We specifically chose our hotel because Trip Advisor told us we’d be equidistant (about a 10 minute walk) from both Oktoberfest proper and the “downtown” section of Munich. Whether this is “downtown” like Times Square is “downtown” I’m particularly sure. All I know is we walked past a KFC, a McDonalds, a bunch of stores touting “New York Fashion”, and lots of packed restaurants with outdoor seating. After getting temporarily lost (which I’ll get in to later) trying to find the place, we found this lantern like a beacon in the night. We’d found Hofbrauhaus.

Hofbrauhaus was founded relatively recently in 1589 when the Duke of Bavaria decided that all the local Munich brews sucked and decided to open a brewery. His son, in 1602, decided that he liked wheat beers — so he made it illegal for anyone but him to brew wheat beer. Savvy business. Since 400 years ago, it’s turned in to (apparently) the most tourist-trappy of all the Brauhauses. Of course, as this was the day BEFORE Oktoberfest opened for business, all of these brauhauses were packed and this one was no different. When we finally got in, we were treated to a type of beer hall that just doesn’t exist here.

The Building: I can’t really even describe the size of this building. We walked about trying to find a table for about 15 minutes and I’m pretty sure we didn’t even walk through every possible room. We walked past a German “oompah” band… maybe 2… not sure. After walking around for 10 minutes we somehow ended up in the outside courtyard. This was delightful as it was approximately 150 degrees with 243% humidity inside. Once outside we still had to work to find a table before finally settling in sharing a table with a few random German folk. Before we even had a chance to settle in, a table of the perfect size for four opened up and I think I may have thrown one of my traveling-mates at it. Whatever.

The People: This was kind of the first chance I had to see the difference between the overly drunk German crowd and an an overly drunk American crowd. While it was rather loud, it was not nearly as rowdy as I expected save for a few dudes behind me who couldn’t keep their pants on. Literally. They liked showing their asses.

The Service: Honestly, I have no idea how these people made it through the crowd, but it seemed every time we needed a pretzel or another litre, they just materialized out of thin air. We had two different male servers over the course of the night (fully decked out in drinkin pants’) as I would become continually amazed at their skill. The most amusing part of the evening — even though we were sitting outside, we could see in to some of the inside rooms. At one point, people at a table decided to start banging their mugs on the table and chanting the riff from the White Stripe’s Seven Nation Army (this was a popular chant so I’m curious where the Stripes stole it from). Everyone in the room started joining in. As it got progressively louder and rowdier, a rather matronly looking German serving woman entered the room, threw a severe look in to the room, and raised a finger. Everyone shushed. It was amazing.

The Food: How different can sausage be? Different. We didn’t really have our wits about enough due to jet-lag and beer, so we simply ordered two different types of sausage with sauerkraut and pretzels. I truly dislike sauerkraut, but for whatever reason, the ingredients they add make it taste less like stinky feet and more like the vinegar mixture they soak it in. Also, this was the first indication I had that frozen hot dogs are likely made with everything that’s ever been rumored to be in them. These tasted so much better than American hotdogs. And the sausage? It had this garlic, peppery flavor that I fell in love with.

The Beer: This was the first time our tables were introduced to Litre Mugs. They are… challenging. It’s not so much that the beer isn’t good — because it is — it’s more because it starts to get a little warm by the end. I know the answer to that is “man up and drink faster” and, well, I don’t have a come back because you’re correct. The litres are €6.90 each, which roughly translates to $10.50 for 2.75 beers. While I was there, I sampled three.

• Hofbrau Original: The light. This was my first indication that the domestic versions of the imports I’ve had in the US weren’t going to quite be the same. First of all, it tasted almost nothing like the import version of Hofbrau I get the US. It’s a much crisper, cleaner version of the same thing. The “German Beer Taste” that I occasionally complain about here isn’t apparent at all. And, wow does it go down easily.
• Hofbrau Dunkel: The dark. It also became readily apparent that, just like in the US, I like dark beers better. This one felt like it had more body and a little bit more of a kick. It was also combined with sausage which, really, has to work to be bad.
• Hofbrau Weiss: Roughly equivalent the Hofbrau Hefeweizen. One of my traveling companions only likes Weisses and Hefeweizens so I got to sample a bunch of these which I otherwise wouldn’t have bothered with. Nothing I’m hugely in to but good for a Hefeweizen.

The Bill: Amazingly reasonable. Nine Liters of beer, food for four, just over $100.

Highly recommended.

The Publick House (formerly the Anam Cara)
1648 Beacon Street
Brookline, MA 02445
Website

Here’s what you need to know about the place. The beer selection is enormous, with rotating taps and too many bottles to count (they even have a rotating cellar selection). The food is great, but it’s consistency has diminished a bit in the last few years. The staff is, well, the staff depends. On some nights you’ll get a server that’s knowledgeable in suggestions, attentive, and quick. Other nights you’ll get a server that just doesn’t care, takes an initial drink order, a food order, and disappears for the rest of the time you’re there. It’s one bar staff behavior that I will never understand—the longer a bar patron’s glass stays empty, the more the patron will want to leave the place, resulting in a leaner tab and a [possibly much] leaner tip. I did pretty good this time around, landing a seat in the newly renovated Monk’s Cellar section of the bar, and a waitress that actually noticed when glasses and plates were empty. Score for me. Now, on to the meal.

I started my night with a light Belgian-style beer—Brooklyn’s Cuvee de Cardoz, a light golden-colored beer. Coming in at 8.5% ABV (at least, according to the menu. Brooklyn Brewing has the ABV at 8%), it was served in the Publick House’s standard the-brewer-didn’t-send-us-something-specific stem glass. It had a taste very close to Victory’s Golden Monkey, but with a slightly different finish. It never tended towards bitter, and the swallow was not overly sweet. Thumbs up to a new offering from Brooklyn.

The Monk’s Cellar section of the bar has its own set of six rotating Belgian taps. I decided to grab my next selection from that list (and to give me a chance to try something new). I went with the Moinette Brune from Brasserie Dupont. This beer was also listed as 8.5% ABV, and came in the same nondescript glass as the Brooklyn. Colored a dark amber/ruby, it tasted wonderful. Notes of dark fruits, hard candy, and Belgian sugars were very evident. The very end of the sip hinted a wisp of bitterness, before the sweetness guided it down. Solid.

It would be remiss for me to not mention the other half of why I went out last week—the food! My meal was a big plate of fish & chips, with coleslaw and horseradish tarter sauce. In addition to being a great portion size (three very large hunks of fried fish completely covered the plate of fries), the meal turned out to go great with the Moinette, enhancing the “candyness” of the beer without turning it into something too sweet.

Keeping to the Monk’s Cellar list, the next beer I found myself with was a Pauwel Kwak. This chestnut-colored brew weighs in at 8% ABV, and came in its brewery-specific quarter-yard glass with wooden stand. Human quality may ebb and flow, but one thing about the Publick House is a certainty: if a brewer makes specific branded glassware, the bar will do its absolute best to make sure that they have that type of glass in stock. I saw one of these quarter-yards leave the bar while I was eating and that was it; I was going to get one, too. The beer itself is also very good, tasting a bit like the Moinette, but with a lighter flavor that was perfect for something you’re drinking after a meal. It also evidenced good sweetness without any cloying.

Knowing I should probably wrap up this beer and food fest before long, I went over the menu to find one more beer that would rank high on the Efficiency scale, but low on the wallet. At the Publick House, this means looking for any and all things local. What I found was the Otter Creek Otter’s Dubbel, coming in at 7% ABV for about five bucks. I could not have picked a better dessert beer, though. Served in the nondescript stemware again, the beer was a dark ruby/mahogany color. Medium bodied in the mouth, it served up a flavor of chocolate and plums with no syrup quality and no bitterness. There was a slight “earthy” flavor towards the back of the sip, it almost was like a bit of chicory. A great end to a great meal.

Final thought, Show?: Four or five years ago, I didn’t have the vocabulary to express all the good thoughts I had about this bar. From that time to now, some things have changed but the overall selection, atmosphere, and food keep this place in the top tier of my favorite bars in Boston. There are plenty of reviews online decrying the service and sometimes the food, and some of those have merit. But when you go to a moderately pretentious place, you run the risk of having some staff treat you accordingly. It’s not right, and I’m not condoning it, I’m just saying it happens from time to time. But, with that in mind, the place is always crowded at nights, with 6p or 6:30p being the “cut-off” time to get there if you don’t want a long wait. The place is one of the few bars with a substantial nontraditional selection of beers. This is the place I bring first-time guests that come up to visit. It’s a welcome addition to a city filled with Irish and/or sports bars.

And when you’re done eating, you can head up the block to their provision shop to purchase most of what you drank with your meal. Highest recommendation.

• Vanilla Stout: 21
• India Brown Ale: 32
• Bohemian Pilsener: 33
• Belgian Ale: 27
• Extra Special Bitter: 39
• Season’s Best Nut Brown: 23

Best: Extra Special Bitter. If someone had told me that Ye Olde Holiday Stand-by ESB was going to come out on top in this pack, I would have thought them crazy. But there it is. Not only did the ESB come up huge in the clutch, but the holiday pack staple actually turned out to have an outside shot to crack my top ten.

Worst: Vanilla Stout. If the Vanilla Stout makes an appearance in next year’s 12 Beers I’ll have to give it a second chance. When I started this 12 Pack, I was expecting something to rival the sadly lost Caramel Porter. It’s possible any of the three new beers would have fallen to my sad rage.

Final Thoughts: The Pilsener and the Belgian were odd choices to include in a Winter sampler. As mentioned in the individual reviews, I expect winter samplers to have a bit more, well, winter in them. This particular sampler is much, much better than the trainwreck Samuel Adams Winter Sampler, half of which are beers available in normal rotation, but it didn’t quite hit the high of their 2007 offering (sadly unreviewed since I didn’t start doing this until a few months ago), which featured Chocolate Lager, Caramel Porter, Oatmeal Stout, and the absurdly awesome (and sadly missing) Winter Wassail. But, as always, points for making their two seasonal sampler packs into things where we can try new offerings from the brewery instead of thinly-veiled marketing strategies to get their big releases in more homes. Yes, Sam, I’m referring to your asinine need to include two Boston Lagers in sampler packs.

Average Score: 29 – Good sampler.

-My first question was an easy one:
What do you like best about brewing?
No surprises here; the answer that came up across the board was the satisfaction one gets from creating something, that something in this case being their own beer. Brewmaster J. likened it to cooking in the sense that something consumable and nourishing is created from base ingredients, time, temperature, and a bit of natural chemistry. Brewmaster P. postulated a parallel to that by saying there’s a satisfaction in “[making] things that most people assume have to be manufactured.” And Brewmaster R. weighed in with the very good point that brewing your own beer allows you to make something that you just can’t buy anywhere. I agree with all of this. Even though my experience in homebrewing has extended to only two offerings, both times I thoroughly enjoyed myself while I was doing it. It just seems like this is the logical conclusion of getting into the non-mass-produced beers of the world.

P. also expressed his fondness of teaching the process to others. In his words, “Having them say ‘That’s it?’ and being able to say ‘Yes’ is fantastic.”

-Next up, I asked the obvious follow-up question,
What do you like least about brewing?
For all of us—R., P., J., and myself—the answer was easy: the cleaning. Allow me to explain. Beer brewing, while somewhat simple in its A-to-B-to-C-ness, is ridiculously tedious in its prep work. Every piece of plastic, glass, metal, and human must be cleaned, rinsed, cleaned again, rinsed, sterilized, autoclaved, certified by the CDC, FDA, and BATF…and then rinsed again. The single most time-consuming process of brewing beer is waiting. Thankfully, you’ll be keeping yourself busy with cleaning during that waiting time, so the tedium will just fly by.

J. brought up a point in his answer that I hadn’t even considered: part of his least-liked aspect of brewing was the…recipe? But when I thought about it, it made sense. As he pointed out, when one is at the novice level of brewing, adherence to the recipe (correct amounts of water, hops, yeast, etc.) is paramount, because a batch can be ruined with just a little misapplication of ingredients.

-My next question was personal (I told you this was hard-hitting stuff),
What’s the best thing you’ve ever made? What are you most proud of?
P.:
1) The first Old Ale I made in the midst of a bout with pneumonia.
2)An Apple Wit that was crafted after someone on [a] homebrew community said it wouldn’t work.
3)The Barleywine that will not be repeated

R.: Best (and most likely unique) beer we’ve made was a Lemongrass Wheat beer. We brewed it again to serve at our wedding

J.: My pride, and my shame, is my Gruit. The brew is bracing, with sweet gale up front, ginger at the back and yarrow, wild nettles and march rosemary throughout.

BigShow: At the moment, it’s the Bw’Arleywine—also known above as the Barleywine that will not be repeated—brewed for Boys’ Weekend Out 2008. This started out as a copy of Sierra Nevada Bigfoot, and due to malt and hop shortages at the store, morphed via substitutions into a sweet, caramel-colored, full-flavored bière magique. Alas, the recipe for this genius was never put to paper, having been made up on the spot in the supply store and the kitchen.

-Next, I asked my subjects to gush.
Who is your favorite brewer?
J. named our friend Steve Bernard as his favorite brewer. Steve is formerly of Mercury Brewing and The Tap in Haverhill, MA. He is currently heading up bottling and some distribution work at Three Floyds Brewing in Munster, IN.

R. named Dogfish Head as his current Brasseurs l’Amour. As he pointed out, there are always great beers coming out of their Rehoboth Beach, DE brewery, and they’re never afraid to push flavor boundaries. See what he means at Dogfish.com

I’m hard-pressed to name a favorite brewer, but I’d have to give the nod to Dogfish Head (for uniqueness of styles). Close second-placers are Southern Tier, Victory, and Blue Point.

-As we stumbled into the homestretch, I lobbed an easy one.
What is your favorite bar in which to enjoy sweet beers?
P.: People’s Pint in Greenfield, MA; and Rudy’s in New Haven, CT

R.: Redbones (Somerville, MA); lots of taps that are always fresh.

J.: Cambridge Common (Note: absurdly loud sound) on Mass Ave. 30 taps, 14 of which rotate, plus a cask and bottles. Runners up: Redbones, Sunset Bar & Grille.

Beer Cellarmaster E. offered his faves, as well. Redbones, Cambridge Common and Christophers [on Mass Ave.].

BigShow: I’m going to go with The Publick House in Brookline. While I have noticed a decline in general atmosphere and service recently, I’ve been a loyal patron of the place for the past five years—ever since moving in to my first apartment up the street from its Washington Square location.

And there you have it — a unique cross-section of the vibrant Boston homebrewing community. I leave you with a final observation. As much as brewing is about the creation, it’s also about the sharing of that creation. There’s a certain feeling these brewers get in taking what they’ve made, using only a few simple ingredients, time, and heart, and giving it to friends and family saying, “Please, enjoy this with me. There isn’t a lot of it, and it will never taste like this again, but I want to share it with you.”

Unless it’s Bw’Arleywine. That stuff’s gotta last.