The Munich Strong Beer Season 2016 at a glance

If you’re a loyal reader – or if you’ve come to us after looking, unsuccessfully, for a reliable source of information about the Munich Strong Beer Season 2016 in English – then you’ll know that visiting Munich for the early pendant to the Oktoberfest requires quite some planning. After all, while the Oktoberfest has very clear scheduling rules and teams of PR people making sure everyone knows about it, the Starkbierfest is a loosely organised, de-centralised event held roughly – but only very roughly – a few weeks after Ash Wednesday (and, despite the Anglican church’s better efforts, the dates for Easter and Lent still vary from year to year).

It gets even more complicated inasmuch as the Strong Beer Season doesn’t officially start until the Paulaner brewery has held its tapping ceremony (accompanied by customary political cabaret), but doesn’t always communicate its chosen date (either two or three Wednesdays into Lent) in good time; this leads to other breweries going ahead with their own dates, which are frequently some way after – in rare cases (such as this year) some way ahead of Paulaner. What is more, Munich doesn’t actually provide any of this information in English: even on the English-languages events page, the Strong Beer Season item is only available in German!

But fear not! We’re here to give you the run-down of where and when you can enjoy your Salvator, Maximator, Triumphator, and Optimus Prime (okay, we made that last one up…).

So this year, Löwenbräu has made the controversial decision to precede Paulaner by an entire week, tapping its first keg of Triumphator strong beer (7.6% alcohol) on Thursday 18^th February. From then on, you’ve got an entire month through to 19^th March to sup on a Starkbier at the Löwenbräukeller.

The Augustiner beer hall, meanwhile, is also jumping the gun and will be tapping it’s 7.5% Maximator on Ash Wednesday itself, which shows a degree of tastelessness unbecoming such an otherwise delicious beer. It, too, is going all the way through until 19th March which, if you ask me, is like having Christmas for three months of the year…

Which leaves us with Paulaner, the one true initiator of the Strong Beer Festival and arbiter of good taste in the matter. This year, as ever, Paulaner will be dolling out Salvator (at 7.9%, ahead of the pack here) for a limited time of 17 days, rather than pandering to our lower instincts – and their profit margins – and drawing it out for a month. The first kegs are available at Nockherberg for public consumption straight after the big televised tapping on 24^th February.

We’ll be there midday on 25^th, in the queue and ready to bag a table early doors…