Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
many premium beers produced here are
still full of regional character. Book in
advance for daily tours of the state-of-the-
art brewery, which of course include a
tasting session. There's also a sizeable
museum of historic brewing equipment,
and you can eat and drink heartily on-site
at Braüstüble restaurant.
So what makes these southern German
beers so delicious? Beer lovers claim it's
because of the local “noble hops,” grown
on the plains just north of the jewel-like
waters of Bodensee, known in Switzerland
as Lake Constance. Drive southeast 111km
(69 miles) on A81 and then A98 from
Donaueschingen to Tettnang, capital of
this hop-growing hotspot. You can eat,
drink, and stay overnight at the cheery red
Brauerei & Gasthof Zur Krone
(Bären-
platz 7;
&
49/7542/7452;
www.krone-
tettnang.de). This marvelous little artisanal
craft brewery, founded in 1847, is still fam-
ily owned and produces a range of beers,
some of them organic. There are regular
Saturday afternoon tours with brew master
Franz Tauscher; other times are available
by appointment. Though the guestrooms
are surprisingly white and modern, the
heart of the place is its old pub, full of intri-
cate dark wood carving. The menu features
robust Swabian specialties like beer bacon
soup with dumplings, fried whitefish from
the nearby lake, sour lentils with Saiten-
würstle and
spätzle,
or a beef roast with
onions and handmade noodles—perfect
beer-drinking accompaniments.
(
Stuttgart (207km/128 miles).
L
$$
Zum Roten Bären,
Oberlinden
12, Freiburg im Breisgau (
&
49/761/
387870;
www.roter-baeren.de). $$
Brau-
erei & Gasthof Zur Krone,
Bärenplatz 7
(
&
49/7542/7452;
www.krone-tettnang.
de).
Breweries
377
Abbaye de Notre Dame de Scourmont
The Shrine of Belgian Beer
Chimay, Belgium
Since the Middle Ages, the tiny bourgeois
nation of Belgium has raised the craft of
brewing to a high art; its outsized reputa-
tion in the world of beer is completely dis-
proportionate to its size. Today it produces
around 450 different brews, from golden
pilseners such as Stella Artois, to light and
effervescent lambics, to dark and strong
double bocks and triple bocks. For many
aficionados, however, the quintessential
Belgian beers are the rich, complex dark
brews made by reclusive Trappist monks
at six Belgian monasteries: Orval, Roche-
fort, Sint-Benedictus of Achel, Westmalle,
Westvleteren, and, the best-known of
them all, the Abbaye de Notre Dame de
Scourmont at Chimay.
Manual labor is considered a form of
meditation by these monks, and they take
great pride in their time-honored meth-
ods, zealously guarding their recipes and
special strains of yeast. Brewing opera-
tions are a major source of income, help-
ing the monasteries fund their charitable
activities. Because they're such strict reli-
gious communities, the breweries them-
selves aren't open to the public—but with
a little ingenuity, you can get close to the
source.
On your way from Brussels toward Chi-
may in southern Belgium, just west of
Namur you can glimpse medieval monastic
life at the 12th-century Cistercian
Abbey de
