Five Breweries Every Serious Beer Fan Should Visit

Over the weekend, and for reasons that now elude me, I posted some pictures of the floor-malting at Ferdinand Brewery in Benešov, Czechia on Twitter. Many breweries now add flavor and authenticity to their lagers by using Weyermann’s Bohemian floor malts. They come from Ferdinand.

The tweet languished with two or three likes and no engagement until Katzenbrau directed his spotlight to give it a bit more attention. It gave him the vapors, he said, and I assumed that would be every beer fan’s reaction. Not to get too scoldy, but he’s right: Ferdinand is incredible and miles more interesting than the millionth photo of another hazy IPA. It’s one of the most amazing locations in the beer world, one of the most historic—and, in fact, one relevant to many people’s experiences right now.

An insularity is settling in among American craft beer fans, and it is cutting them off from the roots of their own tradition—and robbing them of the joyful discovery of things different and remarkable. Everyone reading this post should be hungering to see Europe’s great breweries, no matter how committed to the American tradition they are.* It’s not always easy to tour the world’s most interesting breweries, but even for non-writers, it’s not impossible. Even if you’re just into the standard American craft lineup, your appreciation for those beers will deepen if you visit the breweries that inspired them—and encounter brewing traditions that are hundreds of years old.

David Mareš, Ferdinand’s sladmistr. — David Mareš, Ferdinand’s *sladmistr*.

Pivovar Ferdinand (Benešov, Czechia)

Let’s start at Ferdinand, a malthouse/brewery founded by the man whose death sparked WWI. There are very few of these left anymore, so right off the bat we’re in rare territory. But consider the history of Czech lagers. When Josef Groll brewed the first pilsner in 1842, its distinguishing feature was malt. Indeed, Groll was not just a brewmaster, but a maltmaster—or sladmistr in Czech. Of the two roles, the latter was more important then, and more highly prized today. A pilsner is defined by malt; the difference between a mediocre example and a good one is not the hops, which all come from the fields in Saaz (Zateč)—it’s the malt. And it’s the sladmistr who makes the malt.

Ferdinand operates a classic floor malting, with basically no modern updates. There’s a germinating floor and a wonderful Seussian kiln with rotating rakes that seem to be kicking like Rockette legs as they rotate. You learn about the different barley varieties, the process of germination, and kilning. And when you see bags of Weyermann’s product on the floor of your favorite American brewery, you’ll have new appreciation of why their pilsner tastes the way it does.

Brouwerij Rodenbach (Roselare, West Flanders)

It is increasingly common for American breweries to have large oaken vats for aging beer. Curiously, they don’t call them vats, but the Dutch word, “foeder.” That’s of course because Belgium—and especially the Northern Flemish-speaking half—was the one country that continued to use them even after scientists isolated wild yeasts. And no brewery on earth has more of these wooden giants than Rodenbach.

The brewery’s cellar contains 294 of them, spread across ten different rooms. Some date back into the mid-19th century. They are arranged in silent rows, seemingly miles of them, and walking among them brings a sense of stillness, as when walking amid giant cedars and firs in an Oregon forest.

Rodenbach played a key role in teaching Americans how to work with wild yeast. Although a complex blend of wild yeast and bacteria define Rodenbach (they were originally collected when the brewery conducted spontaneous fermentations), the brewery starts by making a rather simple red ale. It ferments out normally and only then is it subjected to the chaos inside those still foeders. Americans started making really wonderful wild ales only once they’d absorbed this key approach. There is nothing on this earth like standing in the middle of the foeders at Rodenbach; and no way to experience it by seeing photos.

Harvey’s Brewery (Lewes, Sussex)

There are actually a number of breweries one could slot in here—Fuller’s, Greene King, Samuel Smith’s, JW Lees, Belhaven, and Caledonian are a few I’ve seen—but the key is to visit a traditional gravity-fed cask brewery in the UK. This is where the American tradition was born, and, the more our tradition evolves, the more it seems to be resembling these brewing methods.

Americans didn’t invent dry-hopping or post-kettle hop additions, nor did our high-ester yeasts come from nowhere—all of this was taken straight from the British playbook as breweries like Harvey’s have practiced it for centuries.

Perhaps more important is standing with a brewer who has spent decades making these beers; in doing so, one develops a brand-new appreciation of the word “craft.” These are places where the same beer has been made thousands of times, where a brewer knows the beer at an almost atomic level by taste alone every stage of the brewing process. Americans revere “innovation” above all else, but a different knowledge emerges from a craft executed a thousand times. Attentive visitors will learn new things about ingredient and process most American brewers still don’t know. There is nothing more “craft” than cask.

Schneider and Sohn (Kelheim, Bavaria)

Haze, you say? Fruit juiciness? These are other discoveries Americans did not make first. Most breweries in Bavaria make weissbier, but one only makes weissbier. That wasn’t always true, and in fact, until Georg Schneider led the charge to get the law changed in the 19th century, the only place to get wheat ales were these specialist breweries. Schneider is thus the most important living link in this 400-year-old style, but the one place where the brewery was created to make nothing else.

Bavarian weizen is a beer of process. Schneider conducts seven (!) different mash rests before sending the beer along to the fermentation room, where all the large vessels are open to the air. This is critical in goosing that fruitiness characteristic of style. (The British do the same thing in their cask ales for the same reason.) Until the brewery started making alkoholfrei beer, it didn’t own a single conditioning tank. From the fermenters, the wheat beer is dosed with speise (fresh wort) and sent straight to packaging.

Hans-Peter Drexler, Schneider’s brewmaster.

I would be happy to argue that Schneider is the weirdest brewery in the world because of all this—and the only thing stopping me is I don’t know that any single brewery can claim the title. But Schneider is a singular brewery making a kind of beer that has been around hundreds of years. There’s literally nothing like it in the world.

Brauerei Schlenkerla (Bamberg, Franconia)

Much of American brewing comes from the traditions of other regions, and we can observe some fragment of distant ingredient or tradition in it. Yet sometimes it’s worth visiting a brewery because it’s so otherworldly and has not a thing to do with the United States.

It’s impossible to beat a brewery making lagers the way they did at the time Reinheitsgebot was drafted, served in a pub that was already a hundred years old by then, located at the center of one of the most well-preserved medieval towns in Europe. I speak of course of Schlenkerla, the only all-rauch (smoke) brewery in the world. Bamberg isn’t near anything else, but you could easily spend a week there and just barely cover the bases. The star of the show is Schlenkerla’s medieval pub, which is—I recognize the danger of saying this out loud—the best in the world. Ox-blood beams, half-timbered building, drinking in one of the several different rooms or out on the cobblestone street—it’s hard to argue against the thesis. Reach out to the brewery ahead of time and perhaps someone will take you to the brewery and show you the malting, merrily powered by crackling beechwood. Even if that’s not possible, the pub alone will more than satisfy. And remember that Spezial, Mahr’s, and eight others are in town—and dozens more in the Franconian countryside just beyond.

Before signing off, I’ll add a final note. There’s a wonderful paradox in learning about the brewing traditions beyond those you care about. I pretty much guarantee it will make you appreciate these beers, and I definitely guarantee you’ll love the tours either way. But you’ll also walk away with a deeper appreciation and understanding of the beers you already love. Beer is unusual this way: knowledge feeds rather than satiates curiosity. Visiting Schneider will not challenge your love of hazy IPAs in the slightest, but there’s a chance you’ll leave thinking more deeply about esters and fermentation, or weissbier in general, or what a brewery making a 400-year-old hazy beer may know to inform a country making them less than a decade. Either way, you’ll be glad you went—I promise.
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* These five are a great place to start, but there are dozens of others. As a few examples: Brasserie Dupont, a lambic brewery, a Trappist brewery (Belgium); Urquell, Budvar, U Fleků (Czechia); Uerige, Früh, Weihenstephan, Zoigl country, Augustiner, Ayinger (Germany); Ch’ti or Thiriez (France); one of the farmhouse breweries Lars Garshol documents on his blog.