Part 5: Wöllnitz

I haven't written about our Germany trip in months, and I'm determined to finish this bad boy. Let's do this.

After our evening in Leipzig at the Ohne Bedenken, we trekked out to find packing material for transporting our beers. The plan was to buy a box, tape, lots of bubble wrap & packing peanuts, and check the box as luggage. After a lot of searching in a big mall, we finally found a box, but no packing materials. Batting and fake-snow fluffy stuff from the Christmas decoration section would have to do. We also found some cheap-ass cherry mead (€3 for a 750ml bottle - and it was actually pretty good!) and entertained ourselves with the flat escalators in the mall.

Despite the best engineering intentions, shopping carts are difficult to hold in place on these things.

With our purchases in tow, we headed toward Wöllnitz, which John had read about on Ron Pattinson's blog. Incidentally, on the way to Germany, we also read Stan Hieronymous' "Brewing with Wheat" where he  mentions this city's unique style of beer. Gasthausbrauerei Talschänke brews a sour wheat beer there, called Wöllnitzer Weißbier. Beer Advocate & Rate Beer list this as a Berliner Weisse, but it's actually a derivative of an old style called Lichtenhainer - a sour wheat beer made partially with smoked malt.

Smoky sour wheat beer in Germany

The aroma was bready and very citrusy, like a lemon sherbet, with a very faint floral hop aroma at the finish.  The flavor was also citrusy, but not so much as the aroma was. The finish was smoky and bready; the wheat in the grist contributed to a light graininess that complemented the citrus character well. We both thoroughly enjoyed it, but I have to admit...

... I liked the Jever better. A very bitter German pils, Jever on tap is something to behold. You can get something sort of close to Jever at Grünauer by ordering a glass of Czechvar, but it won't be nearly as bitter or delicious.

And speaking of delicous? Hackepeter! Take raw pork, add some fresh onion, a raw egg and some spices, toss it on a plate, and voila - deliciousness on a plate. My mother would die knowing we were dining on a plate of raw pork & raw egg, but I am starting to believe that cooking meat ruins it.

A bit of Jever next to some Hackepeter, a pickle, and a giant wedge of butter

It's a regional specialty, and we ran into a variant of the raw pork delicacy in other cities... but first? Dortmund.