Read Online Travels with Barley by Ken Wells - Free Book Online

single concession to the latter-day American version of German lagers. In fact, Mike later told me that not only were Bud and its American competitors verboten but the clientele had risen up in protest when the bar put in a tap for Beck’s. “Everybody bitched and bitched,” said Mike. “They said, ‘Beck’s? That’s an American beer!’ We had to get rid of it.” (Well, actually, Beck’s is a German lager brewed in Bremen since 1533 under the Reinheitsgebot , the German Purity Law of 1516 that prescribes how German beer must be made. Its status as the most popular German import in the U.S. perhaps explains why the picky Gasthaus crowd shunned it.)
    When I seemed befuddled by the beer choices, Mike suggested a Hacker-Pschorr, made by a Munich brewery in business since 1417. He poured it expertly and set it before me. I took a sip and it was smooth as a moonstruck night. One thing you can say about lagers: the good ones don’t make you work very hard to like them.
    Mike got busy so I struck up a conversation with my nearest bar mate, an affable workingman named Andy Holdorph who lived just a couple of miles away. Andy described himself as a regular who came in for the authentic German beer and the conversation. He said the Gasthaus was really just a neighborhood joint, even if the neighborhood was mostly cornfields and cow pastures, and that it had a very clear idea of its clientele. “I know a lot of people think Minnesota is full of Swedes but it’s actually full of us Germans,” Andy told me. He then wanted to know if I were planning to come to the Gasthaus Oktoberfest next week. Since it was September 7, I was a bit surprised that Oktoberfest was falling so early. Andy rolled his eyes; it became obvious to him that he was dealing with an Oktoberfest ignoramus.
    Yes, he told me, the German beer festival got its start in October 1810 as a public wedding reception for Bavarian Crown Prince Ludwig and his bride Princess Therese. “But the weather was lousy in Bavaria in October so they moved it to September. The Germans are practical people, you know,” Andy said. American Oktoberfests generally follow this later calendar. I eventually learned that Oktoberfest in the fatherland had mutated into an annual beer blowout in Munich at which literally five million liters of beer—about 85,200 standard U.S. kegs—are drunk over a sixteen-day period.
    Andy said the Gasthaus did pretty well for a place out in the sticks. “They’ll be 2,000 people here next weekend,” he said. “There’s deer stew on the menu.”
    Deer stew and beer didn’t sound half bad but I had a big river, and many other beer joints, to explore.
    I told Andy about my Perfect Beer Joint quest. He thought about it a minute and concluded that the Gasthaus should certainly be in the running.
    Mike, the bartender, overhearing us, had a few of his own notions.
    â€œIt’s got to be workingman’s bar,” he said, “a place where you’re welcomed, no matter what you do. But no BS. You don’t want to have to be looking over your shoulder. Oh, and no peanut shells on the floor. And a guy can light up a cigar if he wants to.”
    He paused and then went on: “And it can’t be politically correct. You should be able to tell a Michael Jackson joke and get away with it.” (He meant the pop star, not the beer writer.) He had one last thought: “And, oh, yeah, there should be no Big Blues.”
    This term stopped me and I asked Mike what he meant. At the Wall Street Journal where I work, Big Blue is the corporate nickname for IBM, the computer giant.
    He explained that this was a kind of German-American beer hall insider slang. Big Blues are bartenders or cocktail waitresses who wear blue lederhosen or dirndls; they have the uniform “and know how to sling gin and pour beer but they’re either pompous or have no personality,”