March Beer of the Month – A Smorgasbord of German Brews!

Welcome to March 2016! This month, The Half Wall is featuring an array of beers from Germany. You will find popular brands such as Hofbrauhaus, Paulaner, and Weinhenstephaner. Add in bottled favorites like Augustiner, Ayinger, Andechs, Becks, Hacker Pschorr, Konig, Schofferhofer, Spaten, Tucher, and Warsteiner and your head will be spinning trying to decide which one to try first!!

Here are some fun facts about beer in Germany:

• Beer is a major part of German culture. It is even considered a food in Bavaria!
• Germany is home to a beer pipeline. Taps in Veltsin-Arena are connected by a 5km tube of beer.
• Oktoberfest originally started as a festival celebrating the 1810 marriage of Crown Prince Ludwig.
• At the start of Bavarian Beer Week in Germany, an open-air beer fountain dispenses free beer to the public.
• Germans are the second largest beer consumers in the world, after the Irish (of course).
• To ask for a beer in a pub, you would use your thumb to indicate “one” rather than your index finger.
• Bavaria has over 600 breweries, and is home to the oldest Brewery in Germany.
• A law guaranteeing the purity of beer was in force in Bavaria from 1516 until 1988. Called the Reinheitsgebot, meaning “purity order”, the law stipulated that only water, barley and hops were allowed to be used, with yeast not added until later.
• The typical ceramic German Beer Stein started out as protection against the bubonic plague and periodic widespread invasions of flies.
• German beer gardens, Biergaerten, date back to the Middle Ages, when brewers planted chestnut trees over their underground storage areas to shade the contents of the beer cellars from sun.

Stop by The Half Wall this month and tantalize your taste buds with a ‘journey overseas’! Every Tuesday you can get our Beer of the Month for 25% off from 8pm to close! 

(excerpts from: http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art16340.asp)