Finding yourself in a German Biergarten is a memorable experience,
especially if you can recall how much more interesting the beer was decades
ago. All photos by Charlie Papazian
Let there be no mistake about beer in Germany. It is good. Germans still love it. And if you find yourself in Germany for the first time sitting in a summer Biergarten confronted with a liter mug of golden lager or a tall cloudy refreshing Hefeweizen (wheat beer with yeast) you’ll feel like you’re in heaven.
But increasingly both German and foreign visitors know not of what they speak or drink. German beer has undergone a massive shift in the past two decades. There’s trouble in Deutschland.
The number of small traditional and independently owned breweries in Germany has plummeted from numbers approaching 2,200 fifty years ago to about 1,300 in recent years. Fifty years ago 2,200 were almost all independently owned. Today’s 1,300 may reflect the number of actual breweries, but it does not indicate the number of independently owned breweries. That number is far less.
There are many reasons for this. The competitive nature of the beer business is purely based on price, forcing many to call it quits. Large breweries buy out small breweries to eliminate competition and international global brewers buy out large breweries to do the same. Regularly there are family owned breweries can’t find an heir to continue the company.
It doesn’t matter whether it happens in Germany, USA, UK , Japan, Australia, Brazil, Mexico, or South Africa. When there is consolidation of businesses then consolidation of beer types and homogenous beer character follow. When brands get taken over they get reformulated and there is a decrease in beer differentiation.
Photo right: The small town Bierfests still exist, but finding variety and distinctive German beers is a challenge these days.
The variety and wonderful nuances of different brands of pilseners, Helles lager, dark beers, wheat beers, etc. in Germany are disappearing.
If you had the good fortune to have visited and enjoy beer in Germany twenty years ago, you know what you are missing. If you have just visited Germany for the first time, you don’t know what you’re missing. That’s the point.
Next: Trouble in Deutschland part 2 – German beer quality unsurpassed
Comments
It sounds like the Germans are going through what we went through in the U.S. after the war with buy-outs and Mega brewing conglomerations. It's sad to hear that that tradition is going away.
I agree with you to an extent. If you roll into Koln you can find a plethora of Kolsch brauereis that are still independently owned and rocking some mean Kolsch. Then again, I wasn't in Germany 20 years ago. ;-)
Part 1:
This is a bit of an exaggeration. Although a trend towards sameness has been occurring, it has been doing so everywhere. The situation isn’t as dire as it has been depicted here. I’ve lived in Germany for 12 years, and my first trip over was as an exchange student in 1990. I also studied Brewing Science here. The statistics do not tell the whole story, as is almost always the case. Particularly in Bavaria, many small towns still sport a brewery or two. If you travel to big cities like Hamburg, Munich or Berlin, it is true that you won’t find as much diversity. It is true that what we went through in the 1950s is occurring to some extent over in Europe. However, if you get away from the big cities, especially in Bavaria; the beer culture is alive and well.
Part 2:
As far as food pairing and neo-craftbrewer baloney like that, it has never existed in Germany and probably never will. Beer is liquid bread, i.e. nourishment, to Middle Europeans and will remain so. It isn’t a luxury or dessert, like in Belgium, the US, etc.
Germany itself is still very regional and every region has its own opinion about what makes a good beer. Talking about “Germans” and “their beer” in one breath is to make generalizations like “Americans all eat at McDonalds”. As a matter of fact, Europe on the whole, is very regional. The knowledge required to make Parmesan cheese can only be found in Parma. No one else knows how, not even the scientists who study dairy products. It takes experience. This is something that most Americans can’t get a handle on; especially since the 1950s we’ve been moving from state-to-state as economic nomads. Plus, our country is very young – not several thousand years old.
Part 3:
Although a trend toward sameness is inevitable at a national and international level in our global economy, the grass roots traditions in Europe are more resilient than you give them credit for. Let’s just hope they stay that way.
One disturbing trend, however, may ultimately result in the demise of the German beer culture, and that’s the negative birth rate. Apparently, the desire to make more little beer drinkers has taken a back seat to more pressing issues in life. As their beer consumption goes down, so does their birth rate. No surprise there.
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