Cologne, Germany: Kolsch
No book pairings these next couple of entries, just beer.
“Just beer” is starting to feel like the motto for this trip. Right now, I'm conflicted over how to spend tomorrow: either I make a day-trip to Drie Fonteinen, a legendary gueze blender, or I take a break from beer to check out Brussels's art museums. I was thinking art for tomorrow - until I met some people at dinner who said that I had to go to Drie Fonteinen. Later, my server (unrelatedly, while handing me my bill) said that she'd had the best beer of her life at Drie Fonteinen recently. What to do, what to do...
On that note: a bit about the beer of Cologne, where I spent the first two days of my trip.
With a landing like this, I should've known that getting to Cologne would be heavenly.
I arrived in Frankfurt to one of those dream travel scenarios: I was the first one to walk off the plane, the first to walk up to the customs window, and mine was the first suitcase waiting in the baggage claim. When I got to the airport's train station, I had to wait only 6 minutes for the next train to Cologne. I arrived at my hotel an hour before I told them I would, but after I snuck around the corner for a cup of much-needed coffee (overnight flight), my room was ready. There, I had time for a shower and a power nap before my former Harvard-Westlake colleague Florence would arrive in the lobby of Stern am Rathaus (a hotel that, despite what it’s name may sound like to English speakers, is way too lovely and clean for rats; it just sits next to the rathaus, or city hall. Plug: the service at Stern am Rathaus may be the best I’ve ever experienced.)
The point of visiting Cologne on this beer trip was to drink kölsch (and it didn’t hurt that its location didn’t add too much time to an already long traveling day). Just as Champagne must technically originate only in the Champagne region of France, so must true kölsch must originate in Cologne, or Köln. So the kölsch I drank there would be the real deal. First thing, then, Florence and I headed to Brauerie Früh am Dom.
Honestly, I forgot to take tasting notes at Früh because I was so tired. What stood out, though, was this: whereas I was hoping that the infamously pure Cologne water would add that extra something special to kölsch in Cologne, the kölsch at Früh tasted pretty much like the kölsch that you’ve had at home: pure, clean, super effervescent, the Pilsner malt adding - maybe - a slight taste of cracker.
What Cologne does add to the kölsch drinking experience is service.
In Cologne, your kölsch always arrives in a proper kölsch glass, one with a narrow diameter that allows the beer’s head extra time to linger (the less surface area, the fewer bubbles can escape, the longer the head lasts). Kölsch glasses are also relatively short, another design feature that ensures that the beer keeps its head until you finish your drink. Because the servings are small (25 cL) and the beer is light (3-5% ABV), you drink kölsch relatively quickly, so waiters are constantly on hand, floating around with a flotilla of full glasses in a contraption like this:
You need never ask for a refill. Once your glass is empty, a new one takes its place. As the waiter replaces your glass, he adds a little tick mark to your coaster to denote the number of glasses that you’ve consumed. At the end of the meal, he'll tally these to prepare your bill. When you’ve finished, place the coaster atop your glass to signal that you don’t want any more.
My coaster at Fruh. Don't worry, Dad - I had only three little glasses of kolsch while dealing with jet-lag, promise.
Früh is tourist-y, since it’s right on the Cathedral plaza. But it’s a classic, and I wanted that classic experience first. The next day, we visited Päffgen Kölsch’s brauhaus, which is a little (teensy tiny bit) less touristy.
There, the kölsch had more malt flavor, tasting a bit more bready than the beer at Früh did. (Maybe even slightly peppery? Though what I thought was spice may have just been the beer’s crazy effervescence tickling my tongue.)
After a big nap and dinner, I really wanted to go to Braustelle, an independent brewer outside of Cologne that I read about in Lucy Birmingham’s My Beer Year. I also wanted to try Cologne’s Craftbeer Corner (a craft-beer bar). But both were closed for Germany’s labor day, alas. As a consolation prize, I bought these other German beers at a supermarket, guided by the advice of a fellow shopper, an English-speaking beer-lover from Antwerp.
So far, I've tasted a couple of those beers. To an American palate, even the beers that are going for IPA tasted quite sweet and malty. The Ubsersee Hopfen IPA (second from the right in the picture above), in fact, tasted so malty that I initially thought its sweetness reminiscent of candy cane. Is that a thing? Maybe that was the sugar that they add to it to bottle-condition? (So now I’ve had my first bottle-conditioned IPA - not sure I need another. When I drink an IPA, bitter is what I’m after, not unattenuated dextrose.) While the Hopfiges Lebersgluck Simco 3 (on the left) sure smelled like Simcoe (grapefruit! home!), the hops were definitely mellowed by malt, with more dried apricot than any fruit juice coming through.
The next day, as Florence and I sat at a cafe before she headed back to Hamburg, I also got to taste a schwarzbier on draft, a German dark lager. Köstritzer has been around since 1543, and you can tell from the finesse of their beer that they've been honing that recipe for a long time. A beer that is over four centuries old makes me realize what a young country I'm from, and what an absolute pity Prohibition was in that it wiped out almost all of the beer history that our young country had managed to amass by 1920.
Cologne is a lovely old city. Its architecture, especially that of its cathedral, is heavenly - intricate and dripping with history. Its Museum Ludwig gave me glimpses of pieces by some of my favorite artists (Rauschenberg, Oldenburg, Richter) that I'd never seen before. But as for beer, well, the best thing about my time in Cologne was not the beer - it was the chance to catch up with an old friend. When my brain was tired, Florence got me around Cologne, bless her multilingual heart.
Brussels, on the other hand, has been amazing when it comes to beer - and I’ve been here only a day and a half. More notes to come soon: on Moeder Lambic, Hill Farmstead (of all things), the Brussels Beer Project, Drei Fonteinen, Nuet Nigenough, BrewDog Brussles, and Poechenellekelder…
