MdV beer e-news, 1-27-05: Ayinger Brewery

MdV: Merchant du Vin beer e-newsletter – Thursday Jan. 27, 2005: Ayinger Brewery, Bavaria, Germany

Ayinger Celebrator Doppelbock resonates with rich, deep, malt complexity. It is available year-round in bottles, but in the winter you can get it on draft! http://www.merchantduvin.com/pages/5_breweries/celebrator.html

Readers who have been curious to see what Samuel Smith’s Oatmeal Stout looks like through a “differential interference contrast” microscope with a polarized light source can do so here:

http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/beershots/beers/oatmeal.html

Smith Imperial Stout is also a good one: http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/beershots/beers/smithstout.html

Thanks, Florida State University!

Samuel Smith's Winter Welcome Ale -- get it before it’s gone! More:

http://www.merchantduvin.com/pages/1_about/Samuel_Smith_Winter_Welcome.gif

Chicago, IL; San Antonio, TX; Williamstown, MA . . . tastings, festivals, beer coverage in the press . . . it is a great time for fine beer! Full event listing at:

http://www.merchantduvin.com/pages/1_about/news.html

Beer Chat from the Beer Court Jester: Ayinger Brewery, Bavaria, Germany

A visit to Bavaria is eye-opening for an American beer drinker. Beer is everywhere, and it is all-malt, locally produced, excellent beer: wheat beer, snappy pils, bock, helles, doppelbock. It is common to see only Bavarian beers in a whole day or weekend of looking. There are over 600 breweries, from small to large, in Bavaria.

Just a few kilometers south of Munich is the small town of Aying. The traditional Bavarian homes; the church with domed steeple; the fields of barley and wheat outside town; the maypole in the village square; the bicyclists from Munich in the summer . . . Aying captures the spirit of this inviting part of the world. The journey there is a trip to another era, and a tribute to a warm and proud family that operates fine restaurants, one of the finest hotels in Germany, and a remarkable, respected, award-winning brewery.

There are signs of civilization in this area from the Bronze Age, 1150-1200 BC. Hundreds of years later, the Roman highway from Salzburg to Augsberg passed just 2 km from the current site of Aying. And in 1385 is the first record of an inn and tavern in Aying – however it’s almost certain that the tavern had been a fixture in the town and community for years before then.

In around 1820, Franz & Katharina Liebhard purchased a farm and the Ayinger tavern. Their son Peter took over around 1840, and Peter’s son Johann and his wife Maria took on operations in 1877. It was Johann Liebhard that built the Ayinger brewery that year, brewing with the excellent barley and wheat from his own farm. He noted in his diary that on Feb. 2, 1878, “the first beer from our brewery is served,” and that the customers loved it. Sales grew, and Ayinger beer was soon delivered to nearby Keferloh and Forstinning. Maria and Johann’s eldest daughter, also Maria, married August Zehentmair in 1904 and that same year they took over operation of the brewery and tavern, adding the beautiful Ayinger Brauereigasthof Hotel in 1927.

After August’s passing in 1936, eldest daughter Maria Zehentmair and her husband Franz Inselkammer took the reins, continuing to produce regionally famous beer and renovating the restaurant in 1961. They began exports to Italy and to the US, and brought Ayinger beer’s fame to the world. After Franz died in 1986, his son Franz II and wife Angela stepped in to continue the high standards of hospitality and fine beer. In 1999 the current brewery was completed, a spotless and beautiful modern marvel dedicated to producing fine art, in bottle and keg.

Ayinger brews a complete line of Bavarian beer styles, from the pale export Jahrhundertbier (Yar-hoon-dirt-beer); a gentle, decocted dark lager Altbairisch Dunkel (alt-by-rish doon-kul – it means “old Bavarian dark”); pale wheat ale or hefe-weizen, Brau-Weisse (broy-vice); dark hefeweizen, Ur-Weisse; a magnificent strong fall lager, Oktober Fest-Marzen; and the deep, elegant, complex, compelling, exotic dopplebock, Celebrator.

Ayinger perennially places first in every category entered in the World Beer Championships. Celebrator won the “Top Dark Lager,” award at the Helsinki Beer Festival in 2004. And again in 2005 Ayinger has won four new gold medals from the Deutsche Landwirtschafts-Gesellschaft (German Agricultural Society) for Brau-Weisse, Ur-Weisse, Jahrhundertbier, and Alt Dunkel. In the DLG, Ayinger is one of the most awarded breweries in Germany . . . a nation of over 1500 breweries.

Seek Ayinger beer at your local store, bar, or restaurant and you will be pleased you did.

Just say: “EYE-ING-GR”

Merchant du Vin, America’s Premier Specialty Beer Importer Since 1978