But in the United States, the market for unusual and inventive beer is growing. As German leaders try to stave off global economic crisis, they’re trapped between conservative impulses and a situation that appears to require radical solutions. German brewers, too, are struggling between pride in their long, steady history and the need to invigorate their bottom line.Whether the average Wolfgang will go along with the efforts is another
electronic cigarettes health question. The mostly Bavarian revelers who were at Oktoberfest this week swore fealty to traditions that have connoisseurs from other countries looking elsewhere for inventiveness.“One of the advantages of Bavarian beer is that it’s so old. It’s clean and natural,” said Florian Hiering, 20, who was sipping Spaten — founded in 1397 — from a mug that held a liter of beer. He had an ear piercing and was wearing soft brown lederhosen with matching suspenders.“Bavaria is very conservative, and Germany is, too,” he said. “America is more open to experimentation.”Those who attended the final days of Oktoberfest this week weaved through a pastiche of Bavarian culture both exaggerated and sincere: oompah brass bands, gigantic robotic tableaus of hunters who were roasting oxen on spits, and hundreds of smelly fish crackling on grills.The celebration of unchanging traditions is big business for the brewers, but being stuck in time cuts both ways. Germans drank 122 liters of beer per person in 2002; in 2010 it was down to 107. Overall beer production sank from 10.8 billion liters in 2002 to 9.6 billion last
about electronic cigarettes year, according to the German Brewers Federation.“We have to educate the consumer,” said Christian Dahncke, the head brewer of Hacker-Pschorr, another major firm, as he drank his own beer at the festival in his company’s tent, which can hold 8,200 people. “People grow up with the brewery. The father drinks Hacker-Pschorr so the son drinks Hacker-Pschorr.”German beer generally sticks to a framework set down in a 1516 brewing law that is the oldest of its kind in the world: water, barley, hops and little more. Within the boundaries, there’s room for variation. But there’s little of the experimentation that takes place elsewhere.“In America, what we’ve seen over the last 10 years is a growing subculture of brewing,” Dahncke said. “In Germany, we need more marketing pressure.”He said that his company was opening a small-scale brewery this year to test new kinds of beers internally.The conservative approach to beer is part of a broader caution toward radical reinvention in Germany — also on display in its approach to the debt crisis in Greece, economists say.
German brewers worry about future
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