The craft $ANYTHING scene is a bigger deal in the US, but you can get better beer, bread, or cheese at almost any decent shop in Germany. There is a lot of Amer

The craft $ANYTHING scene is a bigger deal in the US, but you can get better beer, bread, or cheese at almost any decent shop in Germany. There is a lot of Americanized crap in the stores, but if you know enough to avoid that, the bar for what is acceptable quality is pronouncedly higher, across the board. In the US the standards are ... flexible, the patrons can be sold all sorts of myths bc they don’t know much to begin with, and you wind up with things like $9 slices of toast and all ‘craft’ beer coming in a 16oz can with a wacky sticker on it and tasting like pine tar. Everyone’s happy though bc they had to wait in line for these pleasures and had ample time to post online about what they were doing! If you speak German there are a handful of fantastic documentaries about village bakeries and breweries produced by BR, including some cool stories about the next generation of those trades finding new markets. It’s hard to compete with the allure of the new, even when you’re making the best beer in the world the same way it’s been made for hundreds of years.