In my last post I showed the glassware associated with the various beers I ordered in Germany, Belgium, and Amsterdam.When I got back to Germany, I got a bit braver at striking out in new directions when I ordered beer. Germans put STUFF in their beer!
For example, you can get lemonade in your beer. This was super yummy and felt really refreshing on a warm spring day. It's a lot of liquid to drink, but it didn't feel at all boozy.
There's also a thing called "Berliner Weiss mit Schuss" that I was on the lookout for. My great-aunt and -uncle lived in Germany in the 1950s, as part of his military tour of duty. My great-aunt is still extremely active and sharp, and when I saw her this spring she told me about living in Berlin, and recommended I look for that particular item on the beer menu. It turns out that "Berliner" is a brand of beer. They are known for making a rather bitter form of weiss, the wheat beer common in the area. The "mit Schuss" bit is where it gets odd - Germans will put in a shot of brightly colored sweet syrup, either red or green. This takes the bitter edge off the beer, and adds either raspberry or woodruff flavor. Yeah... I don't know what woodruff flavor is, and I preferred the raspberry version. I tried both, though, like the adventurous traveler I want to be!
Here is the red. I was so proud to order "Berliner Weiss mit Schuss" and was confused when that wasn't enough information - until I remembered the red/green bit. I randomly chose red.
When I next got the chance to get this, I went with green. I also randomly pointed at something on the all-German menu and accidentally got scrambled eggs for lunch. oops.
Mary got in on the Berliner action. On the right, another verson of the red. On the left, something that was not very nice at all - I thought it was going to be another lemonade-in-beer, but it was SOUR. Perhaps it was lemon JUICE in beer. It was the only drink I didn't finish:
And last, and weirdest, and most oddly tasty: banana juice in beer. Yes. And look - more of that yummy Franziskaner! In this case we got a good-sized bottle of beer, and a glass with about 5 inches of banana juice in it. Then you pour in the beer at will. The beer & banana juice foamed a lot, but didn't stay fully mixed, so there was plenty of juice at the bottom of the glass to mix with the leftover beer.
If there's any other beer-juice mixtures, I don't know about them, but I'll keep an eye out on my next trip in July. Otherwise I'll stick with what I tried!
