“That doesn’t exist,” says the man with a rock-solid voice, as if he were talking about unicorns or dragons. “Maybe in August,” he says, his voice long since lowered, his smile long since gone. Of course, it already exists in every brewery restaurant, because they are the preferred suppliers. What is this drink all about, and where does the “hype” come from, as the operators of the “Isarquelle” drinks market on the other side of the bridge call it?
On a cloudy Wednesday afternoon, a delivery truck with a trailer is parked in front of the entrance, towers of drinks are being pushed back and forth. A good starting point for the search for the brew and the answer to the question of why it is so hard to get hold of.
You might think that clever marketing experts have created a perfectly staged, free advertising campaign by artificially creating scarcity. The opposite is the case. And while Andreas Warmuth from Getränke Roth is heaving crates of Adelholzener from his loading area at the “Isarquelle”, he says curtly: “And that’s because of non-alcoholic drinks?”
That’s the way it is with hype, there are always going to be people who shake their heads at it. For some, it’s completely normal to lie in wait outside an Apple store for an iPhone days beforehand or to live outside a sneaker store for a short time, for others it’s completely crazy.
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Warmuth, Team Brain-Cracked when it comes to Augustiner Alcohol-Free, has just come from Moosburg, “the drinks dealer would have needed two pallets there,” that’s 90 crates. He got nothing. And Yusuf Koca, operator of the “Isarquelle,” still laughs about the topic, but more after he’s lost it in the past few weeks. “Every day, a hundred people ask about it, a hundred,” he says. Why is that? Is it because of the taste? “I have no idea, I haven’t drunk it yet.”
That would have to be clarified first, even if taste is a matter of taste: the basic prerequisite for commercial hype is good products. Experts and non-experts agree on this: the drink is a success. That’s what Walter König from the Bavarian Brewers’ Association said, as did Walter Orterer from the Bavarian drinks retailer of the same name, as well as the men’s group on Wednesday in the Augustiner brewery on Landsberger Strasse, next to the brewery.
König, who can be reached by phone at the “Hop Research Center Hüll” in Hallertau, calls it “very successful, very close to the original,” and Orterer, who can be reached between dead spots somewhere in Bavaria, speaks of the “typical Augustiner taste.” The color is also like the pale beer, but the most important thing: “It doesn’t taste malty, not sweet.” The Beer has the original taste of the brewery, albeit weaker.
:This is what the non-alcoholic Augustiner beer tastes like
The cult surrounding the Munich brewery lives on the fact that much is still the same as it was in the year it was founded in 1328. But now Augustiner has also introduced a non-alcoholic beer. It is not intended to be a copy of the Helles.
But you also took your time to get all the other Munich Breweries have long had non-alcoholic options. Even on Landsberger Strasse, they now have to take into account the fact that the proportion of non-alcoholic variants in beer sales is continuing to rise. According to König, this figure will soon exceed ten percent in Bavaria.
Four men are sitting in the brewery on Wednesday afternoon, respectable, gray-haired pensioners. Two with non-alcoholic beers in front of them, two with alcoholic ones, who all say in unison: Tastes like normal beer. But these are not hardcore fans who disgustedly reject anything that doesn’t have a bishop’s staff on the bottle. They meet in different pubs and drink all the beers from Munich breweries. The best thing? Well, that’s a matter of taste. One thing is clear with this new variant: “You can see how technological development makes it possible to get ever closer to the original with non-alcoholic beers,” says König from the Brewers’ Association.
In the brewery, the non-alcoholic beer is available not only by the glass, but also by the bottle, but – and that’s the catch – at a price of 3.70 euros. That’s 1.30 euros more than the empty glass with the new print, which is available a hundred meters away in a fairly well-arranged room that at all other breweries would probably be called a “Visitor Center” and offer expensive tours every hour. Just not at Augustiner. And that brings us to another explanation for the hype or run, as König from the hop research center with a good telephone network calls it: the non-marketing practiced by the brewery since the early Pleistocene.
If you want to buy a glass, you obviously can’t buy it in an online shop. But there is a website. From there you can download the price list of all the non-liquid devotional items in stock. But you have to know that a T-shirt or a stone mug can only be bought in the morning between nine and twelve, and only if you ask the doorman. He sends you to the other side of the driveway and presses the door opener until you are on the other side and in a wood-paneled room with a friendly saleswoman. The lady confirms, as does Walter Orterer, that customers who want to drink are now even lying in wait outside the brewery to catch the next delivery, follow it and get their turn at the first drinks market stop.
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The Munich-based Augustiner brewery has sparked a real boom with its new non-alcoholic beer. This fits in with the trend, as beer drinkers’ tastes are changing.
This place gives the impression that this brewery, which doesn’t advertise, perhaps couldn’t do it anyway. But it doesn’t need to. And in a world where you’re constantly being followed by promises and offers, some people are clearly yearning for companies that just do things. After all, there’s a man-sized cardboard bottle of non-alcoholic beverages in the room, crooked but clearly recognizable as an advertising item. Orterer puts it this way: “Word of mouth is always stronger than advertising.” Probably even more so when it comes to a drink.
“Nothing is staged,” Orterer continues, emerging from a dead zone. “They invest in restaurants, in hospitality, and then there’s the old way of producing beer.” The brewery’s cellars are impressive, and the beer at the Oktoberfest is still served in wooden barrels. “And it’s the mildest of all Munich Helles, which is what a lot of people like.” On the other hand, a lot of people are angry because they can’t buy the new variation. The discontent was so great that this company, which has not had a press department since it was founded in 1328, felt compelled to make a statement.
At the beginning of May, a letter was sent to beverage stores, which can be viewed on Instagram by one of the many fan groups, the “Augustiner Freunde”. In it, the brewery shows that it is very capable of formulating catchy advertising slogans when necessary. “The unexpected success has pleasantly surprised us all,” says the letter signed by the managing directors. At the moment, the brewery is unable to meet all orders due to capacity constraints. “We have already taken measures to increase production.” But since we are not talking about paper clips, but rather a high-tech brewing process, such an increase takes time.
“They simply underestimated it,” says Orterer. And so you can observe what happens when a product that is currently in Munich already has cult status, and is also sold out. Customised delivery vans, drinks dealers who only sell the goods by the bottle. For some saturated Munich residents, it may even be an adventure to hunt for such an ancient product as bottled beer. And when it is said in pubs such as the Sax that all the non-alcoholic glasses have gone missing, or in other words stolen, that is more part of a wonderfully analogue treasure hunter challenge of the Munich beer drinking community than a collective tendency to steal. Perhaps only Augustiner can make Munich get so intoxicated by non-alcoholic beer.