With Munich’s Oktoberfest beer festival coming up, Tamara Hinson heads to Munich, to try its famous Münchener Bier, which must be produced within the city limits and has been awarded Protected Geographical Indication status.
There aren’t many cities where my first port of call is the destination’s most famous brewery, but Munich has always been the exception. Yes, the city’s Hofbräuhaus is a magnet for tourists (especially when the brass brands start up), and yes, it can accommodate a staggering 3500 guests, but it’s locals and regulars, not tourists, who get the best perks here, such as the right to drink at a reserved table with the name of their group written on a plaque hanging overhead. And the most sought-after perk is a stein locker – the chance to store your personal beer stein in its very own padlocked cage at the rear of the main brewery hall. Currently, there’s a waiting list of five years, and the locker comes with a fee – the hefty sum of €3 ($5.88) a year. Many of the steins kept under lock and key are treasured heirlooms – Hofbräuhaus employee Tobias Ranzinger proudly shows me his stein, explaining that it dates to around 1900.
Proof of Munich’s love of beer isn’t just evident in its breweries or the annual Oktoberfest event. They’re everywhere. At my hotel, the Ruby Rosi Hotel Munich, there are beautiful steins on display in the reception area, and at the Bavarian National Museum, many of the exhibits relate to beer. These include ridiculously ornate silver beer tankards from the 1600s, some of which feature carved ivory sleeves depicting everything from cherubs to biblical scenes, and ceramic steins adorned with colourful Chinoiserie designs, painted in the 1700s when steins featuring Chinese pagodas and colourful birds of prey were especially popular with Bavaria’s elite.
Bavarians’ love of beer also left its mark on the region in more surprising ways. Carl von Linde, an engineering professor at the Technological University Munich in Germany, invented the modern-day refrigerator in 1876, largely because the city’s growing number of brewers desperately needed a more reliable form of refrigeration. Much of the development was funded by breweries. Prior to von Linde’s invention, less reliable gas absorption refrigeration systems were available, but most breweries relied on methods still in evidence today – chestnut trees. There’s a reason most Bavarian beer gardens are filled with this species of tree, and it relates to their supersized, flat leaves. Beer gardens usually sprung up above the cellars, and the shade provided by Bavaria’s leafy chestnut trees not only helped cool the ground but provided sanctuary for summertime imbibers enjoying their liquid refreshment. Sip a stein in Hofbräuhaus’s huge beer garden, filled with chestnut trees which have grown here for hundreds of years and which can accommodate 1000 people, and it’s easy to forget you’re in the centre of Munich, rather than a leafy Bavarian forest.
