Hanoverian specialties

Beer from Hannover

Hannover’s brewers can look back on a tradition dating back several centuries. As early as 1526, Cord Broyhan, who was born in Stöcken, invented a light, top-fermented beer that is known today throughout the world, along with a glass of schnapps, as Hannover’s iconic drink, “Lüttje Lage.” Twenty years later, in 1546, he founded the Brewers’ Guild together with other master brewers, which later became the Gilde Brewery in the Südstadt district. Hanover’s second major brewery, the Herrenhausen Private Brewery, has been brewing its beer in the northwest of the city since 1868, very close to the world-famous Royal Gardens of Herrenhausen.
Other traditional breweries, such as the Lindener Aktien-Brauerei from 1853, the Kaiser-Brauerei, which opened in Ricklingen in 1889, and the Lagerbier-Brauerei-Wülfel from 1906, eventually had to dry up their taps and are now a thing of the past. Hannover’s pub breweries, on the other hand, are alive and well, such as the Brauhaus Ernst-August on the edge of the Old Town or Meiers Lebenslust at the Aegi. And then there’s the craft beer brewery Mashsee: young and bursting with creativity when it comes to handcrafted specialty beers.

Art of brewing — The Art of Brewing at the Ernst August Brewery – A True Hanoverian Tradition

Liquid gold made in Hannover

The Gilde Brewery, located not far from Lake Masch in the southern part of the city, is the largest and oldest brewery in town. The trademark of this brewery, founded in 1546, is the so-called “Broyhan-Taler”; this circular emblem, featuring a white rooster on a red background, was once the seal of quality for the beer produced by the Hanover Brewers’ Guild. Today, the impressive brewhouse on the company grounds on Hildesheimer Straße produces the Gilde Ratskeller Premium Pils (the traditional beer with a perfectly rounded hop note), Gilde Pilsener (a spicy Pilsner with a light hop note and pleasant freshness), and Lindener Spezial (a bottom-fermented, golden-yellow full-bodied beer with a pronounced hop note) are brewed today.

The Herrenhausen private brewery brews seven beers under the emblem of the white Lower Saxony horse on a red coat of arms: Herrenhäuser Premium Pilsener (this slightly tart Pilsner is also known in Hannover as “Herri” and is brewed in the Pilsner style using water from the brewery’s own well), Herrenhäuser Alsterwasser, Herrenhäuser Icebeer (a particularly mild beer produced using a special brewing process in which the hops are frozen to minus 3°C, causing the bitter compounds to bind to ice crystals and be filtered out), Herrenhäuser Weizenbier (the first wheat beer in Northern Germany) and Herrenhäuser Spezial (a mild and quite smooth Pilsner), as well as Lüttje Lagen (a top-fermented draft beer typically enjoyed with a shot of schnapps) and Hannoversches Festbier, which is available only fresh on tap and exclusively during Oktoberfest in Hannover.

Beer has been brewed at the Ernst-August Brewery on the edge of the Old Town since 1986 and served fresh from the tap at the attached pub. The house brands, which have been produced exclusively from organic-quality German ingredients for over 20 years, include the naturally cloudy Hanöversch Pilsener, Hanöversch Bio-Weizen, Hanöversch Pale Ale (a refreshingly fruity beer with notes of lemon, mandarin, and grapefruit), Hanöversch Roter Saphir (a naturally cloudy, top-fermented red beer) and Hanöversch Lüttje Lage (a bottom-fermented draft beer traditionally enjoyed alongside a glass of schnapps), as well as the seasonal specialties Hanöversch Mai-Bock (a naturally cloudy strong beer with a delicate hop flavor), Hanöversch Fest-Bier (an amber-colored Märzen with a smooth malty character, served exclusively at the Hannover Schützenfest in the summer) and Hanöversch Winter (this dark beer with its subtly smoky flavor is brewed only from October through February).

The brewhouse of Meiers Lebenslust am Aegi, a small craft brewery founded in the summer of 2012, is located right in the middle of the restaurant. Through a small window in the floor, guests can look directly down into the basement below, where the craft-brewed beers—Meiers Helles, Meiers Dunkel, and Meiers Craft Beer—as well as a rotating selection of seasonal beers are fermenting and aging.

Off to training camp with hops and malt

Hannover’s newest addition is the Mashsee Brewery, which was opened on April 26, 2014, by certified master brewer Kolja Gigla and beer sommelier Alexander Herold in the Südstadt district and is now located not far from the exhibition grounds. The name for the city’s first microbrewery is both a reference to the Maschsee (Hannover’s large city lake between downtown and the stadium) and a little play on words combining “mash” (a soft mash made from crushed malt and water that will later become beer) and “see”—which, when pronounced together in a very British way, also sounds like “Maschsee.”

Let’s stick with English for a moment: Kolja Gigla’s specialty is “craft beer”—that is, distinctive beers brewed in small batches using traditional, artisanal methods. Unlike mass-produced industrial beers, craft beers—brewed by hand with a commitment to quality—deliberately and, in some cases, fundamentally differ from one another; they often have quirky or unusual names and can have very distinctive flavors—sometimes quite floral or very fruity, sometimes richly malty or with notes of coffee, caramel, or herbs. The first and still most popular Mashsee beer, for example, is the “Trainings Lager” (another original play on words!)—a bottom-fermented, amber-colored beer with 5.5% ABV, a distinct yet unobtrusive bitter note, and gentle fruit aromas of pear and grapefruit.