"Spezial Keller" in Bamberg Germany
Did you know that in addition to my day job, blogging and being a beer columnist I also have a paper route? It’s true! Every eight weeks or so, I receive a box of freshly printed Mid-Atlantic Brewing News newspapers to distribute to a few of the beery venues here in Charleston. I do it out of love of craft-beer…
The cover story of the latest MABN made me smile – and write! Many of you know I love biergarten culture; beer aside, it’s the pleasure of being able to sit and enjoy a beer in the open air in a civilized way. It happens all over Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic on every good-weather day. The biergarten is an integral part of every gentrified neighborhood or town square. Imagine a real-estate listing in the USA pointing out as a plus, the fact that the house for sale is near the local biergarten!
The biergarten became virtually extinct in America thanks to anti-German sentiment during the First World War being cleverly used by temperance activists to eventually close them and usher in the dark days of prohibition. A friend of mine is just starting to research this fact, citing the fact that Cincinnati was chock-full of biergartens to serve the many German immigrants that settled the area during the industrial revolution. I wonder if the folks of Bavaria’s state-owned Hofbraü brewery were aware of this fact when they decided to open the USA’s first Hofbraühaus near Cincinnati in 2003? The success of that location spawned additional Hofbraühauses in Pittsburgh and Las Vegas. HB serves authentic Hofbraü beer along with real German food and of course a big dose of Gemütlichkeit (good cheer).
The Biergarten at Zeppelin Hall in NJ
The Craft-Beer Revolution has also had a hand in bringing German drinking culture to the USA. Stoudt’s Brewing Company in Adamstown, PA brews world-class German style beer and their brewery restaurant feature a large outdoor biergarten. The Bier-Garden in Portsmouth, VA is an awesome little bar with a small outdoor area and is a great place to find a wide-selection of craft-beer as well as being the largest U.S. Outlet for Schneider beers. A very unlikely spot for a biergarten can be found in the shadows of the skyscrapers of the NYC metro area at the Zeppelin Beer Hall in Jersey City, NJ. The Zeppelin’s humongous beer hall is graced by a biergarten with large picnic tables and pea-gravel on the ground.
According to the MABN article, three additional “garten” projects are underway in our region. Philadelphia will be the home of two of the projects; one will be a 250-seat biergarten and the other will be a revamp of a closed-down venue and will be named “The Hop Angel Brauhaus”. The most interesting project to me is the planned 15000-sqft lager house that is going to be built on Cincinnati’s Riverfront Park. Expected to open in March 2012, the biergarten is a partnership between Christian Moerlein Brewing and the Park Board of Cincinnati ushering in a little “Gub’mint Approved drinking” German Style!
Imagine if we could convince the Kanawha County Commission to add a biergarten to the little playground area at Coonskin Park! If it were in Bavaria, the biergarten would already be there!
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Great article. I’ve only been to Germany once and really enjoyed the beer gardens and the old pubs.