Cologne for a Day

One of the most interesting beer cities in the world is Cologne, Germany.  It has its own beer style, kölsch, but that only begins to express things.  For the most part, Cologne only has kölsch.  Coming on 30 years ago, the local breweries got together and decided to define kölsch.  According to the Kölsch Konvention of 1985, the beer must be a pale, top-fermented beer. It must be “hop-accented” and filtered, brewed within a gravity range of 11º to 14º Plato (1.044 – 1.053).  Finally, it must be served in a 20 cl cylindrical stange glass. Now, when you stop into a pub, that's what you get.  It's possible to find other beer, but the ubiquity of the local pale ale is astounding.  Keep in mind that this is a modern European city, and there's nothing making the locals fall in line and drink just this one style of beer--except tradition and pride.

When you go to a pub in Cologne, a waiter will strafe your table carrying a tray of glass vials by a sturdy handle.  If you have no beer, he'll ask if you wish one and plunk a glass in front of you and make a tick mark on your coaster.  If you already have a glass, but it's getting low, he'll plunk a glass on your table and tick the coaster.  In only rare circumstances will you have to crane your neck to look for a waiter for a refill (in three days in the city, it never happened to me). 

Next weekend, from 11 am to 9 pm, Prost! (4237 N Mississippi Ave) becomes a little enclave of Cologne, replete with three varieties of German kölsch, stange glasses, and proper trays.  If a trip to Germany is not in your immediate plans, I recommend stopping in to get a flavor of authentic Cologne culture. 

Food and Kolsch

I had meant to comment more longingly about my time in Cologne, perhaps embroidering my narrative with the meaning of the amazing cathedral. Instead, running low on time and internet, this small observation.

The kolsches of Cologne are noted for their balance, but nowhere is this virtue so evident as when put next to a plate of food. The balance is actually tripartite: soft, lightly sweet malt and delicate (or sometimes, as with Gaffel, obvious), herbal hopping on the first two hands. On the third, a lively crispness that comes from the mineral water, dry finish, effervescence, and piquant yeast character. With vinaigrette, the malt comes forward sweetly. Bratwurst, heavy and spicy, relies on invigorating freshness while sweeter pork finds spice in the hops.

You could do worse for an all-purpose food-beer than Kolsch.

One Beer to Rule Them All

COLOGNE. Superficially, the idea that in Düsseldorf they drink alt and kolsch in Cologne seems like a reasonable one. (And never the twain shall meet. Turns out there's a HUGE--albeit good-natured--rivalry between the cities. In Düsseldorf, you don't mention kolsch; at Reissdorf Brauerei in Cologne they wouldn't mention Düsseldorf. Each city has its fiefdom, and the breweries guard the boarderlands like vigilant soldiers.) But if you think about it longer than three minutes, the concept is insane. We live in a market economy; new is exalted, variety demanded. Yet walk into one of the atmospheric pubs here, and you have a binary choice: yes or no. The drink is kolsch and your communication to the waiter only involves a welcoming or abjuring cock of the head.

This is remarkable. I visited Reissdorf today, and was staggered to consider that not only does the brewery sell nearly its entire production to people living within 50 kilometers of the brewery, but it has to--outside Cologne, people don't drink it. The beers actually vary noticeably brewery to brewery, but there's no local rivalries, no tub thumping for the "true" or "original" kolsch. You walk in, pay your euros 1.80, get your elegant little stange glass of kolsch, and the waiter keeps a tick-mark tally on your beer mat. Breweries make one beer, and customers drink one beer--but only here. How is it that no brewery has tried to sell imperial kolsch or Westphalian Dark Ale or ... anything? (Leave aside the politics of kolsch and the konvention for just a moment.) Anywhere else, and that would be a given.

Instead, there is a virtuous symbiosis. The little glasses come, the gently malty, crisp, and delicately spicy/floral hopping--absolutely ideal with bratwurst--continues to enliven the palate. The glasses hold only .2 liters (less than 7 ounces), and the beer less than 5% alcohol, so you never think one more is too dangerous. The trouble is ever leaving the pub.

Reissdorf outgrew its urban brewery and expanded.

A fresh beer and a new tick mark.