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The oldest name on this list that stood out to me is Weihenstephan brewery, founded in 1040 in Bavaria, Germany. They have some of the finest lagers I have ever
by navidfarhadi 9y ago
The oldest name on this list that stood out to me is Weihenstephan brewery, founded in 1040 in Bavaria, Germany. They have some of the finest lagers I have ever tried. If you enjoy crisp, refreshing lager beers, I highly recommend their beers. My favorite one is probably the Weihenstephaner Hefeweissbier, followed by the Hefeweissbier Dunkel.
Note: I am not affiliated in any way with the company, I just highly enjoy their beers.
- pavel_lishin 9y agoSeconding. Weihenstephaner is usually my beer of choice if it's on the menu.
- Fenrisulfr 9y agoAmazing beer, agreed. Another recommendation: My favorite Munich-style weiss beer is from Franziskaner (founded in 1363). It's in my top 3 beers of all time.
- navidfarhadi 9y agoFranziskaner weissbier is also one of my favorites, right up there with Weihenstephaner hefeweissbier. Both are top 5 German beers in my book for sure. They are both extremely easy to find in California (SF Bay Area) as well, which is great!
- emmelaich 9y agoI rate the the Schöfferhofer above the Franziskaner. But only just.
- namdnay 9y agoFunnily enough, my all-time favourite weissbier is the Kumulus from Airbrau, the only beer brewed in an airport terminal! It sounds like a gimmick, but it's actually really good.
- justincormack 9y agoOf course lager was only invented in the nineteenth century, so presumably they made very different beers before that.
- laurentoget 9y agoit probably depends what you mean by lager. and calling weihenstephaner a lager is questionable.
- oaiey 9y agoTheir main beer is a "Helles" :)
- laurentoget 9y agotheir most famous in the US is a hefeweizen, though.
- oaiey 9y agoHelles is regional to Bavaria and also the dominant beer. Hefeweizen is secondary choice but strong in export to the world :)
- topgunsarg 9y agoWhich is amazing as well, by the way.
- nwellnhof 9y agoWeihenstephaner is mostly known for their Weißbier which is OK. Their Helles tastes like shit, though, at least compared to other Bavarian breweries.
- denzil_correa 9y agoThe only Weihenstephan I knew before reading this was Weihenstephan Milk [0]. I'm guessing they are a different company though. [0] https://www.molkerei-weihenstephan.de https://www.molkerei-weihenstephan.de
- pera 9y agoWeihenstephaner's hefeweizen is my favorite beer of all times. It's quite difficult to find here in Seattle, but I guess that makes it more special :)
- dfee 9y agoI’m unimpressed with the Weihenstephaner Hefeweizen beer. That said, there is a company in Austin, TX - Live Oak - who makes an incredible Hefeweizen. Every time I go back to Austin, I hunt down this beer and enjoy it with a “Detroiter” pizza from the Via 313 food truck at a bar called Craft Pride. Now that I live in San Diego, I have an incredible selection of local brew to choose from, but I have yet to find anything that tops that hef. https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/383/1062/ https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/383/1062/
- jkestner 9y agoLive Oak Hefe is my No. 1 here (right in front of 512 Pecan Porter), and one of the finest beer I've had period. If you haven't been to the Live Oak tasting room across from the airport, it has a variety of rarer German styles as well. German immigrants settled in this part of Texas, which means there's a lot of craft breweries that give someone who drinks marzens and weisens year-round (me) great alternatives to Weihenstephaner and Spaten. Via 313 is good, but man, nothing on the Neapolitan that Pieous makes. To bring us back onto the topic, water-barley-yeast-hops and water-flour-yeast-salt recipes say that there's longevity in simplicity. Makes one want to give up making technology, or focus on distilling it down to the essential.
- arca_vorago 9y agoHofbräu Hefe is the best commonly available hefe in the states imho. Bonus ancient beer knowledge: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bappir https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bappir
- dmayle 9y agoBeer nazi here... Hefeweizen/weissbier is not a lager. Lagers are cold bottom-fermented beers. Hefeweizen is warm top-fermented beer.
- minikites 9y ago>Beer nazi You may want to reconsider this phrasing.
- shadowbantruth 9y agoChill out. Nobody's killing anybody here.
- stronglikedan 9y agoBrew nazi?
- rconti 9y agoNah, brits will think you're talking tea.
- reitanqild 9y agoWhen I write this minikites is downvoted for no good reason. As much as I support freedom of speech I also think it's unwise to normalize nazism. Reminding people not to normalize nazism isn't something one should be downvoted for in my book.
- icebraining 9y agoJust as an alternative point of view, they're debasing and ridiculing the term, whereas you're helping to inflate its importance by trying to keep it a taboo. As an aside, here's an interview with the Jewish actor who played the Soup Nazi: http://uproxx.com/tv/soup-nazi-interview-seinfeld-apartment/ http://uproxx.com/tv/soup-nazi-interview-seinfeld-apartment/
- 9y ago
- BjoernKW 9y agoFor those here into German wheat / Hefeweizen beers: Schneider Weisse offer a range of excellent regular Hefeweizen beers as well as an annual special limited edition (named TAPX). While the regular TAP7 (a Hefeweizen Dunkel) and TAP5 (a hoppy, fruity Hefeweizen reminiscent of an IPA) are fantastic already and stand out among wheat beers the TAPX edition is a very unique treat. The Tap X Cuvée Barrique for example is a creamy and dry wheat beer that tastes like wild berries, figs, and vanilla. Quite hard to get hold of unfortunately, especially as for the past limited editions.
- nwellnhof 9y agoFully agree, Schneider Weisse is excellent. Other great Bavarian Weißbier breweries are Hopf and Unertl, but they're probably even harder to get outside of Bavaria.
- rconti 9y agoLots of breweries. Belgian Abbeys; Grimbergen, Affligem... Can anyone opine on how similar today's beers might taste to how they did "back in the day?" I'm sure some of the beers are based on the original recipes, and with the Reinheitsgebot, it's fairly plausible that all of the ingredients in the German beers in particular are very similar. But I'm not sure how the process might have changed over the years, or how the ingredients might taste different now than they did a century ago.
- usrusr 9y agoEverything swerner wrote, with a minor interjection: part of a brewery's identity is based on their water source (nuances in chemical composition have a certain influence on the brewing process), so a brewery that stood out due to their well or spring 500 years ago might still do so today. Or not at all, since the interaction between ground water and geology can change a lot in that timeframe.
- swerner 9y agoBeers today taste nothing like they did back then. Microbiology aside (today's beer is made with pure-bred yeast, back then it was a wild mix of microbes), pale malt was not produced until the 17th or 18th centre, and the pale lager beers we nowadays associate with traditional German beer were developed as late as the 19th century.
- 13of40 9y agoIt also would have been warm, flat, made with fire-dried malt (so smoky)[1], and possibly made with bittering agents other than hops, like gruit[2]. [1]https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/all-beer-tasted-like-smoke-brewing?utm_source=fark&utm_medium=website&utm_content=link&ICID=ref_fark https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/all-beer-tasted-like-s... [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gruit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gruit
- timcederman 9y agoI did a beer tour of Belgium and apparently all of their beers are very modern (at most ~100 years old), and the dates refer to either the first brewery in the area, or the abbey itself. Not specific to Belgian/German beers, but I found this interesting: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2vo36v/during_the_middle_ages_was_the_beer_they_drank/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2vo36v/durin...
- microcolonel 9y agoYeah, I marvelled a bit when I first saw that they were licensed in 1040. Weihenstephaner Hefeweissbier is excellent. They seem pretty bizarre as modern breweries go. Originally operated as part of the abbey, they are now somewhat joined with TU München. Hard for me to even say if they are really the successors to a continuous organization from 1040.
- byproxy 9y agoGood beer! And pretty decently priced (in my parts, at least). ~$3.50 for a pint, if you can find it at a liquor store.