The Mahrs brewery was a mild disappointment, since the tour guide was out sick and hadn’t told anyone that our group was coming. We were, however, ushered into a huge room with heavy wood paneling and plenty of deer heads on the walls. We each had a couple beers, which were again light bodied lagers. I had the Farmers’ Beer, which is matured in an open vessel. But contrary to what I’d read about it, it just wasn’t all that interesting. I should have been tipped off by one description of it as having a “spritzy finish.” I don’t want spritzy I’m looking for thick and creamy. On the way out, in the small room next to ours, there was a tiled wood-stove in the corner, with plenty of the local townsfolk hoisting steins around it, even though it was only about 10am. The tiled stove is the picture with the rag hanging over the open upper door. You can see the fire in the door below it. Those are coats hung on a rack beside it.

 

After Mahrs, we headed just across the street to Brauerei Keesmann. There we had some cheese and sausage to cushion our stomachs so we could consume vast amounts of beer again. As usual, lots of wood in the décor, and the ever present light bodied lagers. Our next anticipated destination was Klosterbrau Schroder, was across town on the other side of the river. But we didn’t have time to get there before our bus left in the late afternoon to take us on a tour of the nearby countryside.

The first stop was Geisfeld, 15 minutes due east, 6 miles from the center of Bamberg. There were 2 small breweries there, so the 35 of us split into 2 groups, with one group going first to Griess Brewery, with the name prominent over the front door, and the other to Krug, the large house with the “Krug” lamppost sign on the left front corner of the building. And the featured beer at each establishment was a different pale lager.

Another mile up the road was the village of Melkendorf. They had one brewery, Winkler. So, down the hatch went another pale lager. The photo is easy to identify since it says “Winkler” on the steins. All these villages, by the way, have populations around two thousand or so.

The next two villages we were to stop at, Schammelsdorf and Memmelsdorf, each 2 miles beyond the other, were using Monday as their day off. But the final stop is the one I’d been waiting for: Merkendorf, home of the Rauchenator. That’s their heavy-duty smoked beer. Well, it’s got a great name, but the beer is so lightly smoked that it’s barely identifiable. But also on tap was their Cowboy Schwarzbier. Although not as dark as it looked, it was indeed darker than a pale lager. I described it in my notes as a moderately thick stout beer. It was different, yes, but not so outstanding for me to pack some of it home, although some in our group did.

 

We spent a couple hours there, I had some chicken schnitzel in a mushroom sauce, and then it was 45 minutes back to our brewery-hotel in Bamberg.