Prost!!!

Kraut and I returned home safely from our family trip early last week. It was hard to come back knowing it meant laundry, grocery shopping, cleaning, yard work, and going through some 250 emails at work! We had such an amazing time doing lots of sightseeing, walking, eating, and of course sampling the local brews. One of the most fascinating things to me was that almost everywhere you would have a beer, they would bring it in a special glass just for that brand. I thought this was so cool, and very helpful for a tourist trying to keep track of all the ones she tried! I didn't get pictures of all of them, but I definitely was able to capture plenty to share with you. Here are our samplings...as time went on we started taking more pictures, so we missed a few good ones early on.

Berlin:

This Lubzer Pilsner was consumed right after all the family arrived in Berlin on Friday 6/9. Interestingly enough, we were dining at a place called Tex Mex. There seemed to be a lot of "tex mex" places around, and I know it seems kind of odd that we chose to eat there, but it was conveniently located right around the corner from our place. Besides, the beer was German and thats all that matters!

Here we are a "Haus der 100 Biere," and yep you guessed it...they had 100 beers on their menu.

No, its not St. Paddy's day! This green beer is a mix of Berliner Weisse which is a sour wheat beer made in Berlin mixed with waldermeister (woodruff) syrup. It was delicious! They also mix it with raspberry, but I like the sour one better.

Here was the menu at the house of 100 beers. Look closely and you may recognize something you wouldn't expect.

That's right, MGD represented all the way in Berlin!

Dresden:

We had these brews on our lunch break between museums at the Zwinger.

We sampled these beers while waiting for our tour of the Volkswagen Glass Factory. The Radeburger was my favorite Dresden brew!

We went down to a beer garden down by the river and enjoyed another...

and the view!

Hamburg:

When we arrived in Hamburg on Wednesday 6/15 it was lunch time, so we stopped for a kebab and our nice waitress insisted we needed a perfect pour for the perfect picture of the Konig Pilsner.

On Thursday we took a bus tour around Hamburg, and for lunch we stopped for a brat and another local beer.

When we got done with our bus tour we had some time to kill so we had to sample a Lowenbrau, or two!!!

Brussels:

When we arrived in Brussels on Friday, we took hard to sightseeing until the rain put a little damper on things. However, I think it worked out in our favor because when it started raining there was nothing around but this little pub. So we figured, it must be time to try a Belgian beer. These were both awesome. I'm not the biggest fan of wheat beer, and didn't know the Brugs blanche was a wheat beer when I ordered ut, but I'm glad I did.

This Grimberger was probably one of our favorite Belgian beers, which must be why Kraut wanted to take this artistic depiction.

We picked up this trappist beer in a local convenient store on our way back to the hotel that night...why don't we have quality beer in our convenient stores?

Here is one you may recognize. We had these with lunch on Saturday after lots of sightseeing. I think they were cheaper than water!

We went to a small brewery museum, where you learn all about Belgian beers and particularly about the Trappist beers. Fun fact I retained....there are only 6 Trappist monestaries in the world and 5 of them are in Belgium. Before you leave the museum, they give you a beer (of course), but they won't tell you what brand it is. They had a blanche wheat and a pilsner, so we had one of each.

After the brewery museum it was time to hit up a little more sight seeing, until the rain started, that is. Once again we ducked into a bar to get out of the rain. Here is where we tried some neat ones. These were both Trappist beers, mine was the Rochefort on the right. It was so good!


Still raining, so time for round 2. We saw several people with these 2 beers. Kraut had the one on the left and I had the Kwak in the sweet glass on the right.

Wanted to give you a close up view of this glass!

Kraut thought you should have another artistic view of the Kwak.

I thought it was time to go, but Kraut had room for one more. So here is the last one! I wish we could have just stayed in Belgium, but that could have gotten us into trouble!