heard.)
We had a few mixed rounds of both beers and everyone seemed to enjoy them well enough – even those who spend their working weeks tasting and analysing lager.
Coming to these beers with no baggage, we much preferred Berliner Pilsner. It was drier and more bitter, whereas Schultheiss had a sticky heaviness.
But both were fresh and clean, and both did their job in making quiet people louder, and removing the barriers that get in the way of frank conversation.
Next on the agenda was more foreign beer, from Bavaria. Berlin has, and has long had, plenty of large Bavarian beer halls.
On a Saturday night, Augustiner had a queue halfway round the block, but Hacker-Pschorr had room for us.
Over the decades, we’ve had beers labelled as ‘Pils’ all over Germany.
In Bavaria, it really means something: you’ll know this beer has hops in it.
Drinking Hacker-Pschorr Pils alongside the same brewery’s Helles really brought this home.
Much as we were enjoying big brands – let’s be honest, they’re very well made – we did want to at least try some beers from smaller local producers.
Eschenbräu in Wedding seemed to fit the bill, and came with some cautious recommendations from those in the know.
We got a bus most of the way, through building sites and housing estates, and wandered through dark, quiet suburban streets for a while until we saw the light.
The brewery tap, the sign suggested, was round the back of a block of flats, near the bins.
It didn’t seem likely but a second sign seemed to confirm the directions: yes, you’re in the right place – just stride into this silent, shadowy courtyard and you’ll be fine.
We were about to give up when a door opened and a little music leaked out into the night. Yes, there it was, down a flight of stairs that looked as if they led to the laundry room.
What we found in this unlikely setting was an almost kitschily rustic Bierkeller – a brand new good old Kneipe with low ceilings and lots of drinkers.
The Pils didn’t look promising, resembling one of those hazy, lemon-curd coloured beers you get in bad brewpubs in places like Frankfurt. But it tasted cleaner than it looked, and was electrifyingly fresh.
A village beer in the big city.
(We were less impressed by the other beers, however.)
Victoria Stadler is another corner Kneipe, this time in Friedrichshain. It’s distinctly untraditional, though, with bare walls, fairy lights, arty slogans on the walls and Leonard Cohen on the jukebox.
Whether the handful of boozed-up blokes at the bar realised this, we’re not sure. They gave the impression that they’d been sitting on the same stools getting pickled for at least 20 years.
The beer list is unusual, featuring mostly beers from Bavarian brewery Schönramer.
We’re told the owner is from there and there was certainly a sense of pride in how these beers were listed and served. A blackboard outside reads, in English, “Fucking good Bavarian beer”.
This was another good lesson in the slippery nature of beer styles. Schönramer Helles was harder-edged and more assertive than many breweries’ Pilsners.
Schönramer Pils, on the other hand, was so flowery and aromatic that it reminded us of a pale’n’hoppy British ale.
We loved Schönramer beer when we first drank it in the UK at the sadly missed Greenwich Union, and we still love it.
There was something delightfully jarring, too, about drinking a wholesome country brew while looking out over a rain-glossed city street illuminated by the red signs of kebab shops, and the blue lights of emergency vehicles.
We’d like to thank Andreas Krennmair and Louise Krennmair for their recommendations on where and what to drink in Berlin. We had the email they sent us handy the whole time we were there. Hopefully, they’ll turn it into a blog post at some point.
Impressions of Berlin: a tale of 5 pilsners originally posted at Boak & Bailey's Beer Blog


More...