With mash tun, fermenting vat and storage tank

© Brauhaus Südstern

There was a time when Berlin was the German capital of beer. Around 100 years ago, the city was officially home to just under 130 breweries – from Bärenquell to Engelhard. But now that the large old breweries in Neukölln, Kreuzberg and Prenzlauer Berg have closed down, the city just has one major independent brewery left. However, the number of one-man breweries is growing.

It all began when Martin Eschenbrenner completed an apprenticeship at a large brewery in Karlsruhe. Even back then, he was not satisfied with simply standing next to the brewing equipment and watching the process. Instead, Eschenbrenner preferred experimenting in his father’s garage using his mother’s preserving pans. It took the young apprentice a few attempts to create his bock beer, which his friends, at least, thought tasted better than the beer produced by his company.

A few years later, Eschenbrenner completed his brewing studies in Berlin and fulfilled his dream. In 2001, he set up a mash tun, fermenting vat and storage tank in the old laundry room of his student residence and opened his own brewery: Eschenbräu. The master brewer is still based in Triftstrasse in Berlin’s Wedding district, although his operation is now considerably larger: Eschenbrenner brews 55,000 litres of beer per annum. He has created a number of specialist beers such as ‘Schwarze Molle’, ‘Alter Schwede’ and ‘Roter Wedding’; and you can sample these in his large, leafy beer garden – or at one of the six Berlin restaurants that Eschenbrenner supplies.

From Roter Wedding to Babylon

Eschenbrenner is just one of the many one-man breweries operating in Berlin. Marcus Barkowsky has been brewing his ‘Marcus Bräu Pils’ and ‘Marcus Bräu Dunkel’ at ‘Germany’s smallest brewery’ in Berlin’s Mitte district for ten years. And two years ago Philipp Brokamp opened ‘Hops & Barleys’ in Friedrichshain – a pub with its own brewery named after a song by the British punk band, Leatherface. Naturally, the beer is brewed according to the German Beer Purity Law. This law is also observed by Joachim Ruppert, who runs the Schlossplatzbrauerei Coepenick brewery. Unless he’s brewing his ‘Babylonian beer’, of course. Then Ruppert resorts to a recipe dating back around 4,000 years based on the brewing laws of the Babylonian king Hammurabi.

In each of these cases – and it’s the same for all of Berlin’s brewpubs – all of the master brewers use traditional, eco-friendly processes and offer their guests fresh, unfiltered beers: untreated, with their full content of vitamins, minerals, active yeasts and other valuable nutrients. In other words: enjoyed in moderation, the beer produced by Berlin’s small breweries can even be good for you.
A fact of which the master brewer at the Südstern brewery is naturally aware – and perhaps that’s why Thorsten Schoppe not only offers guided tours of his brewery, but also brewing courses. He does not bore participants with dry specialist knowledge. Instead, he shows them how they can brew their own beer at home. Schoppe is the ideal person for this, as he is not just a master brewer, but also a brewing champion. A year ago, the professional brewer set a world record by brewing the strongest beer in the world in accordance with the German Beer Purity Law: viscous, very sweet and with an alcohol content of 27.6 per cent. And who knows: if Schoppe and his colleagues carry on like this, perhaps Berlin will once again become the German beer capital.