Is zoigl actually a beer style? That’s debatable. The Germans themselves often describe the zoiglbier as a type of kellerbier—an unfiltered lager meant to be enjoyed fresh—which seems fair.
Yet zoigl is certainly a lifestyle—you can’t brew zoiglbier without it becoming a substantial part of your life. So, how can a beer style be a lifestyle?
The zoigl tradition hails from a district of northeast Bavaria called the Upper Palatinate (or the Oberpfalz, in German). This is one of Germany’s most rural, thinly populated areas, right up against the mountains that form the border with Czechia—exactly the kind of region where old traditions are likely to survive, and zoigl is certainly that.
The Tradition’s Key Elements
Some of the villages and towns of this region still have a communal brewhouse that some of the local homeowners are allowed to use. Some background on that: In the Middle Ages, rulers restricted the right to brew for purposes of taxation, but specific homes could buy or receive that right. Those who live at addresses that in earlier times acquired the right to brew are the ones who can use the brewhouse today.
The other part of the zoigl tradition is where the beer is served—which is in your own home, if you’re a brewer. That’s the lifestyle part, although it’s less intense than it may sound. The zoigl pubs aren’t open every day. Instead, they rotate according to an agreed-upon calendar—the Zoigltermine—so each pub is open perhaps one weekend per month.
There you have the two most important parts of the zoigl phenomenon: They brew the beer in a communal brewhouse, and the brewers serve it in dedicated pubs that are also part of their own homes.
There are commercial breweries that produce and package beers that bear the name Zoigl—including some in the same region—but nobody who understands the tradition would consider those to be true zoiglbier.
So, let’s have a closer look at the two key parts of the tradition.
Communal Brewing
There are five towns that still follow the zoigl tradition, but the best known is probably Windischeschenbach. It has about 5,000 inhabitants and is fairly spread out, but the zoiglstuben—the zoigl pubs—are almost entirely in a tiny area next to the church of St. Emmeram.
Why are they right there? Because that was the extent of Windischeschenbach when it received market-town status from the local lord in 1455, which is also when they handed out the brewing rights.
Near the same area—on a side street called Braugasse, or Brew Alley—stands a nondescript yellow brick building with a tall chimney: the kommunbrauhaus, or communal brewery. The inside includes a basic, early 20th-century brewhouse directly heated by wood fire. The brewhouse is almost entirely manual, although they added a pump about 70 years ago. The batch size is 24 hectoliters, or about 20 U.S. barrels—so, they need a lot of wood, and the ground floor is almost entirely filled with large pieces of firewood.
By most accounts, the zoigl brewers still use a decoction mash, and they all seem to use a base of pilsner with a portion of Munich that varies depending on the brewer. The hops are German and typically Noble. (We’ve also heard of a zoigl brewer adding some late-boil Mandarina Bavaria, but hop aroma has never been a prominent feature of zoiglbier.)
After the boil, they pump the wort up to the top floor, where there’s a separate room with a huge copper coolship under the slanting ceiling, which has many hatches to provide ventilation.
Here, it’s important to remember the original function of a coolship—not to collect wild yeast and bacteria, as with lambic, but simply to cool wort. It’s perfectly possible to do this without infecting the beer; temperature and time are key variables here, but any unwanted bugs that do drop in will soon be overwhelmed by fresh yeast. (The zoigl brewers may be feeling some unease over this form of cooling; a sign on the door to the coolship room proclaims, “No entrance for anyone except the communal brewer when the coolship is filled.”)
Once the wort has finished cooling—usually overnight—it’s time to ferment it. However, there are no tanks in the brewery itself. So, how do they move 2.4 tons of liquid? They pipe it down via gravity from the top floor to a tractor-mounted 3,000-liter milk tank—which is also shared by the brewers, as are the firewood, ingredients, and more. The tractor then heads to the brewer’s home, where the wort is again piped down to the cellar to ferment—the same cellar from which the beer is eventually served. So, zoiglbier truly is kellerbier in the most literal sense. (See “The Bier from the Keller,” beerandbrewing.com.)
Farmhouse Lager
Today, the zoigl brewers use commercial malt, but until 1945 in Windischeschenbach, there was a malthouse next to the brewery.
Back then, the brewers were also farmers, and they malted their own barley. The malt wasn’t smoked but instead dried in the kiln on metal plates, presumably without holes. I’m told that back then the beer tasted different, which is no surprise.
The brewers will generally say that they learned to brew from their fathers, who in turn learned to brew from their fathers. They’ll also say that the recipes are passed down through the generations, treated like jealously guarded secrets.
Apart from the secrecy, does that remind you of anything? Indeed, zoigl used to be a farmhouse ale in all the essential ways: They made their own malt from their own grain, and they malted and brewed according to tradition handed down from generation to generation. The only unusual part is that they would sell it.
Oh, and the yeast.
The zoigl brewers today use commercial lager yeast, though a century and a half ago they must have had their own. That would have been lager yeast, too, because lager has been the dominant type of beer here for a very long time. In fact, lager brewing most likely began here in the Upper Palatinate or neighboring Franconia sometime in the 13th or 14th centuries.
So, as far as anyone can determine, zoigl appears to have been a farmhouse-brewing tradition until relatively recently—the beer just happens to be lager instead of ale. Perhaps we should still consider it to be a farmhouse lager.
The tradition of communal brewing once existed all over the state of Bavaria—and quite possibly elsewhere, too—and remnants still survive outside the well-known zoigl area. Pegnitz in Upper Franconia and Kaufbeuren in Swabia both have communal brewhouses and local outlets serving a beer they call zoigl—but whether they belong to the same tradition is open to debate.
Echter Zoigl
To get the true zoiglbier you must go to the zoigl pubs—especially in the five Oberpfalz villages where the tradition survives.
Because these pubs aren’t always open, they signal their welcome by hanging out a special sign that usually includes the German brewers’ star. That’s the origin of the name zoigl, from the local dialect word for sign. (In the same way, English pubs used to hang out an ale stick in the Middle Ages to signal that drink was available, and Japanese inns hung out a ball of twigs called sugidama when there was fresh sake.)
The zoigl pubs are all rural, cozy, wood-paneled, and informal places. Some look more or less like ordinary Bavarian pubs, while others are far less so.
Approaching Zum Posterer in Windischeschenbach, we couldn’t work out whether it really was a pub. It looked exactly like any other home in town, except for the zoigl star outside. There was no normal pub sign, and the steps led to an ordinary door with a doorbell just like any other family home. After checking the address and the map a few times, we tentatively opened the door.
Inside was an entirely normal hallway, like in any home, with a staircase that seemed to lead right up into the family living room. Only two things showed that it was indeed a pub: There were far too many coats hanging in the hallway for a normal family, and the sound of many voices chattering happily from the next room suggested that there was indeed a sort of party in progress.
So, we entered an entirely packed pub, squeezing through the mass of people to finally find two free seats around a single table at the innermost end of the innermost room. We sat, and soon the brewer came to take our order. Before long we were immersed in talk with the people around us; they turned out be volunteer firemen from a nearby town on their annual social outing.
All this is entirely normal for zoigl pubs. They’re often packed almost from the moment they open—so you’re expected to share tables, and your tablemates assume you’ll want to talk to them. As they don’t all speak English, that doesn’t always work out in practice—but when it does, the effect is rather like being invited to a party in someone’s home.
And the beer? It generally tastes like rough, rustic lager, which is exactly what it is. It also varies—while some zoiglbier can seem quite polished and professional, they can also be lightly oxidized or a tad hazy. They might taste slightly dusty and mealy, or sweet, or relatively bitter. They’re usually a similar coppery-amber in color, yet they can taste fairly different from each other because the brewers all use their own recipes and may have slightly different methods.
My experience is that the beer is nice and drinkable, but the real joy is the pubs—atmospheric, social, down to earth, and just plain enjoyable in a way that no modern craft bar, in my mind, could ever hope to match. These are pubs the way pubs should be—more like communal living rooms than commercial establishments.
So, what’s the best way to try zoiglbier? Well, you could build a communal brewhouse with your neighbors and persuade them all to convert part of their homes into an occasional pub, then go drink at each other’s houses in turn. However, it’s probably far easier to make the pilgrimage to the Oberpfalz for the real thing.
