You may have read my posts on brews and breweries, but this is something grander: a full chapter in the yet-unwritten Beer Enclyclopedia. Few have the time or resources to attempt the research necessary to write something as bold and as boozy as this, but given a month in Dortmund, I knew that – setting aside friends, family, and career aspirations – I had one responsibility above all others: trying every single Dortmund pilsner in one sitting, and bringing my new knowledge back to the beer-loving world.
This is something that few if any Dortmunders have even attempted, but I knew that I’d need local help. Aside from Bubi, current proprietor of the Prost-Station in Scharnhorst, I knew that the two best Teutons for the job would be Matthias Spruch and Sebastian Lindecke.
So, on my second-last night in town, Matthias and I assembled an overflowing crate in the Scharnhorst Rewe and headed downtown. Earlier that day we’d visited the Dortmund brewing museum (worth the free student entrance, I assure you), and were so inspired by the rich history, the colorful vintage beer mats, and the various miracles of German engineering, that we purchased gold-leaf Stößchen glasses, the only appropriate glassware of the pils connoisseur.
We’d picked up two bottles of Hövels along with the pilsners and exports, but, as these were altbiers, and really represented an older, pre-war Dortmund, we decided to do away with them before we got to our real project. They served as warm-up beers on the train.
