Mannheim Bundesliga and Beer

Craft beer & football in the German city of Mannheim.

Time again for what's become my annual autumnal Bundesliga & Beer trip.  On this occasion I'd picked the top corner of Baden Württemburg.  Mannheim may not be an obvious tourist destination, but it offered great value accommodation, with good rail connections for a trip to watch Hoffenheim play, as well as exploring some of the nearby towns in the region.

But for this post, I'm concentrating on Mannheim itself and an afternoon spent watching local Budesliga.3 team SV Waldhof Mannheim in action.
 
First up, a trek to search out the tap room of the most prominent local beer.
It's always a given that I'm going to get mildly lost in the suburbs of a new city, traipsing around in the hunt for a bar or brewery, so I figured I'd get that out the way with straight away after dropping off my bags.  

Eichbaum Brauhaus (Käfertaler Str.170, 68167 Mannheim - web)

Eichbaum Brewery dates back to 1679.  The beer is nicknamed "corpse water", due to the brewery being located next to a graveyard and water for the beer being drawn from the ground.  Probably not an angle the marketing department should be focusing on.

The sun's shining on Eichbaum Brauhaus with the more modern brewery buildings behind.

With it being surprisingly busy mid-afternoon on a Friday I grabbed a stool at the bar.  Brightly lit, it feels a little more modern and less cosy than many traditional German brewery bars.  From the four beers on tap I picked the HefeWeizen Dunkel, costing €3.50 for a half litre - a fine, typically German-style beer to start the trip.

Eichbaum also produce a couple of park bench specials craft beers.  Housed in cans with some cool steam-punk artwork, there's an Imperial IPA and Imperial Stout, both weighing in at 7.5% ABV.  And both available from Lidl's for a wallet-freindly €0.59!

The city of Mannheim is situated on the confluence of the Rhine and Necktar rivers, where a thriving river port has helped over the years to make it an important industrial centre.  Of a number of inventions attributed to the city, Karl Benz driving the first motor car there in 1886 is probably the outstanding one.
Of the noteworthy landmarks, the 60m tall water tower takes pride of place...

Mannheim picture postcard shot

The Football Bit...

On Sunday lunchtime I took a leisurely stroll towards SV Waldhof Mannheim's ground, the Karl-Benz Stadion, ready for the 1pm kick-off.

I'd obviously missed a trick - the pockets of my own trousers being far too small for pre-match drink transportation...

Today's Bundesliga 3 opponents were Hansa Rostock, one of the best supported teams outside of the top two divisions.  They'd brought an impressive 2,500 fans, many of them making a 1500km round-trip to this game.
Overall there was a crowd of 13,025 assembled for this fixture - not bad for the third division.  As is often the case, Waldhof Mannheim have a challenge to attract fans away from the big shining lights of the top-flight - Bayern Munich have their own club shop just a few doors down from that of Waldhof in the central shopping centre. 

Reaching the stadium I headed through the gates, quietly proud of myself for interpreting the signage and not trying to stand in the female-only line to get through security.  Only to find myself redirected back out at a second check-point having gone in the wrong entrance for the stand I had a ticket for.

Around the corner, the entrance to the Otto Siffling tribune was via a gravel track down through an intimidating tunnel plastered with Waldhof Ultra graffiti.  The kind of way-in to a football ground that says "enter at your risk, o' foolhardy English ground-ticker".

"Fight on all Fronts" - just not with the timid, English neutral in the wrong stand, please!
(Picture from Waldhof Mannheim's official Twitter pages)

The Rostock fans at the opposite end of the ground were the first to make some concerted noise, unfurling a flag the size of the stand, then setting off flares in their club colours.
Waldhof's response was to unleash banners of their own and yet more flares, leading to the pitch being obscured and play halted before it had barely gotten started.

Once the game got back underway, Waldhof looked marginally the more likely to score in a tight first half.
But just 3 minutes into the second half, Hansa took the lead when former Stuttgart player Pascal Breier pounced on a loose ball in the box and slotted in from close range. Waldhof responded on the 60 minute mark, with the ball taking a kind deflection to land at the feet of midfielder Max Christiansen, who made no mistake with a fine, low shot past the keeper.
No-one really looked like producing a winner in the final third, as both teams looked more concerned about not losing than creating a winner.

More beer, please!

Just a couple of bars of note in Mannheim to tell you about...

Taproom Jungbusch (Beilstr.4, 68149 Mannheim - fb)

Jungbusch is a district just past the inner quadrant of Mannheim, once the home to wealthy merchants, with a number of older buildings which survived wartime destruction.
The tap room opened in 2015, advertising 'no crap on tap'.  Any beer aficionados who've spent time in Germany will know that - especially away from the major cities - craft beer venues are few and far between.  It's slowly catching on, and I was pleased that Mannheim had one of the most highly-rated in the region.

Taproom Jungbusch has recognisable ale-bar furnishings: canteen-style tables and chairs; a mural on the wall depicting different beer styles; quirky beer taps; and beer menus on a blackboard and A5 clipboards . 
From this menu I tried the 'O'Zapft!' a 5.8% ABV märzen, labelled as their own brew.
But the best here, even if the barman did do his best to talk me out of picking it, was 'Boogie Till You Barf' a hefty 10% ABV triple IPA by the ever-reliable Sudden Death Brewery. 

Boland's Tap House (O4 1, 68161 Mannheim - web)
Don't make the mistake I did and pass-by Bolands bar and cafe on the corner, dismissing it as not worth calling in to.  Easy to do with the head-scratchingly confusing block numbering system in the centre, which makes finding anywhere a challenge when you first arrive.
The corner cafe serves up coffees and has a lounge-bar on the first floor.  But a couple of doors away is their recently opened Tap House.

And it's great.  Some 24 beers on tap, ranging from local ales, to German micro's, to big-name craft brewers such as Stone and Lervig.
I'd been in Welde Brauhas in Schwetzinger the previous day, so instantly recognised the hop head beer taps. 
I picked one of the Welde beers I'd missed the previous day: 'Citra Helles', a refreshing, hoppy lager.  Along with a good, filling plate of food, I also tried a nice IPA from Austrian brewery Privatbrauerei Loncium.

All in all it's just another tap on the wall

There are of course plenty of places you can get a beer in the city, but the two above are the stand-out's for anyone looking for something a little different.
Also worthy of a mention is The Upper Glass at R6, 6 - a fine craft beer shop with a good selection of bottles from German craft breweries and lots from further afield.