The Legend of Zoigl
A journey inside the unique beer culture of Bavaria's Oberpfalz.
Charlotte Cook, acclaimed brewer and creator of the Drinking in Strange Places newsletter, returns to Everyday Drinking to contribute a monthly series on beer cultures around the world. Charlotte has been named among the top female brewers in the UK by Drinks Business and has worked at Coalition Brewing in London, Pohjala in Estonia, Cloudwater in Manchester, and Truman’s in London, where she was the first female head brewer in over 400 years. Charlotte previously wrote an essay for us on the “terroir of beer.”
I was lucky enough to go to Germany about a week after getting back from India, when my friend Gavin invited me to join his Zoigl beer quest the Upper Palatinate (or Oberpfalz) district of Bavaria, close to the Czech border.
I had been unlucky enough, however, to have picked up dengue fever on a previous trip to India—which only became symptomatic once I was home. Though I was mostly recovered, dengue is incredibly painful, and so getting to some of the venues in forests and up mountains was pretty exhausting. If you’re going to drink beer up a massive hill in Germany, I would highly recommend not having dengue fever.
Nestled in the hilly Oberpfalz landscape of broadleaf forests and gently peregrinating rivers, there are a handful of small towns that have a unique brewing culture. After brewing rights were bestowed on these towns in the 15th century, they established communal brewhouses, and a culture of serving beer from the homes of the brewers. This pre-dates the infamous Reinheitsgebot (or German beer purity law) of 1516, which declared beer could only be made with malted barley, water, and hops. Oberpfalz’s tradition of Zoigl beer has remained, largely unchanged, ever since.
A domestic style of brewing like Zoigl used to be fairly common across Europe. In England, for instance, women would serve beer from their homes. But this gradually died out, with permanent inns and taverns replacing the temporary homely openings.
In the Bavarian Zoigl towns, however, you can still turn up to a strangers house, sit in his living room, and for the very reasonable price of €2,40 per beer, have as many pints as you care to imbibe, often with the whole family chipping in to serve beer and small snacks. These pubs only open on certain weekends, and houses serving beer post a wooden six-pointed star outside (symbolizing the elements of earth, fire and air, and the brewing ingredients of water, hops and malt) to let you know they’re in business.
Not any old house can open up a pub. In true German style, there is a committee overseeing the brewing and sales of Zoigl beer. To be recognized as true Zoigl beer, known as Echter Zoigl, breweries are held to stringent standards. The brewhouse must be wood fired, with no electricity, and the beer is cooled in a large vat known as a koelschip. The beer is then transported to the home of the Zoigl brewer before being fermented with a lager yeast at a cool cellar temperature and sold on a pre-designated weekend.
The beer has been brewed like this for centuries, and a brewer or brewhouse who breaks these guidelines will be cast out of the official Echter Zoigl list and be barred from selling their beers as Zoigl. Echter Zoigl are only found in a few towns, with the the highest concentration of Zoigl houses—or Zoiglstuben—in the villages of Neuhaus and Windischeschenbach (say that three times fast).
The Zoiglstuben operate according to a calendar, with at least two usually having beer on any given weekend—and from a Friday morning to a Monday evening, will aim to sell out of the latest batch. Each family brews to a different recipe, and so each Zoiglstuben has a unique beer. Most are fairly standard lagers with a heavy wheat character, but some also brew weisse, dunkel, or rauch style beers as well. Most also offer a radler, for when you forget how to say “Prost!” Many also sell a German specialty called cola-weisse, which is a mixture of 50 percent wheat beer and 50 percent cola. The sweet soda balanced with the distinct clove and phenolic aroma of German wheat beer does work well. But for most people this cola-weisse is a one-time only sort of thing.
The Zoiglstuben also sell small meals—cheese, ham, eggs, and pretzels are popular. On a Sunday, more advanced dishes might be served—typical Bavarian fare of pork shoulder with potato dumplings and sauerkraut, or stuffed onions, or beef roulade. This is big food, heavy, salty, and intensely fatty—designed to keep you drinking—and it is incredibly delicious.
When I visited Windischeschenbach (Neuhaus is a technically different town, but the two are so closely linked it is hard to know where one ends and the other begins) I found seven of the 12 Zoiglstuben open. I’d like to say I tried them all, but that would be ambitious, even for a brewer.
Getting to Windischeschenbach isn’t that straightforward. From Nuremberg, there is an hourly train which, after an hour and 20 minutes, will drop you at a remarkably Ghibli-esque platform in the middle of nowhere, where you must then wait for the local train to take you the final ten minutes to Windischeschenbach. These local trains are more of a bus on wheels, only consisting of one small carriage with a bell to alert the driver when you want to get off.
Luckily, there is an All-Bavaria ticket, which allows up to five people to travel together. But these tickets require the names of everyone traveling to be written on the billet, or else they will be considered invalid. On the local train we made this small mistake, and were threatened with a €450 fine—until a god-sent local stepped in to explain that we were naive tourists who didn’t understand, and the guard let us get off the train. She wasn’t happy about this though, and she wailed in despair. They say people in Germany are stoic and sensible, but this particular train witch had a penchant for the melodramatic. We ended up walking 9 kilometers back to our accommodation that day, rather than risk running into her again.
Once you arrive in Windischeschenbach, there is a calendar posted at the town hall of which Zoiglstuben are open. But should you arrive after lunch on a Saturday, there will be nowhere open to buy any food, drinks, or essentials. Prepare accordingly and don’t expect any sympathy or assistance from the locals. You’re on your own if you don’t understand how things work round these parts!
In Neuhaus we went to Zoigl Lingl, which sits in a pretty square at the end of an obscenely steep path from Windischeschenbach, so steep that you’re left out of breath (even if you don’t have dengue fever) until well into your first beer. Part of this Zoiglstuben is the traditional home style establishment, but around the back there is a large and brand new room, reminiscent of a typical Bavarian restaurant, all dark wood panelling and slightly lumpy lace. Nothing in this part of the world feels completely contemporary though, making it one of the most unique and unusual beer destinations I’ve ever visited.
In town the coziest Zoiglstuben open was Zum Roud’n, with a small outside seating area and an incredibly packed living room-cum-bar. Here the Zoigl was slightly sweeter and greener than the others we tried, very malt forward with little hop character. Zum Weißen Schwan, a hotel with a Zoiglstuben attached, keeps traditionally eccentric opening hours; closing at 2 pm on a Sunday with the hotel completely out of bounds until the working week begins. Schafferhoff near the town square does serve warm food alongside it’s slightly hoppier Zoigl, with traditional beef roulade and pork shoulder featuring on a Sunday, but these will sell out by early afternoon.
For those who like to earn their beer there is a Zoiglstuben at a camping ground called Schweinmühle, a pleasant 50-minute walk from Windischeschenbach. The Zoigl here is no longer Echter Zoigl due to the upgrading of the brewhouse to electric power in recent years. But the beer is delicious, and presuming you’re not a Zoigl purist, actually much better than the Echter Zoigl beers we tried. There is also a petting zoo with some extremely grumpy pigs who like to chase the hens they’re housed with for a bit of post-prandial entertainment.
This is a very Catholic part of Bavaria, the greeting you mostly receive in the street is not a “hallo” but “servus,” indicating the willingness of the greeter to be of service to you. This religious aspect of the region also extends to the extensive pealing of bells from 6 am, which is not hugely compatible with getting a lie-in after an evening of over-enthusiastic Zoigl-ing.
The beer quality varies hugely between Zoiglstuben. That’s why it’s advisable to try and visit when several are open at once, so even if you have a sub-par pint, there will be a better one a few minutes away, and you don’t waste a hangover on bad beer. Things are unusual, parochial, and sometimes can be a little bit impenetrable. But if you’re curious to try a unique brewing culture, then Zoigl is one of the most idiosyncratic.
Of course there are some less off-the-beaten path—and more consistent—places to get beer in the region. In the small town of Forchheim, you can find some of the best beer in Bavaria, with the Grief Brewery the largest in town and making excellent traditional-style lager. The real reason to visit Forchheim, however, is to go to the Keller Wald, a collection of bierkellers nestled in the forest about a 30-minute walk from Forchheim station. Walking up to these beer gardens is recommended (provided you’re not recovering from dengue fever). It’s a pretty journey and the walk uphill will get you ready for a stein or two. Most of the kellers also serve traditional Bavarian food, should you fancy a schnitzel or pork knuckle.
Some of the forest kellers are open year round, others are more seasonal or erratic (during the summer folk festival, Annafest they’re all open). With 20 kellers total in the complex, you’ll be hard pressed to try a beer from each one. It’s also worth grabbing the business card of a local taxi driver (they tend to operate as sole traders rather than through a taxi firm) because once you’ve had a few liters of beer and the better part of a pig you will not much fancy the walk back through the forest to the train station.
While There, Don’t Miss Bamberg
Elsewhere in Bavaria, Bamberg is a bucket list destination for any beer fan. This fairytale-like, walkable city ( 30-minutes by train from Nuremberg) is the home of many excellent breweries—including Schlenkerla, a brewery that makes one of the best rauchbiers in the world. A brewpub has been on the site since the 1400s, and since smokeless malt drying was refined in the 1600s, Schlenkerla has been unique in producing beech smoked lagers. Drink a pint of their Märzen and get another pork- and potato-based feast, sitting in the museum-worthy beer hall.
After that, head to Brauerei Spezial to try their version. Both Schlenkerla and Spezial smoke their own malt over beechwood fires in house, and so there are variations between the two from this process. Both make excellent beer, but I think Spezial have the edge when it comes to Märzen. Beyond breweries, Bamberg is also home to the Weyermann maltster, a producer of roasted and smoked malts that most brewers hold in extremely high regard.
Beyond Beer
Of course, there is plenty to do in Bavaria that doesn’t involve drinking. If you happen to be the area over the May bank holiday, then it is well worth making a (very long) trek to Walberlafest, an ancient springtime festival that takes place on a plateau high above the Bavarian Forest.
Once you ascend the 500-meter hill you are greeted with stalls for breweries selling their beer, grilled fish and, of course, pork. The highlight of the festival is the the raising of the maypole, done by a large team of increasingly inebriated locals using a wide variety of unlikely tools to hoist the massive stick upright. It took at least an hour, but the maypole raisers did take frequent breaks for more beer, songs and to see if they can find another table or bit of tarpaulin to help get the pole in the air. Once the maypole is up, the songs have been sung, and the local children have done some traditional dancing the mayor of the town taps a huge wooden barrel of beer and passes out massive glasses to those around.
It’s worth setting off back down the hill before it gets dark, as there are no lights on the way back and plenty of ways to get lost, however there is a bar at the bottom of the hill. It’s worth getting a beer here if you fancy it as there is no chance you’ll get one in town (or anything else for that matter) and you might be left with only the meat and milk vending machines to stave off any hunger pangs you might have.
I’ve always had a slightly complicated relationship with Germany, finding it exhausting to have to play the game of being punished for not understanding how things work. So I was completely exhausted by the time we left. Of course, this certainly may have had something to do with the many pints of Zoigl and the last vestiges of dengue fever. That said, the beer there is spectacular, the scenery breathtaking, and the food delicious (if a bit homogenous). It’s well worth seeing an unusual brewing tradition up close, but on no account forget to bring your toothbrush.
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