Sunday, September 24, 2006

Oktoberfest, part II

"The hills are alive, with the Sound of Music..." Tara is sporting her new Heidelberg look with her neatly arranged hair. The second day of our Oktoberfest celebration went on in the same fashion as day one - with plenty of Weissbier! In true Bavarian drinking style, Tara's glass holds 1/4 gallon of pure wheat beer!


Our drinkin songs of the day included some traditional German songs, like:

"Trink, trink Brüderlein trink,
laß doch die Sorgen zu Haus.
Trink, trink Brüderlein trink,
zieh doch die Stirn nicht so kraus.
Meide den Kummer und meide den Schmerz,
dann ist das Leben ein Scherz."


"99 bottles of beer on the wall..." Tara behind some of the brands we tried. After two days of beer testing we have now gone through 1,2 gallons of beer. And we feel a little bit bloated!


Two beer not two beer - that is the question. It's going to take a while before we can muster another drop of beer again.

Friday, September 22, 2006

Oktoberfest!


(Kim with his liter glass of Franziskaner Weissbier.)

Yes!!! It is Oktoberfest in Bavaria - the mayor of Münich just recently anounced the party for open, and we thought we should celebrate this too (especially since Tara has German ancestors although we haven't been able to trace them yet).

The Oktoberfest - a way to celebrate the harvest - consists of drinking pure wheat beer (Weissbier) brewed according to the old German reinheitsgebot (purity law). Three main versions are available and we only bought hefe (the unfiltered kind) and the dunkel (the dark brew). In the pic above, you can compare the looks of the kristallklar (filtered) and the hefe (unfiltered) wheat beer.

Our impression is that this year's production is very good - or so we thought after tonight's drinking of half a gallon of beer...
Tara said that this is probably the best beer she has ever tasted and pointed out that the sweetness of weissbier makes it easy to drink although it is very (!!!) filling.

Franziskaner Weissbier (the name stems from that it used to be an old monestary brewery) - now a part of the Spaten brewery was today's selection.
To get the German feeling going we had sausages and eggs with it - and it went just fine together.


Tomorrow we are going to try this year's production of Erdinger Weissbier with sauerkraut and bratwurst (sour cole slaw and hot dogs) and on Sunday we will go through our stock of the Weihenstephan weissbier (which by the way is the oldest brewery in the world - founded in 1040).
On Monday we will start working out ...