München (Munich) 

Introduction

Capital of Bavaria and, with 2.7 million inhabitants, Germany's third largest city.

Go to Munich . . . but not in October!

Everybody has heard of the Munich Oktoberfest, which actually starts in September and ends by the first week in October.  You'd think it was a beer fan's must-visit - but we give it a miss!  It's fine if you want the atmosphere of huge crowds (half a million on the opening day), noise, and swilling  lots of  rather bland beer (560,000 litres on the first day), but if you want to taste a range of beers it's not the right place to be.  At CAMRA's Great British Beer Festival you can try over 400 beers if you have the stamina - at the Oktoberfest the range is just a handful. 

Nowadays each of the dozen or so major Munich breweries has a beer tent (seating from 4200 to 9300 people -some tents!) where you  are restricted to their own products but pay 6.30 to 6.80 Euros per litre for the privilege.  And they won't let any other brewers join in - even aristocratic ones!  When Prince Luitpold - who is doing his bit to raise the profile of German beers - wanted to offer his beers at the Oktoberfest he was rejected as the brewery was 30 miles outside Munich.  He wanted to build a brewery within the city limits in order to qualify, so the organisers upped the hurdle again by not allowing breweries built after 1970.  And the real irony is that it was for the marriage of one of Prince Luitpold's ancestors in 1810 that the tradition of the Oktoberfest was founded!  Another ancestor founded a school of brewing in Munich in 1868, which has trained generations of the operatives working in these dog-in-the-manger breweries - there ain't no gratitude!

Starkbierzeit - Strong-beer Time

The Bavarians have a lot of festivals that quite rightly revolve around 'beer', and Starkbierzeit is one of them. The story goes that in morally stricter times, monks brewed extra strong beer to help get them through lent.

The alcohol content of Starkbier is higher than that of normal beer and is produced by all the major breweries. It is thick stuff and very potent.

The Salvatorkeller on Nockenberg Hill traditionally sees the tapping of the first barrel and with it the opening of the festival which immediately follows Fasching.

It begins in March and lasts for three weeks.

The strong beer festival that started at Paulaner am Nockherberg (with the original Dopplebock 'Salvator'). It's generally on for a few weeks around March 19th (each brewery will have a special event).

Should be better than Octoberfest (better beer, less tourists).
 

They call it Munich's secret beerfest, the one the summer Euro backpackers don't know about.

It would be reasonable to think that's why this beer capital stages the Starkbierfest in cool March when snow will quite likely still cover the city's beer gardens. But the timing of the boisterous celebration of Munich's potent doppelbock beers has everything to do with tradition and nothing to do with avoiding the tourist hordes.

The Starkbierfest (literally, strong beer festival) has all the main ingredients of the much bigger, bawdier Oktoberfest, but without the rampant commercialism and tour groups. There's drinking by the liter mug, roast chicken, sausages and pretzels galore, long tables of swaying lederhosen, and ear-splitting oompah bands.

Most of Munich's 13 large and micro breweries produce a doppelbock during March but, unlike the Oktoberfest when all of the main breweries are involved, only one of them is the focal point of these festivities: Paulaner, producer of the original Salvator Doppelbock.

Historically, the Starkbierfest is linked with the religious calendar. The forerunner of today's doppelbocks (double bocks) was a powerful beer brewed by eighteenth-century monks, either to sustain them during the Lenten fast or to celebrate the birthday of their ancient and obscure inspiration, St. Francis of Paula, on April 2 (not to be confused with St. Francis of Assisi). No one is exactly sure which excuse the monks used for creating what they variously called Sanct Pater Bier, or sometimes, Herrenbier, but it is known that brewing had been a major activity of the sprawling Neudeck-on-the-Au monastery since 1634.

By the late 1700s, the expanding town of Munich had grown closer to the hilltop monastery and a barrel or three of the monks' festive beer inevitably found its way into local taverns. The town's destitute had long known about the beer's excellent quality; mugs of it were handed out as sustenance to all the poor who gathered at the monastery gates. This may be the origin of that quaint but apt term to describe Munich beer: liquid bread.

Until the industrialization of brewing, fostered by nineteenth-century technological improvements, much of the scientific knowledge about beer resided in the monasteries, whose inmates were more learned, methodical and unfussed by commercial pressures than secular brewers. Records tell us that Munich's late-eighteenth-century commercial brewers tried to stop the monks from selling their beer because the townsfolk lapped it up so readily. Perhaps it exposed their own inadequacies. While the market tussle still raged, a conquering Napoleon Bonaparte arrived on the scene.

Unintentionally, Napoleon resolved the dispute between monks and town brewers. He closed all the monasteries in Bavaria and ordered their contents and lands to be sold. By 1806, the monastery and its brewery had been taken over by Munich's most entrepreneurial brewer, Franz Xaver Zacherl, who first introduced steam power into Bavarian brewing. Zacherl acquired the monks' beer recipes and turned the monastery into a place of beery pilgrimage.

It was probably Zacherl who coined the local term, Fruhjahrstarjbierkur (the spring strong beer cure), by way of persuading beer drinkers that a few mugs of his strong, special beer-which he called Salvator, derived from Sanct Pater-would sweep away the depressions of the long, gray winter and lift their spirits.

It evidently worked. Both beer and brewer grew famous, and for a time Salvator was variously nicknamed "Dampfbier" (steam beer) and "Zacherloel" (Zacherl's oil). The Bayerischer Volksfreund newspaper of March 29, 1843, reported: "In spite of the bad weather the Salvator beer draws many people out to Zacherl's. This year the production of a beer that is powerful and tasty, yet above all else is healthy, earns every respect."

Today, "Zacherl's" is the huge bierkeller built on the Nockherberg hill site of the former monastery, now engulfed by the sprawling modern city. The original keller was destroyed in allied bombing raids on Munich during World War II, but something much more capacious rose out of the ashes and the Salvator festival was back in business only five years after the war's end with room for more than 5,000 drinkers. When the keller's full, the punters spill out into the adjoining 3,000-seat beer garden, even if winter's snow still lies beneath the trees. Such is the continuing magnetic draw of the Spring Cure, which nowadays is held during the two middle weeks of March.

Over the decades, the fest has become wrapped in a Bavarian cultural coat, which helps to maintain the image of a purely locals' event. Leading Munich and Bavarian political, religious and theatrical personalities are invited to the by-ticket-only opening day. It must be the only beer-swigging event in the world where an invitation is as coveted as an audience with the Pope or dinner at the White House.

Present day Starkbierfest rituals involve the city major and the Bavarian state premier tapping the first Salvator barrel and receiving the first liter mug of the "season." There is much wearing of lederhosen; the rough, green woolenTrachten jackets; and swirling ladies' dirndl dresses. The Oktoberfest was originally a kind of rallying point for Bavarian nationalism until it was invaded by the world's tourists. Today, the opening of the Starkbierfest in part fulfills that role in a harmless way.

Once the prominent first-day guests have all been served the first mug of Spring Cure, bratwursts and sauerkraut, they settle down to the other quintessential feature: the adulation of the Bavarian language, Bayerisch, or Baierisch. It's not just a heavy dialect of German which can be impenetrable to a northern Prussian; there are books written in Bayerisch, too. The Starkbierfest has become a kind of guardian of the local lingo. A prominent "patriotic" thespian, suitably lubricated, is commissioned to recite poetry or tell a Bavarian fairy tale, accompanied by a gentle Bavarian harp or xylophone. The raucous brass oompah band comes later.

They actually subtitle the festival as the Salvatorprobe, which implies a kind of genteel tasting of the new season's brew. This would be very appropriate, given the powerful 7.5 percent alcohol by volume strength of the beer. But probing is hardly the correct descriptive word to define what happens during the next two weeks. Sipping from a towering earthenware liter mug (that's nearly 2 pints) is difficult. Swigging better describes what goes on after the poetry readings end and the popular blasts of the brass bands take over.

You'd think that so much incautious imbibing of a 7.5 abv beer would lead to brawls, but it is probably the beer's strength that causes the opposite effect. It is very soporific. So much so that as each afternoon's and evening's festivities wear on, slumped figures can be counted at many of the food-laden tables. Constant nibbling of sausages, giant pretzels (called Brez'n), chicken legs, hunks of cheese and radishes is essential to counteract the beer's strength.

The cacophony of band music, singing, and megaphone conversation should keep the most tired and emotional souls awake, but the keller's managers employ blue-uniformed watchmen to patrol the hall wheedling out the weak-headed. The one rule of the house is, "If you can't stay awake, please go home and sleep it off." It pays to have a friend or friends to lean on as you leave.

Although the Salvator "probe" is the chief feature of the Starkbier season, rival Lowenbrau Brewery holds is own fest at the same time, with its sweeter and heavier Triumphator Doppelbock. The Lowenbrau fest is held across town at the Lowenbraukeller next to the brewery. Instead of poetry and tongue-twisting dialect, the Lowenbrau fest celebrates the strong beer season by organizing feats of strength and endurance.

Muscular figures in lederhosen are invited on stage to challenge previous years' records. One of the strength tests is to see who can hold a full liter mug of Triumphator at arm's length the longest without spilling any. It is an endurance in more ways than one as the perspiring, red-faced contestants stare longingly at the tempting beer wobbling at the end of their arms. There are far easier ways of "probing" a doppelbock.

This story originally appeared in All About Beer Magazine in March 1996.

More to follow - watch this space