Forget the cathedral. Beer, and a distinctive drinking culture, is the reason to head to Cologne

Sightseeing-wise, Cologne was a bust. I found the much-celebrated cathedral inferior to a long list of others*. The famous perfume is perfectly pleasant but I can buy scents I like better for a more reasonable price. Much of the city centre is remarkably ugly. Like many German cities, it was flattened by bombs in WWII, but post-war construction here veered towards modernism and away from re-creation. (In this, Cologne should be twinned with London.) For me, its star sight is a roman mosaic from an ancient dining room on display in a brutalist concrete museum now closed to the public but, fortunately, you can still see the floor through a window at the back and to the right of the cathedral.

The city was redeemed, however, by its beer. There's only one thing on tap here: Kölsch. It's pale, dry, crisp, and served pleasantly cold. It's all highly regulated, with ingredients limited, processes defined and the ability to call it Kölsch restricted to 50 km from Cologne. But that doesn't mean it's all the same. Many of Cologne's copious drinking establishments brew their own versions and aficionados claim different varieties have different fruity notes you don't often find in a German lagers. Anyone can wander into a Cologne pub and get a drink, but going out for an evening with a local guide brought us to the right places and helped us understand the distinctive drinking culture.

Kölsch is served in what, at first, may seem a laughably small glass. The tall, thin, 200 ml (6.8 oz) cylinder is called a Stange, and may strike you as an oversized shot glass. A thirsty drinker could down it in a few gulps. But here's the magic: it just keeps coming. 

You don't order a beer in Cologne. You enter the brew house , find your place, and a waiter (the Köbes) will come up with a circular tray with a tall handle in the middle (the Kranz), full of glasses, and give you one. Because this is really the only thing you drink in Cologne. When your glass is empty, your lovely Köbes is at your elbow with another. And he will be there, again and again, until you place your beer mat on top of your glass to stop the flow. While the initial 200 ml won't go to your head, you can imagine how constant top ups across the evening could do damage to your equilibrium and your wallet. Fortunately, all the evening’s drinking was covered by the excursion price, no matter when or if we decided to deploy our bar mats. This made the price better value for money for some than others.

While our guide on the day’s earlier walking tour (included in the basic cruise price) had focused understandably on history and architecture, the evening’s guide delved deeper into the people and culture. The locals, it turns out, are quite an anarchic bunch. Fiercely independent, fond of parties, lovers of food and drink and … according to our Cologne-born guide … have the best sense of humour in Germany. I couldn't help remembering the fun-loving the Osakans and their prickly relationship with Tokyo. 

Predominantly Catholic, Cologne was absorbed into the staunchly Protestant Prussian kingdom after the Napoleonic era and it was never a comfortable fit. Though there are statues of Prussian kings dotted around the place, they’re treated with mocking contempt. A pre-Lenten Carnival is the party of the year, characterised by Venetian levels of costume, drinking and mayhem. Naturally, the locals kick off the party under a statue of Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm III, a devout Protestant who hated the whole Carnival idea and tried to shut it down.

We started our evening at the Brauerei zur Malzmühle across the street from the Heumarkt, the enormous town square on which that king’s equestrian statue prances. The Schwartz family have been brewing and hosting visitors here for 160 years, and they’re now one of the few establishments still brewing on site in the city centre. The decor is traditional but restrained 19th century German beer hall, with lots of stained glass, wood, festoons of dried hops and memorabilia from carnivals past.

In the best tradition of pub crawls, we lined our stomach here with a hearty dinner to better absorb the alcohol of the evening. Local delicacies here mean pork. Our group shared platters of pork knuckle, sauerbraten, smoked sausage, black pudding, and even a pork tartare. It was both delicious and a bold statement of faith in the freshness and purity of the local meat. (I suspect serving raw pork would be illegal in England, despite the quality of our pork industry.) On the side came fried potatoes and a lightly pickled sauerkraut that bore no resemblance to the cheek-puckering stuff sold in groceries. Even professed sauerkraut haters tried it and found it tasty. Of other vegetables, there was no sign and,  in the local mind, no need. It wasn’t the first time it occurred to me that a vegetarian might starve to death in Germany, and devout Jews and Muslims would be eating from a very reduced menu. My husband, meanwhile, was nearing a coma of transcendent happiness with so many interpretations of his favourite protein in one place.

After a stroll across the Heumarkt to let the food settle, we landed at the Pffafen Brauerei on the square’s northeast corner. You can’t miss the dignified, salmon-pink Baroque building with its ornate wrought iron pub sign, but it’s the crazy interiors that make this place memorable. There’s stained glass here, too, but more abundant and more modern, particularly in the multi-story entrance hall with its enormous chandelier that feels a bit like a cathedral of beer. Push in to the long, narrow building and you’ll be dazzled by a profusion of woodcarving. Local artists have been adding to the place since the current brewer took it over in the 1970s. There are carnival goers, cherubs, monks (pfaffen in the local dialect), hops and foliage. Much is traditionally decorative, but some gets quirky, with heads springing from barrels, figures holding up tables and mischievous faces looking around corners. Here’s Cologne’s anarchic sense of humour at work. 

While the brewers here, Päffgen, supply a variety of brew houses across the city, this is the only one where it comes straight from the wooden barrels. Which, experts tell me, makes a difference. I found their version slightly hoppier and heavier than the Malzmühle Kölsch, but I'd be hard pressed to tell the difference in a blind taste test.

A lane called the Saltzgass leads east from the corner, down a hill towards the Rhine. Its name, “salt alley” gives a nod to a precious commodity mined in Germany and shipped up and down the Rhine since Roman times. The street is all restaurants and brew houses now, our last stop dominating the middle stretch.

Bierhaus en d’r Salzgass is in a historic former brewery dating back 400 years. Brewing stopped here in 1907 and the place changed hands as a restaurant multiple times through the 20th century, but it saw new owners and a major renovation in early 2003. The beer was the same Päffgen we’d just left at Pffafen, just not out of a barrel. No, I couldn’t tell the difference. But that didn’t matter, because it’s the interiors that made this place. Polished, dark wood abounds: columns, panelling, an impressive central bar soaring two stories. In fact, the whole central room is double height, with a second story of revellers able to look over their wrought iron balustrades onto the drinkers below. Another festive establishment with the ambiance of a cathedral. I have a feeling that’s no coincidence in this city.

We Brits could have happily explored one or two more places, but our American fellow travellers were lagging and quick to raise their beer mats. We adjourned to the ship's bar and continued our celebrations there. No Germanic woodcarving, and Kölsch only in bottles that ... gasp ... exceeded 200 ml. We coped.

At 5pm that day, I'd considered Cologne a wasted stop on the cruise. By 11pm I was wondering if we could come back for the Christmas Market or Carnival. That's the difference some good local insight can make. Prost!

*To be fair, because it was the week before Easter the cathedral's ambulatory ... that horseshoe of chapels ringing the high altar ... wasn't open. Most of the cathedral's treasures are back there. If the building has any chance of competing with places like Chartres, Milan or Canterbury, you need to see it outside of Holy Week.

 

The beer drinkers' guide to Munich and Bavaria

For this entry I've given over the writing duties to my husband, Piers. He was the one who chose Bavaria for his birthday trip, and his taste for beer is a lot stronger than mine.  In fact, his taste in beer is sensitive enough to yield some excellent tasting notes for all the local variations we tried.  It was only fair to insist he shared them with you.

So, as a direct result of my demanding to go to Bavaria in search of my roots – and, I might add, to open Ellen’s eyes more to the wonders of Germanic culture – I fear, dear reader, that I have been imposed on your again.

A lot has been written about Bavaria and beer, so I shall only tell some of the history of weissbier, how it got around the German beer purity law and then move on to concentrate on the beers and our experiences of them. If I miss something out that you believe is important, please forgive me.

I hope that you know about how beer is made, as I won’t be covering that here. 

The Rheinheitsgebot (or German beer purity law) is over 500 years old and famously demanded that beer was made using barley, water and hops only. So what of weissbiers, I hear you cry? Aha! That is the point. Weissbiers are wheat beers and the Rehinheitsgebot was designed to restrict the use of wheat for bread -- not beer. A series of wheat harvest failures triggered legislation to ensure that the precious grain was saved for food rather than drink.

Now, by this time we have all heard of the Wittelsbach family (whaddya-mean-you-haven’t? You obviously need to read Ellen’s earlier Bavarian blogs). These glorious rulers of Bavaria were not just extravagant builders but also not beyond monopolising trade. In 1520, four years after the extension of the Rheinheitsgebot to all of Bavaria by the Wittelsbachs, they granted the sole right to brew Weissbier in Bavaria to a vassal family called the Degenbergs. For a significant sum. In 1602, the Duke of Degenberg died without heir and the title and all assets (including the right to brew weissbier) reverted to the Wittelsbachs. Duke Maximillian I, the then suzerain, kept the monopoly, extended his new right to all of his land and summoned the Degenbergs' master weissbier brewer to Munich to become his own. The brewer built a brewery in Munich on the site where the Hofbrauhaus now stands and got to work. Weissbier was as popular as ever and the profits went straight to the government (as the Hofbrauhaus profits still do today). They alone paid for the Bavarian army during the thirty years war against the Swedish, just 11 years later.

So, eventually, every town and village had its own Wittelsbach weissbier brewery. But even in conservative Bavaria, tastes eventually change. In the 18th Century drinking weissbier went out of fashion. As the value of the monopoly declined, from providing a third of all state revenue, the crown began to lease its breweries out to the locals. In 1798 it even decreed that any nobleman or monastery could brew weissbier. The decline lasted for about 160 years (have we mentioned how conservative the Bavarians are?), when it got a revival in the 1960s ... not just in Germany, but in the rest of the world as well.

“But enough about history, what about beer?” I hear you demand. Well, in our traipsing around Bavaria (and Austria) we drank more than a few pints (litres?) a day.  All in the name of research for you, dear reader. (It’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it.)

Of the six major breweries in Munich, we drank at five of them. We missed Spaten, but few people remember them as a major brewery and neither did we. (Always leave something to go back for.) We also drank four of the five major varieties: Helles, Dunkel, Helles Weissbier and Dunkel Weissbier; we didn’t drink any Bock, but then I can’t remember having seen that on any menus. We did try the Oktoberfestbier or Marzen, unsurprising given the timing of our trip. We also tried the two varieties of shandy: Radler (Lemonade mixed with Helles) and Rus’n (Lemonade mixed with Weissbier) – more of which later.

Lowenbrau Original

This is supposed, by some, to have tobacco and smoke aromas and have a sweet, grassy, vanilla and metallic taste. It may have been the temperature that it was served at, but if there were smoke aromas, it was a dry smoke and the vanilla was swallowed by the metal. I found it thin, clean (ie: with little taste) and somewhat reminiscent of what could be called “euro fizz” or generic lager. In short, nothing to write home about, certainly compared to other beers drunk.

Franziskaner Hefe-Weissbier

‘The Franziskaner of my youth’: memories of the Franziskaner merry-go-round are raised by the reminders of my previous trip, the two quarter litre beer glasses on my shelf at home (it was all they served on the merry-go-round in 2004 on the Wieszen). One of my tasks, this year, was to find and have a drink on that Franziskaner merry-go-round. I have to report, dear reader, that I failed – not because it was lunchtime on the opening day and we had no chance of a drink on the Wieszen, it was more fundamental than that: they obviously rotate who gets to serve on the merry-go-round as this year it was HofBrau and not Franziskaner whose Weissbier was served there. Have no fear, Mike and crew, we raised a glass to you elsewhere.

But memories don’t get to tell you about this delightful brew. It is round and creamy, with a ‘tropical and grainy texture’ (according to one tasting note). I don’t know about tropical, I certainly got a bready flavour, but then it’s wheat beer so you would, wouldn’t you. I also got a taste of vanilla and lemon curd and a hint of warmth/spiciness.

Franziskaner Dunkels Weissbier

Don’t mistake this for a dark barley based beer; so far as we could see, Franziskaner only brews weissbier. This has a lovely round, malty, toffee and coffee flavour as well as the ‘normal’ creaminess of weissbier. It doesn’t really have that much bitterness, just enough to cut through the rest of the flavours. It was probably the most drunk beer of the trip (at least by me).

Hofbräu Munchener Sommer

I honestly didn’t think that Germans brewed Bluemoon, or drank it, yet this is the most similar taste that I could think of. Whilst it had more hoppy bitterness at the fore in the taste, I definitely got a deal of orange rather than a sharper citric taste of lemon (as in a Franziskaner Weissbier for example). This is still a barley based beer but it had a lot more roundness than the Lowenbrau Original.

Hofbräu Dunkel

This is a dark lager. It is supposed to have a toasty, malty and caramel flavour with the crispness of a lager. I found it to have the maltiness and toastiness described, but I didn’t find the caramel (or maybe the caramel had gone over). Having identified the tastes mentioned above, I found it to be thin and bitter – not something I would normally go towards just for drinking, but it may be better with food (possibly a curry?).

Hofbräu Rus’n

So to the first of the shandies, I had never tried weissbier shandy before. If this is indeed named after Russian emigres, I would suggest that it shows the disdain that Bavarians have for Russians. I found it to be incredibly sweet thick and almost like liquid honey, mass produced rather than a lavender or acacia honey. I wondered if this is what mead tastes like (and have yet to find out – so little time, so much to do).

Augustiner Brau Munchen Oktoberfestbier

Let this brewery not be mistaken for the Salzburg variant of the Augustinian brewers. We had several of the Munich variant’s excellent beers, stumbling upon a street party for the release of this beer, a day or so before the opening of the Oktoberfest proper.

This beer is medium weight, heavier and more rounded than a Helles lager but not as creamy as a weissbier. Not really that bitter, just enough to remind you that you are drinking a lager, it was also light but hoppy in taste. Whereas some Helles beers reminded me of the clean, metallic taste of many northern German lagers, this reminded me more of Czech lagers like Pilsner Urquell or Budvar (the lagers I would normally drink at home). In short, very nice indeed.

Augustiner Munchen Dunkel

A dark barley beer, which has the characteristic caramel hoppiness and burnt flavour of a Dunkel Helles beer, it was somewhat more rounded than many other Dunkels we tasted on the tour.

Tucher Helles Hefe Weizen

Just to prove that we didn’t just drink beer in Munich, this weissbier is from Nurnberg. Ellen though that this had a heavier weight in the mouth than other weissbiers and she noted a smoky bacon taste; I thought that this might have been there as an after taste, but I couldn’t find it in the body of the beer. I tasted a bitterish lemony flavour, which to me brought the hoppiness more to the fore than is usual in weissbiers.

König Ludwig Dunkels Wiessbier

We had this beer in the valley between Hohenschwangau and Neuschwanstein castles, rather appropriate really as the beer is actually brewed by the current Prince Luitpold and is also known as Prinzregent Luitpold Weissbier Dunkel. It has less of the creaminess of many weissbiers, tasting slightly drier and with a coffee taste coming through.

If I were to pick just one of the above to drink from now on, I would be caught in a cleft stick between the Franziskaner Dunkels Weissbier and the Augustiner Oktoberfestbier; I would probably have to come down on the side of the Franziskaner in the end, but it would be a struggle. The final argument would be down to volume, can I get it all year around and the Augustiner is only available as a seasonal beer.

I have come from this experience with the intention of trying other beers, possibly even ales and bitters which I have previously dismissed as I have always considered myself a lager drinker. Naturally, the above are only personal tasting notes on some of the beers we drank. Others may taste banana, cloves, coriander and other flavours. I hope that it has given you an idea of the ‘sheer hell’ we went through on your behalf and given you thoughts of trying some of them for yourself.

Go on, prove me wrong – although tasting is on the tongue and nose of the ‘beholder'.

Parade beats beer in our Oktoberfest initiation

Opinion amongst my Munich insiders was fairly consistent: Oktoberfest, unless you can score some corporate hospitality, is over-rated.

It's a magnet for foreigners to descend upon Munich to drink themselves silly; like an American college Spring Break, but with an international crowd in Bavarian costume.  It's so packed that the main beer tents are almost impossible to get inside after 10 am, thus you probably can't experience more than one a day, if you get in any at all. The city is stuffed to bursting, everyone raises the prices of everything and hotels book up a year in advance. It's not, the locals sighed, what it used to be.

Thus we scheduled our holiday to end on the day Oktoberfest opened. We broke out the dirndl and lederhosen, saw the opening parade and drank in the atmosphere of the fairground before heading to the airport ... avoiding the price crunch and the worst of the crowds.  This was generally a good solution, though it meant we didn't get into any of the beer tents.  Since they only serve beer to people seated at tables, it means that, ironically, we went to Oktoberfest but didn't get a drink. Despite the fact that the main pavilions seat almost 100,000 people. But we tasted the atmosphere, and decamped to the nearby Hacker Pschorr beer garden for refreshments.

The mobile beer ban was just one of many surprises that made me realise that I actually didn't know that much about the mother of all Oktoberfests. Here are some key points, for others amongst the uninitiated.

• The festival has a rich historical legacy.  It started as a wedding celebration in 1810 when the prince who would become King Ludwig I and his bride Princess Therese decided to include the people in their festivities. The merriment took place in fields outside of the city centre, renamed Theresa's Meadow in the princess' honour. The area is still officially known as Theresienwiese, though almost everyone shortens it to the Wiesn. I found a pleasant continuity in the fact that the man who left the most enduring architectural legacy on the city was also the one responsible for starting its greatest festival.

• Oktoberfest feels a lot like an American state fair.  The Wiesn is a big fairground set aside specifically for the purpose, there's an enormous strip of carnival rides (akin to an American fair midway) and loads of traditional food. The beer tents are fabulous temporary constructions, rising like a stage-set city for the duration of the event.

• Pretty much everyone comes in costume. You'd think you'd feel a bit odd, being a foreigner putting on a local costume ... but you'd feel a lot stranger in regular street clothes. Everyone dresses up, adding to the magic of the scene. The shopkeepers of Munich know this, and make it easy for you. Whether it's a cheap, Chinese-made Holloween costume purchased from a stall outside the train station, a basic outfit from a department store, mix and match from a traditional clothing warehouse or high-end pieces from specialist shops, there are options for every taste and budget.

• Locals have a different experience, and you can spot them easily. Evidently, most of the seats inside the tents can be reserved, and these reservations belong to either corporate hospitality or private clubs and organisations. As with most big events, there's a separate track for well-connected locals, who weave through the Wiesn crowds to take their rightful places.  Their clothing is exquisite. The great and the good's lederhosen might be accented with embroidery and tends to be longer; outfits are  accessorised with knives, badges, boar bristles and other bits and pieces that look like they've been passed down for generations. Women's dirndls are exquisitely tailored with fine detailing, probably from the posh department store Loden Frey. (Even if you have no intention of buying anything, it's great fun to wander through the traditional clothing section here to see what's possible.)

The parade's a big deal for the local kids

• There are two blockbuster parades worth making an effort to see. The first, on the opening Saturday, is a procession of beer wagons heading towards each tent, interspersed with marching bands. Coaches and more wagons filled with well-dressed locals follow the beer wagons; presumably more of the great and the good on their way to those reserved tables.  Getting to the route near the Wiesn entrance about an hour before starting time meant that we had a front row view as the spectacle unfurled. For more than two hours. It was glorious. And it's supposedly the inferior parade.  Sunday's, which is longer and has more than 8,000 marchers, is devoted to celebrating the identity of regions throughout Bavaria, celebrating variations of local costume. The problem with the parades, of course, is that if you stay on the street to watch them you give up your chance of nabbing a seat in any of the beer tents. After the Rose Bowl Parade, the opening day of Oktoberfest was the best parade I've ever seen. I think we made the right choice.

• Talk to people. The festival brings the ethos of the beer gardens to the streets. There are no strangers, only friends you haven't met yet. We struck up a conversation with the American couple we stood next to at the parade, and ended up spending the rest of the day with them. We had a blast, and the company made the day even better.

I liked our Oktoberfest approach, but if I had it to do again, I'd vary our schedule slightly.  I'd put Munich in the centre of our holiday, and I'd stay through the first Monday night of the festival.  I'd go to both parades, decamping to beer gardens off the Wiesn afterwards for lunch and celebration. On Monday, I'd get to the Wiesn early so I could get into a tent. And, maybe, try for two.  Then I'd head down to Schwangau, where the Bavarian Palace Department takes advantage of the influx of tourists to run a short season of concerts in the minstrel's hall at Neuschwanstein. 

Sounds heavenly. That's the plan for next time.

Beer and comfort food underpin any Bavarian culture tour

Carbohydrates and pork are the sacred duo of traditional Bavarian cuisine. It's pure comfort food, consumed in a place created to encapsulate that feeling of warmth and good fellowship: the beer garden. They even have a specific word for the combined aura of food, beer and company.

Gemütlichkeit.

It's a lot like Danish hygge, but practiced in public and without so many candles.  Who knows? Maybe the enduring legacy of battling through long, cold winters is the elevation of cozy fellowship to its own word. Whatever the origin, it's one of the best things about Bavaria.  I've now filled eight blog entries with the historic, cultural and artistic highlights of this trip.  But truth be told, we probably spent as much time, cumulatively, drinking and eating in beer gardens and halls while chatting to our neighbours as we did at cultural attractions. Because these are cultural attractions.  And no trip to Bavaria would be complete without a steady diet of them ... even though you risk putting on at least a pound a day.

First things first. Don't even attempt dieting. The standard traditional menu will have something called a wurst salat, but it's still loads of pork with some notional greens.  Vegetarian? It's easier than you'd think, but you'll be eating a lot of dumpling variants. Proper vegetables (as in ... not potatoes ... are few and far between.)

Get ready to drink beer. Lots of it. Even if you don't think you like it. Because (1) it tastes better in Bavaria and (2) it's cheaper than water.  Seriously. The Bavarians don't seem to do tap water.  On average, a one litre bottle of mineral water was €3.50. A litre of beer was €3.20.  What would you do?

The decor and atmosphere of beer halls and gardens varies greatly, but the menus don't.  We found them all almost identical, the food uniformly tasty if not memorable or elegant.  Everyone tries to out-do the others with claims of the best schnitzel (meat fillets pounded flat, lightly breaded and fried). The most resolutely traditional is served with a red berry compote and fried potatoes; I confess to finding that a bit dry and loving the version served with mushroom cream sauce. Schweinshaxe is the queen of all the pork dishes ... a whole pork knuckle encircled by lush crackling ... but you'll find pork prepared a variety of ways on every menu. Pork includes sausages, of course, and you could spend a lifetime learning to differentiate the varieties.  My own favourite is weisswurst. This disconcertingly anaemic veal sausage is traditionally served in pairs in a dish of steaming water. You're supposed to carve it out of its skin and eat it with pretzels and sweet mustard. You're also supposed to only eat them before noon but I think they're far too tasty to be limited to mornings.  Fortunately, most beer halls now share that view. I occasionally went off the porcine piste for some beef goulash, but rarely saw and was never tempted by chicken or fish.

They do meat well, but the Bavarians reach epic levels of comfort food when they start working with carbohydrates.  Soft, bready brezn ... the classic Bavarian pretzel ... differs slightly at every establishment and is the perfect warm up for any meal.  This is a meal in itself when served with obatzda, a soft ball of a cream-cheese based concoction mixed with various flavours and served with thinly sliced red onions.  (There are as many variations on obatzda as there are on brezn.)  Moving on to the potatoes ... a single dumpling the size of a child's fist, smothered in dark pork gravy, often upstages the meat beside it.  Spinat knodel is an adaptation of Italian spinach gnocchi and, as I argued about rococo architecture, it's just possible the Germans upstage the inventors. But the pinnacle of Bavarian starchy treats, the king of carbohydrates, the most comfortable of all comfort foods, is Käsespätzle.

Spätzle are little flour and egg dumplings created by running the dough over a grater-like press so the tear-drops of starchy goodness drop directly into boiling water. Removed when hot, fluffy and pillowy, they're then tossed with emmenthaler cheese, given a topping of deep fried onions and flashed under a grill to crisp everything up. This is possibly in the top 10 most unhealthy dishes of all time but, sweet Jesus, it's delicious.

And, of course, there's the beer to wash it all down. I have a guest blogger coming soon to cover that in another entry.

We worked our way through most of the Telegraph's list of the top 10 beer gardens in Munich, and sought out regional versions outside of town. My Munchener friends were actually a bit horrified. "We don't eat like that every day!" they exclaimed. "That traditional stuff is for Sundays and special occasions." Evidently they eat plenty of vegetables and foreign food at home. Certainly, we experienced the joys of modern German cooking at Geisels Werneckhof. But for the rest of the visit we stayed resolutely traditional, always seeking the elusive pinnacle of Gemütlichkeit. Here are some of our favourite spots. All are in Munich except when specifically noted otherwise.

Best Surprise - Westenriederstrasse Street Festival

The Saturday before the official opening of Oktoberfest, we were wandering aimlessly around Munich when we stumbled upon a festival in a small street near the Isartor.  Relentlessly local, we heard little English and watched with delight as locals in full Bavarian dress settled in for a sunny afternoon. We dubbed the older man behind us the mayor of the street; crowned with an impressive boar-bristle flourish in his hat, he graciously accepted the greetings of a stream natives coming to pay their respects.  An excellent local band called Wies n Buam gave traditional oompah an injection of youthful cool, and a festively-decorated wagon drawn by glossy black draught horses rolled in mid-afternoon for the ceremonial delivery of the Augustiner Bier.  This is one of our fondest memories of the whole trip, enhanced by the pure serendipity of stumbling upon it.  You can't schedule stuff like this, but it should be remembered: a planned afternoon of sightseeing is worth throwing out the proverbial window when you stumble upon unexpected local delights.

Best Atmosphere - Hofbrauhaus
It's the one beer hall in Munich that everyone has heard of, and nobody can imagine visiting the city without dropping by. You'd think that would turn it into a tourist trap. In fact, it ensures that there's always a buzz about the place, there's non-stop Bavarian music and you're generally sharing a table with someone who can speak English. Since part of the appeal of these places is hanging out for hours making new friends, that's useful. In other places across the week, we found weekday lunches to be dead and nights early in the week to be equally slow.  The less touristy a place is, the more likely it is to only be crowded and offer entertainment around the weekends. The Hofbrauhaus is consistent from Monday afternoon through to Sunday lunch. The high, vaulted ceilings with their  paintings along the theme of the good things in life and long tables beneath them with dark wooden benches deliver the quintessential picture of a beer hall. There's a warren of rooms and a large enclosed courtyard with tables beneath the trees, meaning you can get as close to or far from the music as you want. Girls in dirndls stroll around selling fresh brezn ... the best we had in Bavaria. Trip Advisor reviews aren't keen on the food, but we thought it was in line with most other places. Only two negatives: service can be ridiculously slow, and the congenial atmosphere is sometimes broken by bus tours walking through to take pictures without stopping for a beer. Tragic.

Best for View - Hohensalzburg Castle (Salzburg)
There are a couple of restaurants up here, and one has a beer garden in the northwest corner of the castle ramparts.  The views are spectacular. From one side, Salzburg spreads beneath you like one of those toy towns beneath a Christmas tree. On the other, leafy suburbs give way to farm fields before the mountains of Berchtesgaden (story here) rear out of the valley floor.  Beware: even on a sunny day, the stiff wind can make it chilly up here. Memorable spinach dumplings.

Best for the Local Experience - Chinesischer Turm
Perhaps the finest example of the Bavarians' delight at borrowing foreign styles to create festive backdrops, this faux Chinese pagoda sits in the middle of the Englischer Garten, a sprawling urban park based on 18th-century English landscape design principles.  Capability Brown would be proud, though he might be a bit perplexed by the dichotomy of a Bavarian brass band blasting out Ein Prosit from beneath the Oriental geegawgery of the tower.  Hundreds of tables spread out from this wonderfully preposterous centrepiece, shaded by venerable old chestnuts.  Beyond them is a ring of booths selling beer and food. It's a fantastic outing for a Sunday, when it's packed with families and friends getting together.

Best Architecture - Zum Augustiner
One of the few Art Nouveau buildings in Munich, this is an architectural fantasy on the theme of Bavaria. Dark panelling, traditional murals, sweeping arches, plenty of antlers, dramatic light fixtures. Don't miss the chandelier that brings the cooper's dance (part of the show on the nearby town hall clock) to life.  It's a warren of rooms, all with different architectural highlights to explore.  The glass-domed Muschelsaal, or Mussel Hall, is so named because its walls are decorated, grotto like, with the shells. I wish we'd had time to return for a sunny afternoon in the Arcade Garden. Tucked away in the back, it evokes the medieval monasteries where the local brewing tradition started. Zum Augustiner is on Neuhauser Strasse, the main drag between the train station and the Marianplatz; impossible to miss.

Best for Oktoberfest - Hacker Pschorr
Getting a seat inside any of the beer tents inside the official Oktoberfest grounds (the Wiesen) can be challenging. And, unfortunately, you can't get a beer unless you're sitting down. Hacker Pschorr provides a great alternative. It's located on a rise just across the street from the fairgrounds. Have a wander, then stroll over to this place to drink and eat.  It's a modern building with several vast halls inside and a big garden overlooking the Wiesen. Faux stonework, a maypole and massive copper brewing kettles give the interior a bit of charm, but on the whole it feels more like a big American sports bar than a Bavarian Beer Hall. A mood exacerbated on a Monday night when we found it empty, dimly lit and a bit spooky. Five days later, at the height of the Oktoberfest crush, there was still room here, and once populated the atmosphere picked up. That bit of local knowledge saved our day from disaster.

Best Rural Retreat - Hirschgarten
Reputed to be the largest beer garden in the world, 8,000 people can find seats here. But you'd never know, because the tables stretch out into heavily forested parkland. Deer graze in an enclosure to one side, children gambol in meadows on another.  It's fronted by a long, low-slung building with multiple dining rooms should the weather not be clement enough for outdoor dining. Ideally incorporated into a day out at Nymphenburg Palace, the 15-minute stroll through the surrounding leafy suburbs will give you a taste of where you might choose to live in Munich if you had a particularly good compensation package. Best Käsespätzle of the trip.

Best Escape from the Crowds - Ratskeller
The Ratskeller saved us on two occasions when crowds were queuing everywhere else in the town centre. It takes up the entire basement underneath the New Town Hall, so you can't get more central. I'm not sure why the crowds don't find their way here, as well, but both our experience and guide books hint you can usually find room here. Maybe it's the subtle signage, or the fact that you're retreating underground in a world where people love their beer gardens. Classic decor, traditional food, no-nonsense servers who seem to be lifers. It's nominally a beer hall on one side, and a wine hall on the other, but the menu is consistent in either place.

The Rest
We didn't find any of these spots to be particularly exceptional, but they all have their merits if, like us, you're on a mission to visit as many beer halls as possible.

Schlossbräustüberl (Hohenschwangau) - Crouched in the valley between Ludwig's two castles here), it's the perfect place to grab lunch before your ascent to Neuschwanstein. Classic decor and food, somewhat diminished by bus tours and the rapid turnover of tourists in a hurry. The house brewery is still owned by the Wittlesbach family.
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Schlossbräuhaus (Schwangau) - Considering the fact it's the closest, decent-sized tourist town to Germany's most popular tourist attraction, Neuschwanstein, Schwangau is curiously short on evening possibilities. Maybe it's because the majority of tourists are day-trippers; maybe it's seasonal. (At least three restaurants on the main street weren't open.) Thus we ended up at this place twice. Modern and efficient, complete with salad bar and adjoining mini-golf course, were it not for the German speakers and the resolutely Bavarian menu, it could have been a micro-brewery in an American shopping mall. Resolutely average, but a better option than the hassle of getting in a car to seek out something better.

Augustiner Keller, Löwenbräukeller, Paulaner am Nockherberg - Much of a muchness, this trio of traditional beer gardens are all outside of the central ring of Munich town centre. The first two are fairly close to the main train station, the last out beyond the Deutsches Museum. All have both big buildings for indoor drinking and large gardens stretching away beneath chestnut trees; standard traditional menus across the board.  The first two are clearly older with more traditional architecture and atmosphere. Paulaner is in a modern stretch of offices and industrial buildings (our fellow diners were mostly office workers grabbing lunch), but probably had the best service of the three and there's a stunning view over the rooftops of Munich as you climb up here.  Löwenbräu was the biggest disappointment, with rotten service and the only place on the whole holiday that served short measures.