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Brewery Tour

Posted by Nick B. (formerly in Erlangen) on 2019-06-20 03:34:09

I guess maybe my impressions of Germans' English is coloured by my years "teaching" them English.

I should point out for anyone that hasn't heard it before, that I used to dislike what I knew of Herr(n) Michel myself, until I spent time chatting with him about non-beery things. For whatever reason, he is somewhat blessed in life, with good looks, charm, and whatever has enabled him to move in what we might call "high-society social circles" both in and out of the non-local-to-Franconia brewing world. I mean, yes, he's friends with "rock star brewers" in the US like the Stone guy, who he put me on the phone with one evening when I was there.

He's also got connections to great rock-n-roll heroes of mine -- Led Zeppelin. That in itself is reason enough for me to fall smitten with him.

Anyway, when I used to obsess about beer, I spent ages on here decrying how thin and bland Mahr's U was, which NO ONE ELSE on here seemed to agree with. I loved the tavern, the Schwemme, and the food, but the beer...meh. Gimme a Mahr's Hell instead of an U. And I found Michel to be a bit full of himself when I first met him and talked beer with him.

"Tarting around the US..." That sounds a bit hard, Jason. Are you not tarting around Europe? Guess I don't know how to interpret "tarting" here.

I've lost track of exactly what some on here find so objectionable about what Michel has done to Mahr's, having had other things to worry about in the last couple of years. Is it that he's brewing different beers now? Table reservations in the tavern? Too famous?

Be careful, because if we were to demand that Franconian taverns revert to a specific level of traditionalism, we'd have to pick a point in the past to have them revert to. Would that be before flushing toilets? Smoking? Electric lights and refrigeration?

Anyway, just more holiday musings, nothing meant to be taken too seriously. Speaking of which, back when I was new with German, I mis-read the name of today's "Corpus Christi" holiday to be "Frohenleichnam" rather than "Fronleichnam". So I thought it translated to "Happy Cadaver". I can't get that out of my head to this day.

I have no idea about Griess's English, but he spoke good proper Deutsch with me, having recognised that I don't speak Franconian, because of that I figured maybe he could manage some English, compared to Roppelt.

There are also issues of class and educational background that will impact how well a given brewer or brewmaster will speak English, as well as whether they have simply had opportunity to do so since school, what with working and raising a family every day for the last umpteen years.