Several days ago, a friend emailed a blurry photo of a sticker on the back of a white van.
That photo was taken with a cell phone through the window of his car, and in tiny letters under the logo, you can barely make out “hausbrauerei” (brew house). Naturally, he became my hero.
Using various hacker tools (“google”), I figured out where they were located. So Alissa and I took a 7 minute train ride out to Feuerbach to visit. The place was really big, with tons of outside seating. The inside was decorated with hop plants and bags labeled “Wichtel Malt” and neat old-style bottles. They had these cool cooper kettles mounted inside, but I don’t think they’re in use.
We only tried their two regular beers; the pils and the dark weisen. The pils was pretty good. The first sip was all “woah, this is delicious”. The 300th sip was all “hey, you’ve been drinking that for a while, maybe switch to something else”?
So I switched to the dark weisen. I’m a little conflicted about what to write. On one hand, it was very weird-tasting. A lot of dark weisen beers taste burnt (in a not-especially-good way), and this beer was no different. But it wasn’t simply a pure burnt flavor. It was almost like they also burnt the hops, just to introduce something different. A secrete sauce, if you will.
On the other hand, I would like to congratulate them on creating a beer that isn’t like all the other beers around here. It was worth a 0.3 liter serving (0.634013 US pints) to experience something new. Next time we go, I hope to try the seasonal beer.
Downstairs, you can see the actual brewing area. Looks less like good ol’ fashioned brewing, and more like professional German engineering.
A major part of the food they serve is “Wichtelkuchen”, which I believe is a play on the word for “german-style-pizza-but-not-really”. Anyway, it’s similar to a NY thin crust, but without tomato sauce. Mine had sauerkraut on it, because I chose the option representing the most German of German-ness. Pretty delicious.
By the way, we’ve been here for four months now!
Come on, at 0.3l you should have been able to try all their beers in one sitting!
Only the dark beer was 0.3! I got the small version because I suspected it wouldn’t be great. Also, I’m not totally sure they had any others on tap. It wasn’t obvious, and I don’t like to make waves.