St. Galler Schützengarten - Shooting range beer

Dear beer enthusiasts,

what is Switzerland famous for?

Usually the answer that comes to mind is chocolate, cheese, the Alps... and, for those of you with some ocult business, secret bank accounts (this last one being one with which they're trying to come clean...)

It is also famous for international courts and the notorious neutrality

Nevertheless in today's post I will talk about two less famous things about Switzerland which deserve more attention... 

The first one, of course, is beer. As the country shares a big border with Austria and Germany and has a numerous part of its population composed by german speakers, some traditions are similar, and the millenar art of brewing is one of them.

The St. Galler Schützengarten is a product of this tradition, brewed by the Schützengarten brewery, in the southern extreme of Lake Zurich. It is a 5% lager with a potential to compete with most German helles (although when it comes to helles my heart still lays in the German side of the border)

The symbol of the brewery, an aiming musketeer, is what led me to the second theme of today.

St. Galler Landbier and the Schützengarten brewery Logo

The Swiss people are also known for being very good Marksmen, every adult male in the country receives military training and is given a rifle to take home and ammunition to learn how to shoot

Every year there are several Schützenfeste - marksmen festivals - around the country, where people compete among each other for the title of "King of the Marksmen" while others celebrate life with beer and typical food

It is said that, in one of these festivals, shortly before World War I, the German Kaiser, who had just watched an exhibition by the Swiss militiamen, asked one of the Swiss competitors: "You are 500,000 and you shoot well, but if we attack with 1,000,000 men, what will you do?" The Swiss replied "Shoot twice and go home". If the story is true, I don't know, but Germany never attacked Switzerland...

My personal opinion about people having guns at home in nowadays society, is a completely different question that doesn't fit in this blog.

All I will say here is: For the safety of all around you in a Schützenfest, do not drink and shoot  :)

Cheers

Ruppaner - Carrying bottles on a bike trip

Dear beer enthusiasts,

today I bring to you the 330ml bottles of two beers produced by the Ruppaner brewery: the 1414 Extra, a naturtrüb with 5,3% alcohol and the Schimmele, a Pilsen with 5,0%

Both are listed as specialties in the website, they're quite good clear beers, with the typical German touch - a very full and sustaining body.

Ruppaner's 1414 Extra and Schimmele Pils

The Ruppaner brewery is located in the city of Constance, which lays in the north end of the Lake Constance (Bodensee in German), the third biggest lake in central Europe. I was there in 2014 after crossing the Black Forest by bike.

Whenever you travel long distances by bike, weight is a fundamental factor, and a hobby like collecting beer bottles becomes almost unpracticable...

Almost...

I had done something similar before, when I backpacked through northern Germany for about one month adding new tastes and new bottles to my collection and ended up carrying around 30 empty bottles back home... at the occasion I had brought one extra luggage which was strategically placed in Aachen, where I could pass by and drop my load every week, but this time I could not afford to carry an extra luggage.

I could only count with some extra space left purposedly in my backpack so I could carry some of the local goods back to Karlsruhe once my trip was done. So I had to be a bit picky, I could not afford to buy six-packs or any kind of bundles, I had to go for single bottles...

The owner of the hostel I was staying, Gerry Mayr, recommended me the Ruppaner restaurant, near to the brewery, where I could also buy some bottles later. After a meal at the restaurant, I went to the small office at the brewery, knowing that I had to choose only two bottles to take with me.

It was not my first time buying beer directly from the brewery, and this time the language barrier was not a problem. Once I had payed for the two single bottles, I went to collect them at the loading docks, where several pallets full with crates of beer were being loaded to trucks.

I apporached the man whose face fit the description given to me by the guy in the office and handed him the piece of paper that served as proof of my purchase... he looked at me in slight desbelief and with a hearthy laugh said something like:

"Bottles? Two BOTTLES? I deal with CRATES as units here, seriously, who buys two bottles in a brewery? Are you a student or what?"

As I explained my problems were about space and weight and not of a monetary nature, he gave me the bottles. We chatted a little bit more while I packed my new acquisitions and prepared to ride my bike back to the hostel.

Later on that trip I also crossed the border to Switzerland for some more bottles... but that's for another story...

Cheers

San Miguel - Free beer in an improbable night

Dear beer enthusiasts,

this post puts an end to the Altbier sequence, although the story behind this bottle is still related to Düsseldorf.

San Miguel Especial is not a pretensious beer, only another pilsner, although slightly stronger in alcohol (5,4%). The producer of this beer is the Mahou San Miguel conglomerate, which apparently only has a website in Spanish... but I found some of the advertisement they do in a British website dedicated to this beer.

If you understand Spanish, take a look on their San Miguel History, the video is quite nice.

San Miguel Especial

After watching the video I was not certain as if this beer is really spanish or actually from the Phillipines, but what I know is that I got this specific 330ml bottle under the following circumstances:

- In Germany (Düsseldorf)
- In a Jazz bar
- On a Monday evening
- For free

I'm not completely sure about what possessed me and brought me to a jazz bar on a Monday evening... maybe it was the fact that I come from a city which never sleeps (São Paulo, not New York) or simply because my vacations made me forget that regular people work on Tuesdays, and therefore don't go to jazz bars on Mondays...

But there I was, in an almost empty bar, only in the company of a man cleaning the taps and a girl sitting on one of the tables while reading a book. I decided to sit near the only soul in that bar, and break the ice with her by making a beer related pun: "why is this bar so empty? Do they serve Kölsch here?"

As an answer I got half a smile and the menu... as it turns out, the girl sitting alone was the waitress, and the bar was really totally empty...

I ordered an Alt and we talked... I heard all she had to tell about her boss not being a very smart businessman and how she was not making good tips that night, but heard also more intense stories about how she volunteered for the American army during the Iraqui war and how she kicks trouble-makers out of the bar on more busy days... (o.O)

At some point the conversation converged to my bottle collection, and she seemed quite amazed by the fact that I was carrying bottles during a backpacking trip.

So she decided she would help with my collection, by offering me one of the beers the boss had behind the bar... she pulled out a whole assortment of flavored Becks (which I promptly ignored) and a San Miguel.

As I asked then "how much for the San Miguel" she just said: "It's yours, just put somewhere the boss won't see"

In the jacket it went... I gave her a good tip and went back to the Hotel with a regular beer and a curious story :)

Cheers!

Füchschen Alt - The craft alt

Dear beer enthusiasts,

Continuing the Düsseldorf/Altbier post series, I introduce to you the Füchschen Alt. I have purposely moving from bigger breweries to smaller ones, and after passing through Gatz and Schumacher, we arrive at the one which is considered to be the craft beer of the Altbiers.

I don't mean to go into cliche fallacies and say that all craft beers are excellent, but when you combine old tradition with the smaller scale production - which allows better quality control of your raw materials - you usually get good results, and the Füchschen Alt is a good example of that.

Füchschen Alt - The craft Altbier

This 500ml bottle contains a very good quality Altbier with 4,5% alcohol content, the main product of Füchschen Brewery. But, as Schumacher, they are not limited to producing altbier, nor are they afraid to try new variations of their old recipes, generating quite some interesting limited-edition brews.

In their website, they claim that even those recipe variations abide to the Reinheitsgebot (German Purity Law). Now, I have mixed feelings about this... if they mean the newest German regulations, then it is alright, that's their obligation to follow the rule and offer the consumers beer which is appropriated and certified for consumption. But if they mean the old and outdated 1516 Reinheitsgebot, then I really think they should rethink that policy...

The old regulation made sense then, in 1516, but today it limits the creativity of the brewer, mainly when we are talking about a brewery with small scale production that could produce quite some innovative brews if it would be audacious and break away a little from the cast that has been paralising German brewers for quite a long time.

A beer does not have to follow the Reinheitsgebot to be tasty, and, independent of abiding to it or not, the Füchschen Alt is a tasty beer, definitely worth to try.

This bottle was acquired, as the others mentioned in this post series, during my backpack trip in 2008... maybe it's time I pay Düsseldorf another visit and have a go at this years special editions...

Cheers!