Maisach and München

Day three in Munich and I opted to set out on the S-Bahn to find a nearby brewery in the town of Maisach.

Located 16-miles northwest of Munich this sleepy place has increased in population size by over 40% since the late-80's.  What's bringing them all here?
Could it be because they have a UNESCO cultural heritage listed shooting club? The folk festival? The fact that pagan metal band Equilibrium were founded here? The town's own brewery?
Or perhaps because it's peaceful and less than 30-minutes on the train from central Munich.

As there really isn't much to see, especially on a chill grey morning with the raindrops beginning to fall, I headed straight to the brewery...

Bräustüberl Maisach (Hauptstraße 24, 82216 Maisach)
It's unmissable as you walk down the main street, the chimney and brewery logo on a white wall visible from some distance.  Their wirsthaus/restaurant takes up the left-hand side of the building.

Maisach Brauerei dates back to 1556 according to the beer mat...

It has been in the hands of the Sedlmayr family since 1907.  Somewhere within the brewing building are historic steam engines, early 20th century coppers, and a grist mill from 1925, the latter two still being in use today.

Beer-wise, four regular drinks are on offer: 'Perle' (a hoppy Helles), Keller Bier, the dark beer - Räuber Kneißl, and an unfiltered Weißbier.

I started with the marvellous Dunkel, then followed it with the unpasteurised Keller Bier, served in earthenware mug.

It's a lovely place, all tables filled on a weekday lunchtime with a mixture of locals, business-folk, and couples.  I felt a bit guilty that I was sat at a table for four and wasn't eating (too good a breakfast buffet that included pancakes and cheesecake).  Plus, I wanted to get back to Munich with a reasonable amount of time to keep exploring, so I paid the bill after two beers and moved on.

Here's a picture of me stumbling out the pub...

I made it back to the train station and hopped aboard the next S-Bahn service to Munich, alighting at Marienplatz and returning to theViktualienmarkt for a bite to eat.
Close to the outdoor market is this little bar...

Giesinger Bräu - Stehausschank Viktualienmarkt (Prälat-Zistl-Straße 4, 80331 München)
A stehausshank is literally a stand-up bar - somewhere to call into, get served at the counter, perch on a ledge and quaff your beer elbow-to-elbow with your fellow patrons. I thoroughly approve.

There really wasn't much room in here: just four perching tables in front of the counter with no stools, although pavement seating allows you to take the weight off provided the weather behaves.

Giesinger started out in a garage in 2006 in the suburb of Giesing and have since grown into the second largest private brewery in the city, with a capacity of 1.2 million litres per annum.  I've read that they've been trying to get a tent at the Oktoberfest for a number of years, but keep finding new hurdles put in front of them.
Perhaps there's a suspicious eyebrow raised at the modern beers which Giesinger concoct alongside the traditional ones.

I'm afraid that I only tried the one on this occasion.  I vow that Giesinger will be high on my list next time I'm in this neck of the woods.

The Dunkles was served in a clay mug for €4.70 a half litre and was a fine example of the style.

I didn't move on far, my decision dictated by worsening weather.  The smart modern Hacker Pschorr pub is pretty much straight across the road.

Der Pschorr (Viktualienmarkt 15, 80331 München)

This is a modern smart bar/restaurant which I can't say was my favourite in the city.  Very much a 'please wait to be seated' place - quite the opposite to where I'd been beforehand.
The main draw was the chance to drink the Hacker-Pschorr 'Edelhell' from the wooden barrel...

So, how was the ambitiously-billed "Pschorr Experience"?
Hmmm...pricey with that €6.70 charge for a half litre.
Perhaps a little too chilled for my liking and nothing special in my opinion, wooden barrel or not.

But - wow! - the psychological effect of the bell ringing when a new barrel is tapped is something to behold.  The number of people draining their glasses and putting in orders as soon as the bell rang was incredible, despite the fact that I don't imagine any one barrel stays in place for long enough for the beer to get tired.

My next point-of-call was to the Munich tap of a brewery 50-miles to the south.

Tegernseer Tal - Bräuhaus (Tal 8, 80331 München)
The brewery traces its roots back to 1050 (take that, Britain's oldest pubs!) and is connected to an ancient Benedictine abbey in the lakeside town of Tegernsee.  They've grown a bit over the years and now have a second production site and the official name Herzoglich Bayerisches Brauhaus (The Bavarian Duke's Brew House).

The building this pub is housed in dates back to 1897 and previously housed Brauerei Schlicker who ceased brewing in the 50's.  It has remained a pub ever since and was taken over an refurbished by Tegernseer in 2013, providing another alternative to the dominant Munich brewers. 

I was really comfy sat in here, helped by the fact that I was sheltered from a heavy rain shower outside, refreshed by a light, hoppy, grassy half litre of helles, and earwigging a beery conversation between Americans and Aussies sat at the bar.

Tegernseer had WC signage worthy of a covert bit of photography...

 

Then I was off into the gloomy late afternoon, examining football stickers on lamp-posts (must come back and get to an 1860 game), and searching for more modern beer.

My evening diversion for 'craft' beer (Maisach may have a thing or two to say about that descriptor and will vehemently tell you they've crafted their beer for hundreds of years).  

I caught the underground to Poccistraße, then made a short walk to Fisches Bier.

Frisches Bier (Thalkirchner Str. 53, 80337 München)
This modern moodily-lit bar, in a part of town that really deserved a bit more exploration, offered up 14 tap lines of trad lagers, Dutch pastry stout, bocks, and IPAs.
I picked the 5% dunkle from Tilman's, who I assume the bar is associated with based on the number of their beers listed in pride of place at the top of the menu.
Tilman's is a Munich nano-brewery set up in 2014 by a fella called Tillman Ludwig.  The enjoyable 'Die Dunkle' was like a very light English stout with caramel and blackberry notes. I just wish I'd have given myself longer to stick around and try more.

 

Unfortunately, I didn't manage to get a decent interior photo of Frishes bar.
But I do have a picture of donuts at the train station...

Which I think is a fine alternative.

Those sticky sweet treats bring my 2026 exploration of Munich to a close.
My evening ended up at the back of an aircraft hangar of a venue watching Biffy Clyro...gosh, they have an awful lot of ballads.

Bear with me - if you will - for further posts on Nuremberg, Bamberg, and Augsburg, before I return to these shores and Banks's bitter in backstreet boozers.

From the Hofbräuhaus to Obliteration

I've been looking back through the blog to try and discern what's missing from the posts. Then it struck me: not enough Napalm Death.

So I'm going to try pairing grindcore and New England pale ale.
By way of the transport museum and Munich's most famous beer hall.
Let's start at a gentle pace...

I strolled south from the main station under blue skies that defied the rainy weather forecast, making my way to the Deutsches Museum Verkehrszentrum.
This is housed in 1920's exhibition halls on the edge of the Bavaria Park, three large halls containing all manner of motor vehicles from all ages: trams, trains, bikes, skis, and F1 cars.

I thought it was great.
I even put my coat and bag in a locker and I never usually commit myself to staying in any museum long enough to need to take my coat off.

Ironically, viewing all those modes of transport and old Munich trams in the museum, I was mostly relegated to travelling on my own two feet throughout the rest of the day, Munich's transport network brought to a standstill by a strike.  And I thought that only happened in London.
My route took me across the expanse of the Theresienwiese (nope, still no interest in visiting the Oktoberfest).

Then into the centre via pleasant leafy suburbs, through the Sendlinger Tor, then onward to the beer hall that I said I wasn't going to bother going to this time.
A bit like going to Leeds and not visiting Whitelocks, or skipping a pint of Bass in the Bell in Bath, you kind of need to pop your head in to the Hofbrauhas. 

Hofbräuhaus München (Platzl 9, 80331 München)
It's perpetually busy, attracting a vast number of tourists although that doesn't seem to put of a strong local following too, numbers swelled by Bayern supporters ahead of a cup tie with RB Leipzig.
The cavernous main drinking hall with painted ceilings was awash with noise and all tables occupied early in the afternoon, although I suspect there were plenty of spots to squeeze in if you were determined enough.

Live music...no, that's not Napalm Death, not yet...

The Hofbräuhaus am Platzl was originally built adjacent to the brewery in 1589 although it didn't open to the general public until 1828.  It has a dark bit of history, famous as the venue where the National Socialists held their inaugural meeting and used for subsequent speeches.

I perched myself on a high table about as far away as you could get from the action in the main hall and perused the beer choices...

The core beers are Hofbräu Original, Dunkle, Weiss from a bottle, and a seasonal on offer provided you're here at the right time.  Beware, the seasonal only comes in a 1-litre measure, as is the Bavarian norm.  €5.40 gets you the more sensible 0.5l measure of the pale or dunkle. The Original for me - "Bier mit charakter" according to the menu.

For those whom the hecticness of the beer hall is too much, Ayinger's central Munich tap is located almost directly across the road and is a lot more relaxed.

Ayinger am Platzl (Platzl 1A, 80331 München)
Their beer is brewed in a village to the southeast of the city, easily accessible on the S-Bahn if you want to sample it at source.  I grabbed a stool on the end of the bar and ordered the Kellerbier in the absence of a menu.  Nice glass...

I read somewhere that many locals stick with the big city brews and don't rate Ayinger, yet I thought the kellerbier was excellent and so easily drinkable.

Here's your male and female signage on the basement WCs.  Luckily my hair was quite dishevelled this day and I looked just like the chap on the gents (although I'd left my clay pipe at home), so no confusion this time. 

 

Departing from Ayinger, I strolled back through the city centre, dropped my backpack off at my hotel near the station and set out in the early evening dusk and on-set of drizzle for some more modern Munich beer.
Ah...they've set up a chair especially for me where I'll be out the way and won't bother anyone...

Higgins Ale Works (Karlstraße 122, 80335 München)
This fooled me a bit - I had the image of a sprawling industrial unit based on the 'Ale Works' moniker, yet it turned out to be every bit the micro pub.
Great music  - LCD Soundsystem, New Order, Talking Heads, Violent Femmes 'Gone Daddy Gone'.
Six of their own beers on offer, although all on the pale side.  I picked the New Zealand pilsner 'Tikier Tour', brewed in collaboration with Ingolstadt's Yankee & Kraut.  Then moved on to the 'Secret Idaho Pale Ale', a 5.7% hazy concoction brewed with Vic Secret and Idaho 7 hops.

The bar consisted just four tables, plus stools at the counter and stools along a ledge at the front window. Despite my picture making it look like a typical PropUptheBar empty pub visit, it filled up nicely during the time I was there.

Moving on, I walked through the drizzle to Hackerbrucke station, the local trains still running despite the strike providing an alternative to a longish dull wet walk.
I was chuffed to jump straight on a train - less chuffed that it sat there and didn't go anywhere thanks to an 'incident'.

Regrettably, 15-minutes sat on an S-Bahn train going nowhere led to a late arrival and missing a good chunk of Polish stoner metal band Dopelord's set.  Shame...what I heard of them sounded pretty good and they had ace t-shirts that I couldn't justify buying after only catching 2-songs.

Next up - all the way from exotic Leamington Spa - were 80's punk band The Varukers.

A anarcho crusty punk band who formed in 1979 and have impressively kept going over the years with Anthony "Rat" Martin on vocals since the very beginning.

Veteran New Jersey trio Whiplash provided some pedal-to-the-floor thrash metal...

Backstage Werk was a cracking venue, part of a larger cultural centre with the evening's football playing on a big screen in another hall, a club venue, and more spaces to lounge about in what looked like converted shipping containers.  Beer in the venue was a very reasonable €4.50 - a bottle of Augustiner Dunkel for me.

Headliners Napalm Death took to the stage just gone 9:30...

Details of the setlist?
No idea...except that everything was fast, loud and very noisy.
Back in Oxford, I played Mrs PropUptheBar my video of Napalm Death kicking into 'Scum', the crowd bouncing off one another in front of the stage.  Strangely enough, she didn't say she wished she'd been there.
I like a bit of noise every now and again - and four noisy bands of various persuasions made this good value for money - although I appreciate that many would much prefer to spend the evening with the dulcet brass tones of the Hofbräuhaus band as their musical accompaniment.

Craft Beer in Munich

February 2026.
Back in Germany with a couple of gig tickets, football tickets, a few sightseeing ideas, and a whole lotta beer which needs to be drunk.

So, without further ado, let's start exploring the Bavarian capital, somewhere I haven't been for a fair few years. 
The central outdoor market seemed as good a place as any to start.  BBC weather had promised me that Munich was replicating the UK's early 2026 rainfall every day forecast, so I figured I'd make the most of the mild and dry conditions on my arrival and sample some helles al-fresco.

Biergarten Viktualienmarkt (Viktualienmarkt 9, 80331 München)
Beer comes from the kiosk where half litre's of pale lager are dispensed at the counter to the left for you to scoop up, before handing your €5.50 to the chap at the counter to the right.  No need for the barrier or any queue on a weekday February afternoon, when there was just enough custom to ensure your beer hadn't been sitting there for too long. 

 

The Viktualienmarkt beer garden rotates through the big Munich brewers every couple of weeks, with barrels of Hacker Pschorr being tapped on this occasion. 
The helles does the job without being especially exciting - a sweet bready golden lager that's lightly carbonated and easy to drink.

Being as it was fairly bright and not raining, I paid my €5 to clamber up the steps of the 91m-high church tower of St Peter's.
(Perfect blue sky the next day, but how was I to know...)

That bit of exercise almost certainly offset the calories of the beer, making it quite acceptable to waste no time in sampling the wares of another of the Munich 'Big Six' breweries.

Augustiner Stammhaus (Neuhauser Str. 27, 80331 München)
On a busy central shopping street, this was the original site of the Augustiner brewery and adjacent beer hall.  It was completely rebuilt between 1896 and 1897 by local architect Emanuel von Seidl to incorporate a restaurant for the newly prosperous folk of the city along with several function rooms and a courtyard garden.
I may only have explored a fraction of the place, but it's a super-impressive cavernous venue: vaulted ceilings, dark wood panels midway up the walls, big tables, and steady buzz of conversation with most tables occupied even if it was far from as busy as it often gets.

I grabbed a stool at one of the huge barrels close to the bar, where my view looked like this...

Then ordered myself the Augustina 'Weissbier', a 5.4% brew which smells of yeast and banana when you get your nose into that frothy head, then tastes of malty bread, citrus and orange peel once you get on with drinking it.

Mmmm...
One great beer from the brewery that many Munich folk will argue is the city's best.
I made a call to the basement WCs which have that annoying feature of an attendant expectant of your euro coins, although - to be fair - they were pristine facilities. 
Then took a quick blurry snap of the front room and the Schäfflerwagenkranz, the ceiling light featuring coopers dancing to ward off the plague...

Then I was on the move, heading towards  one of the city's modern brew pubs...

Schiller Bräu (Schillerstraße 23, 80336 München)
This was a short walk from the haupbahnhof, along a bustling street.  It was founded in 2017 and is shiny and modern inside, featuring brewing coppers on a raised platform in the front window, sleek and smart dining tables on two floors beyond the bar.
They offered three house brews in traditional Munich styles (light or dark lager and wheat beer) plus seasonal bocks and festbiers if you're here at the right time.
I tend to favour a dunkel, so that's what I ordered...not very dark though, is it?

This was at the lighter end of the dunkel colour spectrum - best bitter-looking - with others being stouty black and a fair few disguised completely by being served in ceramic mugs.
Apologies to Schiller for not staying and trying all the beers, but I had other places to visit.

Leaving Schiller, I caught the U1 underground line to Kolumbusplatz, then made the 5-minute walk up Falkenstraße to another modern brew pub.

BrewsLi - Der Biermacher (Taubenstraße 2, 81541 München)
BrewsLi (good name!) is a cool little craft brewpub in a nice neighbourhood.  It's an L-shaped place, with shiny brewing equipment visible just inside the door, sofas and casual seating in the front, regular tables towards the back.  A young chap named Benjamin Saller is the owner and brewer, setting up the 250l brew kit and opening the bar slap bang in the middle of lock down 2020.

The beers are all displayed on skate boards hung above the bar counter - or on an easier to manage piece of paper if you sit at a table.  Eleven in total, including an alcohol-free offering, trad styles, tweaks on trad styles, IPAs and a sour ('Hoppy McTartface').
Prices ranged from €3.90 for 0.3l of the helles to €8.20 for a half litre of the 7% west coast IPA.

I stuck dark with a 5.9% 'Night Draft' 'light' porter...

Brews Li was quiet when I arrived, although a reasonable Tuesday after-work crowd steadily rolled in whilst I was there.  Music was 90% dubious modern hip-hop with Galliano providing a slight jazzy up-turn and Nena's '99 Red Balloons' an unexpected curveball.
Being initially the only person sat at the bar enabled a nice chat with the staff about football and beer.

The porter was followed with a 'DH Helles' 5.4%, a craft twist on the style, dry-hopped with citrussy Krush hops.  Then the 'Top Notch' 5.4% session IPA.

A thumbs-up to Brews Li then, which deserves a place on anyone's Munich beer itinerary.
But I had to move on, with my eye on a little more craft beer to finish my first day in the city.
I hopped aboard a bus that randomly terminated midway through its route, then jumped on this tram...

Tap House (Rosenheimer Str. 108, 81669 München)
Wow!
This was one of the first craft bars to trample into Munich's trad drinking reinheitsgebot territory and serve up all sorts of modern murk.  They do it rather well.
A long bar counter stretches the length of the room to your left when you step through the door.  An arched ceiling gives this a cellar-like feel, painted a murky yellow (is it just UK pubs that discovered olive paint?)

The tap list offered up a hefty choice of 40 beers, the first 18 of which came from Bavarian brewery Camba (from Seeon-Seebruck), owners of the Tap House.
There was too much choice.  Trying everything I'd like would have cost me a pretty penny with the stronger beers perilously close to the €9.00 mark.  And I probably wouldn't have been able to walk in a straight line or find my way back to the hotel either.
Imperial stout from Munich Brew Mafia, limited edition NEIPA from Yankee & Kraut, a Jager Weiss wheat beer...Murphy's Irish stout (? perhaps I'll skip that one)...what to pick?

I opted for Camba's own limited-edition 8.5% collab: 'Zappenduster Imperial Oatmeal Stout'.

 

Then stuck around for the pinsa (tarte flambée) and a murky strong IPA from Frau Gruber.
After which it was time to call it a night.
Turns out you that 8.5% imperial stout is an absolute destroyer when you've been up since 3am in the morning.