Starkbierzeit

Strong Beer Season
Still too cold to sit outdoors; already too restless to stay indoors

By mid- to late-March, the snows start to melt in Munich. This is a sure sign that the worst of winter is over. The good citizens of Munich know they have come through yet another cold season, and their hearts begin to yearn for a reward. A beer fest would be just the thing to celebrate the good things to come, but it’s Lenten season, the time of fasting, not feasting. Leave it to the Munich natives to solve the dilemma between abstinence and revelry: The first beer fest of the year is celebrated with both gusto and Lenten devotion. During two weeks, wrapped around St. Joseph's Day, March 19, the people of Munich observe Starkbierzeit, “strong beer season,” a noble tradition started by none other than pious Paulaner monks hundreds of years ago.

The Paulaner monks, so-named after the Italian Saint Francis of Paula, set up shop in Munich in 1627 to do good works...and they clearly succeeded! Within a short time after their arrival, they started to make a very strong and malty beer which they brewed according to a medieval Benedictine recipe. The friars called this brew Sankt-Vater-Bier (“Holy Father Beer”), a name that soon evolved into Salvator, the Latin word for “Savior.” During Lent, when, according to ecclesiastic doctrine, only liquids were allowed to pass their lips, these friars made their Salvator “double” strong (“doppel” in German). The stronger they made it the more nourishing it was, and it didn’t break the fast! Thus, they came to call their double-strong Salvator Bockbier, their Doppelbock or liquid bread.

What’s good for the pious monks must be good for the people at large too. The citizens of Munich soon followed the friars’ example in Lenten self-denial. Come Ash Wednesday, it’s time to go easy on the solid bread and to break out the potent liquid bread with the monastic tradition. Today, most Bavarian breweries make a strong spring beer, their own version of a Doppelbock, and in deference to the Salvator brew that started it all, they usually label theirs with a name that ends in “ator,” such as Maximator, Optimator, Unimator, or Triumphator.

But the Salvator, the oldest Doppelbock, still takes a special place of honor in the Strong Beer Season festivities. The opening act of the two-week celebration is always marked by the televised tapping of the first keg of the new season’s Salvator Doppelbock, and the event takes place in the hallowed halls of the Paulaner-Keller, the Paulaner-Salvator Brewery’s beer hall at Hochstrasse 75, in the Nockherberg district of Munich.

There, before a star-studded audience, a new Bavarian beer year is officially initiated by the swing of a mallet driving a brass tap into the bunghole of a Salvator keg. The Paulaner event is only the beginning. All major Munich beer halls have their own strong beer celebrations, with blaring oompah bands, singing and dancing, comedy performances, sausages and pretzels, and, of course, plenty of malty, amber-colored Doppelbock.