Drinking Kölsch in Cologne, pt.2

Notes from our second and final day in Cologne.

Waking up in a hotel room after getting so used to the van was strange. The pleather curtains blocked out the daylight to such an extent I believed it was midnight when it was, in fact, 9am. From the outside, this hotel looked tired and municipal, the average of an average in terms of concrete, brick, ageing signage, and rain-stained glass. Inside, there was rather a lot of fake leather, as a bedspread, as cushion covers, on the windows. Was this a statement on the city as a whole? Whatever, I suppose it’s easy to clean.

After an extended ablution — showering is a luxury if you’re living in a van, I watched an Austrian documentary about the Matterhorn with German subtitles waiting for Tom — I complained of a rumbling tumbly. “We’ll have to do something about that then, won’t we?” Tom had said. We hit the streets in search of coffee.

At Meinstein Coffee, pour-overs are the speciality. This was all Tom’s doing, I couldn’t give a tiny mouse fart about coffee. It all tastes like rotten vegetables to me unless it’s burnt and served with creamy milk the way I like it. It was a cute little place though, all white walls and smart little stoneware cups. I swerved the pastry cabinet in favour of a mug of batch filter, whispering to Tom that I knew where we could get breakfast instead, insinuating that I was taking us somewhere special. In a way, I was. Breakfast was, after a brisk walk, bought at a kiosk outside a Merzenich in the town centre. Cologne’s answer to Greggs it might be, but I’ve never had a nicer ham and egg sandwich in my life. Our bakeries need to learn about rye.

Caffeinated and fed, we were ready to drink, which was just as well, because as we headed over to the cathedral it started howling it down. Waiting for the rain to stop just made things worse — we gave up our spot underneath a concrete balcony and ran from the Cathedral to Gaffel am Dom under black skies.

Being next to the cathedral, Gaffel am Dom is bound to be a bit of a tourist trap, but it’s pleasant enough inside, with the same solid wood furniture and high drinking tables you get everywhere else that Kölsch is served. We sat at a high four-top with a half-finished glass and a wet raincoat as our neighbour until two guys took a seat next to us. When they were asked to move — the raincoat had an owner somewhere, after all — they took exception. “Fuck’n’ douchebag” said the dark-haired man to the grey-haired man once the waiter had left. Said with such venom in such a great accent, we repeated it to each other for the rest of the trip.

Gaffel is a good Kölsch, one of my favourites, and I wished that there was a little more ambiance at our table by the door. I watched the rain hammer down on the Platz outside and enjoyed second-hand happiness courtesy of the large table in front of us who were clearly having a long, laughter-filled work lunch. There was a chill though, and we were getting edgy. We wanted to go.

The rain wasn’t going to stop, so we took up our skirts and jetted to Brauhaus FRÜH am Dom, just across the way. You can easily get Früh at home in the UK, and it was likely my first experience of an authentic Kölsch, although I can’t remember for sure. I suppose I could lie to you and say it was. I’ve always liked it anyway, and its candy-striped cans. In the Brauhaus was a work Christmas party in full swing, antlers and sequins prepared for a long afternoon of drinking and singing. Service was slower here than anywhere else we’d been, which was probably because it was dead in the part of the Brauhaus we’d chosen to sit in. I popped next door to have a look inside the older part of the building all decked out for festive schnitzel and wurst and it was packed. We drank our allotted beers — do you need a tasting note here? Light, refreshing, a little dab of Noble hops — and left for the gift shop, where I bought a Früh branded umbrella. “A great investment!” said the shop assistant, a compliment about my practicality only a German could have given. I glowed.

Sorry this photo sucks, we are not photographers.

Newly protected from the relentless downpour, I happily skipped to Sion. This was the most beautiful bar we visited by far, and we were served by the surliest man. I liked him. He poured a whole rack of Kölsch with a deft flick of his wrist, and he only had smiles for the people he worked with. He gave a glass of beer to a waitress who’d clearly been having A Day. He was polite, even with the large group of teenage boys who kept coming in out of the rain and being chased away, but he wasn’t cheerful. He just hated tourists, I surmised. When the next man through the doors went straight to the bar and asked for a pint of lager, I kind of saw where he was coming from.

The Kölsch in Sion had a little more crunch of cara malt about it, but perhaps I was looking for depth and character because I could literally see our man battering spiles into kegs on the bar to pour from, direct-drop style.

Peter’s Kölsch was the Christmassiest of all the Kölsch places we visited. The rather glam front door was guarded by two enormous Christmas trees — normalise Christmas trees being put up in the street, by the way — and inside there was a definite feeling of merriment in the air. It was busy, and the staff were serious but friendly. We took a familiar spot at a tall drinking table, and ordered our beers.

Peter’s is a gorgeous building, huge and white, with an ornate glass ceiling in the dining room like the inside of a Tiffany lampshade. It has been decorated for tourism, but I appreciate the effort nevertheless. How couldn’t you? Although it feels strange to drink an everyday beer in such a place, like eating pie and mash in the V&A.

Speaking of pie, it was time for lunch, and Tom said we had somewhere great to go to next.

Brauhaus Päffgen is such a great place that I just got emotional thinking about it. An historic brewery beloved by hardcore Kölsch nerds, of course the beer is good, but the place itself is perfection. We sat on a wooden bench and ate delicious pumpkin soup, bread, cheese and mustard, and Tom ordered a single gherkin jsut because it was on the menu. The wooden-beamed dining hall was welcoming and haunted at the same time, flanked by windowed partitions and a “confessional” — the strange but efficient booth where the maitre d’/Oberkellner took telephone bookings on a rotary phone, controlled the lighting from a central switchboard, and thrust tickets and receipts onto a steel spike at the side of her desk.

There is hours of fun to be had just sitting in the Päffgen hall and people watching. A man beside us was having lunch, reading the paper. An elderly couple on the other side of the room were dressed in leather and suede, a German Mick Fleetwood and Stevie Nicks. We drank Kölsch after Kölsch, enjoying the soft, lightly carbonated texture that, to me, gave it more of a creaminess than I was used to. Our glasses were unbranded, served in chipped enamel Kranz trays probably as old as the bar, which was built in 1955. Black and white framed photos — of who? — are hung everywhere, and my seat is overshadowed by a wooden carving of a man we call “the friend”. I haven’t got photos other than the two here. You just have to go and see it for yourself.

Another two glasses of Kölsch — at Brauhaus Päffgen the glasses aren’t branded, adding to the jumbled sense of mystique.

To get to Brauhaus Päffgen we’d taken the tram/U-Bahn over to the west of the city centre, so we thought we’d make the most of it and visit some wine bars. This means our Kölsch journey is almost at an end, dear friends, but not until we visit one last place — Reissdorf Kölsch.

Reissdorf was actually the first Kölsch I drank in Cologne. I bought a can from a kiosk and drank it in the hotel room when we first got there, enjoying finally having a sit down after an afternoon of trudging and traipsing. For this reason, I have a fondness for Reissdorf. It sorted me out when I needed a friendly beer, and I wanted to see it again.

The Reissdorf am Hahnentor is an FC Köln pub, and shows live football matches on TV. It’s got a full menu of delicious-smelling traditional meals, and behind the bar area is plastered with “Köln Ultras” and anti-nazi stickers. We stood at the bar and soaked up the atmosphere, which, if you want to be a prick about it, was by far the most authentic we’d found so far. We drank many, many Kölsch here as the man beside us sank his Cologne-made amaro and alcohol-free Gaffel. I was particularly intrigued by the manager, who had the look of a former footballer — slim physique with a lean about it, a Haircut with a capital H, a sparkle in his wrinkled eyes, nipping out frequently with a cig behind his ear. I wanted to know his story. Sadly my German is so bad I kept accidentally saying “dank u wel” instead of “danke,” “bit-stollen” instead of “bittzahllen”. This is the pub I think about most when I remember Cologne. The older gent who said “thank you” in English when I gave him my chair. The smiling waitresses. The bottle of schnapps reserved for regulars. I’d love to see it on a match day, packed and loud, and entirely red and white.

And that’s the end of our Kölsch epic. I know there are many more breweries in Cologne, and that we missed off a few you might call obvious — we simply didn’t have the time. On our way back from Reissdorf am Hahnentor we did other things: visited a Christmas market, had a late tea at Augustiner. What I’m trying to say is, while Kölsch was our major aim, there is far more to Cologne than its famous local beer. I’ll return and try Brauhaus Stüsser, Brauhaus Pütz, Schreckenskammer, and the one with a really weird name I can’t remember at this very moment. I’m looking forward to seeing the city in the summer, when the chestnut trees are heavy with green and sitting outside to drink won’t get me drowned. There is much more to see in this great city.