Posted by trachten in Bavaria | Comments Off on Where, when, and how? The 2015 Munich Strong Beer Festival
Where, when, and how? The 2015 Munich Strong Beer Festival
If you’re ever in the mood, you can take a look at the Wiesn countdown and, bam!, you’ll know exactly how long it is until the 182nd Oktoberfest gets started (in 213 days today). You’ll also know how long it’s running for and where to go. What more can you ask for?
If, however, you’re looking for information about the smaller brother of the world’s biggest beer festival, you need to start searching: finding out about the late-winter “Starkbierfest” – the Strong Beer Festival – is not easy. That’s because, above all, it’s a local celebration for Munich residents and is not organised by a large central apparatus in the same way as the Oktoberfest.
But that doesn’t mean that visitors aren’t welcome: they just have to find out about the event for themselves. So those of you who want to come to the 2015 Munich Strong Beer Festival will a little help from your friends – from us, for example!
“Salvator, our salvation!”
The Starkbierfest takes place not on the Wiesn, but in the breweries themselves, so it’s to them that you need to go: there are two who put on festivities for high-percentage beer, Paulaner and Löwenbräu.
Paulaner is the brewery that can claim to have founded the Strong Beer Festival: in 1891, a clever Munich stand-up comedian came up with the idea of matching his cabaret show to the inevitably drunken audience following the tapping of the first keg of strong beer. This tapping ceremony always followed Ash Wednesday by a few weeks, and since then, the Paulaner brewery at Nockherberg has always decided on the date for the show and invited politicians and celebrities so that the cabaret artists can take the mick out of them to their faces. After that, the brewery serves its very strong strong beer Salvator (double bock, 7.9% abv.) for two weeks. This year, the ceremony is on 25th February and bookings are taken from 27th through 15th March.
Not bound by the weight of tradition, Löwenbräu takes things a little less seriously. Their own keg-tapping ceremony for the Strong Beer Festival 2015 is being held one day after Paulaner’s, and after that, thirsty double-bock drinkers have got four whole weeks to get a litre of the dark, thick, 7.7% Triumphator brew (yes, all of the double bock beers and in “-ator” and sound like Transformer robots).
So now you know: if you’re going to be in town for the 2015 Munich Strong Beer Festival, just get in touch with Paulaner or Löwenbräu and reserve yourself a ticket to some of the best brews in the world!
