Two bottles of St Georgen’s Bräu to start the season. A gift from friends who are visiting from Germany and who know my tastes. The beer was a discovery for me on a previous visit to Bavaria – Franconia to be more precise – and as well as evoking memories of Gasthof Schiller and juicy schäufele is probably, despite another brewery’s having nabbed the slogan, the best lager in the world.

Visitors, guests. We have them, we are them. The Schiller guesthouse in Wernsdorf where I first tasted St Georgen’s Bräu has been there in one form or another since 1348, but apparently only run as the guesthouse it is now since 1715. Still, they seem to be settling in. The biergarten there on a summer evening, a stein of beer on the wooden table, its surface dappled by spear tips of golden sunlight that pierce the leafed shade. A bone of slow roast pork next to it. The best hospitality makes you feel at home even when you know you aren’t, even when everything is new.

I don’t know how Georg Modscheidler did it, but sometime around 1624 he discovered how to brew my favourite beer. You always wonder, don’t you, about the sequence of events and decisions that lead to a great discovery. Read the rest of this entry »