The oldest brewhouse in town
The date on the sign is 1533, when the prince-bishopric set up a dark beer house here. The building is older than that: a brewery on the site is mentioned in 1333, and the archbishops owned the place until 1790. The name comes from the Franciscan monastery that stood nearby, not from the brewery itself, which has always been a commercial house rather than a monastic one.
The output is about 4,000 hectolitres a year, which is small. Most of it is drunk in the rooms and the garden; the rest goes to a handful of pubs in Bamberg. That is the economics of the place: a brewery the size of a village one, in the middle of a town of 77,000, selling beer across its own counter to people who walk here.
It stands in the Mühlenviertel, the mill quarter, where the Regnitz is split into channels and runs between the buildings. The house is half-timbered and sits on the Obere Mühlbrücke with water on two sides. In summer the garden is on the bank itself, and stone steps lead down to the river where people sit with a glass. The water here is a working channel, with weirs and sluices, and it moves fast.
What the glass holds
Order the Schwärzla first. It is a Schwarzbier at around five per cent: black with ruby edges when the light gets through, mild on the tongue, more roasted bread than coffee, and dry at the end. It is the beer the house was founded to make, in the centuries before pale lager took over Franconia and most breweries forgot how to brew dark.
The rest of the range is short and old-fashioned. Braunbier is the brown beer the house is named for, maltier and softer than the Schwärzla. Bamberger Gold is a Pils with a firm bitterness, Braun's Weisse a wheat beer, and a Bock is on from October to May. At the Zwickel you can also order the unfiltered cellar beer, and there is a smoked beer that has won a gold medal.
The kitchen does not try to compete with the beer. Roasts with Klöße, sausages, a Brotzeit of bread, butter, radishes and cheese, and in summer a shorter menu in the garden. Prices are what a brewery taproom charges, which in Bamberg is less than a restaurant on the Hauptstraße and more than a kiosk. Nobody comes here for the food, and nobody leaves disappointed by it.
Finding the door
Obere Mühlbrücke 1–3, five minutes upstream from the Altes Rathaus along the left arm of the Regnitz. The entrance is easy to walk past, because it is a doorway in a row of mill buildings rather than a shopfront with a sign. Look for the low half-timbered house with the beer garden behind it and the steps down to the water.
It opens Wednesday to Sunday, from two in the afternoon on weekdays and from eleven at weekends, and stays closed on Monday and Tuesday. The garden runs from May to September. Come at three on a Wednesday and you will have the room to yourself; come at seven on a Saturday and you will share a table, which is the better version anyway.