The 3rd Sunderland Octoberfest is a CAMRA event held on Sunderland’s riverside at The Bonded Warehouse. Expect ales and ciders by the skinload, giving a decidedly British take on (and spelling of) Oktoberfest. Doors open at 4pm on Thursday 6th October.

For those looking for a more European beer selection, Central Bar in Gateshead (just over the High Level Bridge from Newcastle’s bustling bar scene) is holding an Oktoberfest (note the correct traditional spelling) on Friday 7th and Saturday 8th October.

Details online for the latter are scarce, but the staff confirmed the dates by phone and the beer list sounds awesome:

• Fernandes Weissbier (wheat beer)
• Downtown German Pale Ale
• Durham Viennese Maltz (a hybrid of English bitter and Vienna red – really looking forward to this one)
• Haviestoun Hoptopberfest (brewed using unkilned ‘green’ hops)
• Tyne Bank German Alt (a German-style Altbier from a brand-new Newcastle craft brewer)
• Durham Vice (Bavarian-style wheat beer)
• Caledonian Idleweiss (dark wheat beer)
• Rauchbier (smoked beer! I’m hoping this will be Franconia’s Aecht Schlenkerla)
• Erdinger Weissbräu (actual Bavarian wheat beer!)

Two beer festivals in as many days? See you there!

This is clearly very exciting news.  Last night Bier Matt began preparations for the Scots’ arrival south of the border by doing what any true beer fan would do – drinking an ass load of beer. With a bar like this in town, he’ll need all the practice he can get.

Located right in the city centre at 16 Dean Street (next to Pizza Express), the bar expects to stock a bewildering 150 bottled beers from BrewDog and others as well as, of course, delicious BrewDog on tap. Mmmmm. It really is hard to imagine us not getting arrested.

For more info, check out BrewDog’s blog.

This will be the bar’s location, and where you will find Bier Matt on many a Friday night:

But why not open it in style? Forget the bottle opener: Bier Matt’s random object of choice is usually a fork or spoon with a stiff, plain metal handle. Avoid rounded edges and anything with a decorative/comfort grip – manly bottle-openage annihilates these.

Hit the ceiling for triple points!

Here’s how:

Step 1: In your non-dominant hand, grip the top of the bottle as you would a bottle of champagne. Leave a gap of about 1.5mm between the bottle cap and your index finger.

Step 2: Arm yourself with your utensil of choice. Hold the fork, for example, in your dominant hand as you might a toothbrush, prongs away from you. Point the handle end of the fork down to the bottle cap at an angle of about 45 degrees.

Step 3: Slip the fork handle between the cap and your finger and tighten your grip. The fork should be half way up the first bone of your finger, resting on the fleshy side part. (Preparation is everything – grip tightly!)

Step 4: Suddenly, and it won’t work unless it’s fast and sudden, lever the fork downwards, maintaining a firm grip around the fork and bottle cap.

If you do it right, your finger will work like the support of a seesaw, transmitting the force from one side to the other. You’ll know you’ve got it right if the bottle seems to open itself – actually I’m sure there is some truth in this, what with the pressure and all that.

Top Tip:

Works GREAT with wheat beers – all that yeasty power guns the lid off with a righteous BOOM.

Danger Rating:

5/10 (watch your eyes!)

Enjoying a lie-in this morning, I thumbed through my copy of Roger Protz’s “300 Beers to Try Before You Die”, marking those I can be sure I’ve tried with a tick. The total came to a disappointing 47 out of 300. Now, I know that – touch wood – I’ve got a lot of time to get through the other five sixths.

It’s just that I really thought I’d have done more.

Having recently relocated from the beer heaven that is Munich, Germany, I suppose now is the time to ramp up my efforts – exotic beers are infinitely easier to come by in the UK than in Germany.

The work begins today, albeit not with one of the 300. Expect notes on the Jarrow Brewery’s CAMRA-certified “Rivet Catcher” any day now. I also plan to find out if there is some kind of tour one can do at the brewery, since it is now a mere hop over the river from my new home.

Everyone, I think, secretly hates the Wiesn (as the Bavarians call the fest) – you go along to the largely outdoor event just as the days are getting colder, and you spend too much, drink too much, eat badly, and barely sleep for two weeks.

Then there are always one or two chaps that take things that bit further, as if it wasn’t already strenuous enough. I reported on the attempt by one such chap a couple of weeks ago. He planned to drink 100 Maß (100 one-litre beers) this year.

Actually, he made a bloody good go of it – at the last official count, he’d guzzled (or, perhaps, forced down) 72 Maß in 15 days, and he was pretty confident of striding over the 80-Maß line by the end of day 16. Hats off to him, and I hope we’ll all be routing for him again next time round.

Gracious in defeat, Jon took time to applaud the heroic efforts of one Georg Mayrhofer, a native of Vienna, Austria, who has been at almost every day of the Wiesn for the past 27 years. All that practice has, as you’d imagine, bumped up his two-week intake quite considerably: According to an article in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, he once managed to put away 111 Maß (the all-time Oktoberfest record), probably without even really having to try.

Mayrhofer compares his own efforts to those of a triathlete, and describes the effect of his exertions quite honestly: “Das mag der Körper ja eigentlich auch nicht.” (“My body really doesn’t like it either.”)

I think that quite neatly sums it up for this year. My body didn’t like it, and I’m damn sure Jon’s didn’t.

Right now you can get a 20-bottle crate of Löwenbräu Oktoberfestbier at a discounted price of €11.99 (plus €3.10 deposit for the crate and bottles). That’s only one euro lower than the usual price, but you also get a free ceramic Maßkrug (one-litre beer mug).

Can’t say fairer than that really, can you?

Well, unless you hate Löwenbraü, as a disproportionately large number of beer drinkers seem to do. Don’t get me started – it’s a nice beer. End of story.

P.S.:You’ll get a free mug with crates of Löwenbräu Oktoberfestbier at other supermarkets too, but without the discount price.

Jon plans to drink 100 Maß (100 one-litre mugs of beer) between the festival’s opening ceremony at noon this Saturday (September 18) and last orders on the final day (October 4). That, as the intrepid beer lover explains on his blog, equates to 6.25 Maß each day.

My initial shock spurred me on to take the sums a step further: 6.25 Maß, based on a beer of 6% alcohol by volume (roughly standard for the Oktoberfest stuff), makes 37.5 units of alcohol per DAY (one unit = 10ml of pure alcohol). Here are two ways to look at that quantity of booze:

• A 0.7l bottle of whisky at 40% contains 28 units. Jon will be drinking (on average, of course) the equivalent of 1.3 bottles of scotch every day.
• The UK’s recommended maximum consumption of alcohol per week is 28 units. Jon will drink more than nine times as much as he supposedly should, two weeks running.

I’ve always wondered how much leeway there is in those guidelines, but I was usually wondering about the effect of doubling, maybe tripling, the weekly dose. It takes one badass sumbitch to nonuple (yes, I had to look that up) the safe ethanol intake.

We wish you luck, oh brave one!

Anyone to whom this seems like bewilderingly boring news is either reading the wrong blog or isn’t aware that this is Homer Simpson’s favourite liquid meal.

Duff Beer at Edeka – €4.99 for 6 x 0.33l

I spotted it on a closing-time run of the Edeka at Munich Airport on my way home from the UK: Desperate to keep my fridge well stacked for the impending Sunday, I was delighted to find not just any beer, for which I’d have happily settled at this point, but actually some pretty interesting specimens.

And believe it or not, Duff is more than just crafty marketing. I really enjoyed the beer, which drifts somewhere between a Helles and a Pilsner. With the sweetness of Helles and the tang of a Pilsner, it’s got great drinkability – and let’s admit that it’s pretty cool to pretend your drinking the Duff of American-cartoon fame.

Where to buy it

Edeka is selling the six pack shown here (6 x 0.33l) for €4.99, and I’ve also spotted it in the odd petrol station, where a single bottle will cost you about €1.70 – but that’s why you should never buy beer in petrol stations. Except in absolute emergencies.

So here are the names, prices, sizes, strengths and descriptions of the more unusual bottles I found. Where I could track the beers down online, I’ve included a link. Of course Karstadt also stocks some of the usual Munich suspects – Augustiner Helles, Hacker-Pschorr Radler and so on – at fairly reasonable prices.

• Tannen Zäpfle €0.99 (0.33l, 5.1%, Pils, website)
• Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier €0.99 (0.5l, 5.1%, Märzen, website)
• Belzebuth Extra-Forte €2.29 (0.33l, 13.0%, strong ale, website, my review)
• Satan Gold €2.29 (0.33l, 8.0%, strong ale, website, my review)
• Route 66 €2.79 (0.33l, from the Baltimore-Washington Beer Works, 5.2%)
• Westmalle Dubbel  €2.29 (0.33l, 7.0%, bottle-conditioned Belgian ale, website)
• Hellers Kölsch €1.29 (0.5l, 4.5%, Kölsch, website)
• Veldensteiner Zwick’l €0.79 (0.5l, 5.4%, Kellerbier, website)
• Leffe Vieille Cuvée €2.29 (0.33l, 8.2%, bottle-conditioned Belgian ale)

I’ll get back to you when I’ve had a chance to work my way through this list!

P.S. I also discovered that they have a literally dazzling selection of whiskies – well worth a neb.

Browsing the impressive selection of exotic beers at Karstadt’s Münchner-Freiheit store, I came across two beers named after everyone’s favourite fallen angel: Satan Gold, a fruity bottle-conditioned Belgian ale, and Belzebuth Extra-Forte, a hard-hitting French creation from the city of Lille.

Since they’re brewed about 60 miles from one another, it’s no surprise that the beers have a few things in common. But there are some important differences. For a start, Satan Gold weighs in at “only” 8% alcohol by volume, compared to Belzebuth Extra-Forte’s whopping 13% (Extra-Forte translates as “extra strong”).

Satan smells like an ale, with strong orange notes. In fact it’s even a bit like someone’s taken, say, a Leffe Blond and thrown in a dash of cheap orange juice. I don’t normally like sweet beers, and this one isn’t bucking that trend. Belzebuth, on the other hand, has almost no smell. Good, I thought initially – it might be more to my liking. Wrong – despite lacking any real smell or taste (usually good things in a beer), Belzebuth takes the drinker by surprise with a face-crunching sensation conjured up by a potent combination of acidity and hops.

Both beers are outside of my usual territory, so maybe I’m not being fair, but I really hated them both. In terms of which one wins, they’re about as good, or as bad, as each other.

Verdict: Satan is far more drinkable, but my honest opinion goes something like “equally awful”.

Availability: Satan Gold and Belzebuth Extra-Forte both sell at Karstadt for €2.29 for a 330ml bottle.