A Moment on Beer

This is a beer essay.....mostly over two topics, which revolve around one of my top German topics of discussion....beer.

For any American who hasn't ever tried a German beer (well, skip Bitburger)....you have not really sipped anything of quality until you have tried a German beer.

Yesterday, at my local beverage shop.....I noted a newly added item....Maisel and Friends Chocolate Bock beer.  As with all German things, there is risk involved, but I surged ahead and bought two bottles.

You should these odd factors with chocolate-flavored beer.  This is a .75 liter bottle....larger than your typical German beer bottle.  It is 7.5-percent alcohol....which means if you consumed three or four in two hours, you'd be a bit wasted.  The taste?  It'd be almost like you melted a high quality chocolate (a shot glass) and then mixed into a premium beer.  The one issue though....you have to drink fairly chilled.  It's not a room temperature beer, in my humble opinion.

The negative?  Well....it's 4.99 Euro, each.  On the German beer side of economics....it's at the high-end and fairly expensive.  If you were buying a case....you'd have to tote a hundred Euro into the shop.  It's a beer that you'd only want to share with special friends.

The second note of this essay is this sidenote that N24, a German commercial network put up this morning.

It is sad to report....based on the German Federal Statistics Office numbers....that Germans are drinking less beer.  It's roughly 2.2-percent less than the previous period.  On the positive side, the German breweries were able to sell beyond the German border around 8.6 percent more than normal.

What does this really mean?  Germans might be drinking more wine or apple-wine mixtures.  Those numbers weren't released and it might be curious to know this result.

Typically, every year where a World Cup episode occurs.....there's this upswing in beer consumption....mostly due to backyard bar-b-q's and guys sitting around pubs watching the games.  2016 is not a World Cup year.....so it doesn't help much.

I don't think this is the end of the world or an event to trigger breweries in Germany to close down operations.  But it is something that no one would anticipate....less beer consumed within Germany.