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Hefeweizen & Zoigl 🍻

@heterotopian prost

Even when you're on the same plateau you're not always at the same pace but in the end you strive to be in the same place. #beer_wanderers #adventure #beer #hiking #brewery #brewpub #craftbeer #beerybliss #bavaria #brauerei #germany #zoigl #oberpfalz #palatinate #waldnaabtal #green #forest #beerwanderers

#palatinate #beerybliss #hiking #craftbeer #zoigl #green #brauerei #waldnaabtal #beer #brewpub #beerwanderers #brewery #beer_wanderers #germany #oberpfalz #forest #adventure #bavaria

Kölsch and Controversy

Zoiglhaus opened a year an half ago in Lents, Portland’s grungy, eastern neighborhood. The brewery is run by noted Germanophile Alan Taylor who studied his craft in Berlin. Zoiglhaus specializes in traditional lagers with a smattering of hoppy offerings to get the kids in the door.

Zoigl-Kölsch is their first bottled beer. It’s an insanely drinkable beer. Nice bready body, a big whiff of herby, dilly hops, and refreshing. It’s not as bitter or sharp as I was expecting, but that’s fine with me.

The bottle release set off a little tiff in a very specific quadrant of the beer world. Ron Pattinson put it succinctly in a reply to Jeff Alworth on twitter: “They really shouldn't be using the name Zoigl. Because it isn't fucking Zoigl.”

Oh. You don't know what Zoigl is do you? Yeah. It's an obscure practice in northern Bavaria where the community has a single brewery and different people use it to brew wort which they take home to ferment. When the beer is ready the homebrewer hangs a sign -- the Zoigl, a six pointed star -- on the corner and turns their home into a pub until the beer is gone. Pattinson, and his beer historian friends, are annoyed that Zoiglhaus is using the name to describe perfectly ordinary beer.

Alworth took to his Beervana blog to defend the brewery, its owners, and American culture in general. It boils down to: Americans borrow from cultures we admire and in the process we change something European, South American, Asian, to fit our needs, thus forming a new American culture. It’s not meant to offend anyone, but that’s often what happens.

It sucks to be Taylor at this moment. He was probably pumped to get his beer on the shelves, and now he’s being accused of cultural appropriation. It’s not like he didn’t do his homework. Dude knows what Zoigl is. He is even planning on making proper Zoigl style beers in his new brewery, dishing out wort to homebrewers to do with as they please. He wants to keep the tradition alive, but since he’s not German, he’s obviously doing it wrong.