For Germany’s beer capital, a new buzz

Munich and its surrounding state of Bavaria are home to more than 600 breweries, and a beer shortage there is indeed rare.

But when Augustiner, a traditional Munich brewery in business for nearly seven centuries, launched its new beer this spring, it broke the market. 

As the beer sold out in stores, scalpers hawked cases on the internet for 10 times the sticker price. 

Enterprising consumers staked out Augustiner’s loading docks to tail delivery trucks. The beer even inspired an Oktoberfest-style fan song, with the surprising refrain “Alkoholfrei” — because Munich’s hottest new beer is nonalcoholic.

Germany has had nonalcoholic beer since the 1970s, but back then, no one was singing about it.

“It was ‘like’ beer,” said Florian Schönhofer, who runs two Munich pubs. “Like water, with a little taste of beer.”

In Munich, that was a hard sell. Beer there is such a staple it’s known as “liquid bread.”

Munichers drink it, not just for dinner or lunch, but sometimes even for breakfast, with veal sausages and a pretzel. In the summer, the city’s social life moves to its more than 100 biergartens, and in the fall, Munich hosts the Oktoberfest, the biggest beer party in the world.

“We are a beer city,” Schönhofer said — for better, and for worse. 

He recalled that 30 years ago, construction workers would routinely knock back 20 beers over the course of a workday.

“It was normal,” he said.

But times have changed. As people all over Europe and the US drink less and less alcohol, Germany’s beer consumption has tanked, with major consequences for brewers’ bottom line.

“This is really a big problem we have at the moment,” said Thomas Becker, who leads the brewing science program at Munich’s Technische Universität. “And the brewers are looking for solutions.”

In response, he said, breweries have invested in research, technology and marketing to improve their nonalcoholic game. And it’s working: In a decade, consumption of nonalcoholic beer has doubled — to nearly 10% of Germany’s domestic beer market. 

Munich would seem to be on board. With Augustiner’s entry into the market, all six of the city’s big-name breweries now make nonalcoholic beer, marketing it with the same old-school Bavarian landscapes and lederhosen they use for their traditional beer.

Players from the FC Bayern Munich soccer team even pitch for Paulaner’s nonalcoholic Weissbier with corny jokes about its “0-0” alcohol score. 

But for some in that beer capital, the boom in buzzless brew is sobering news.

On a sunny summer evening in the historic Hofbräukeller biergarten, Kevin Kreuzer and Linus Bernmüller sat at a picnic table under a canopy of chestnut trees, enjoying big glass mugs of real beer.

Kreuzer dismissed beer without alcohol — “Like vegan food.”

These days, about 1 in 8 beers the Hofbräukeller sells is nonalcoholic (and they serve vegan food, too). But traditional beer, Bernmüller argued, is more than a choice on a menu — for Munichers, it’s a way of life. 

“It plays a big role in our identity,” he said. “It’s a big part of our culture.” 

Munich pub owner Schönhofer thinks the city’s beer-guzzling image is overdue for an update. 

“We stand for much more than drinking,” he said. “We are not always in lederhosen and always drunk.”

To prove it, this summer, he opened a pop-up: Munich’s first alcohol-free biergarten. Die Null, or “The Zero,” sits at the edge of a seedy downtown park known for drinking and drugs, and it aims to reclaim the space for sober socializing. 

“It’s not like 10 years ago when you had one kind of nonalcoholic beer,” Schönhofer said. “There are [many] more drinks, which are nonalcoholic, and [many] more people who enjoy nonalcoholic drinks.”

Martin Lindowsky stopped by Die Null on a visit to his hometown after having been away for eight years. In that time, a lot has changed — not least, drinking nonalcoholic beer in a Munich biergarten.

“That’s my first,” he said.

Chances are, it won’t be the last. Local media report that sales of nonalcoholic beer in Munich this summer are higher than ever. 

With Oktoberfest starting Sept. 21, Munichers will get a chance to finally try Augustiner’s sold-out, new, nonalcoholic beer side-by-side with “real” beer in the city’s traditional beer tents. 

But when asked whether the Oktoberfest would consider hosting a completely nonalcoholic biergarten like Die Null, Oktoberfest organizers quickly killed the buzz. 

“Nonsense,” a spokesperson replied.