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, the 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.