Franconia, one brewery per village

More breweries than anywhere on earth, a smoked beer in a tavern from 1405, and the beer garden is a forest.

A craft beer trip through Germany and the Netherlands — 4 days and about 638 km. It is built around 4 places the trip exists to include, all in Germany: Bamberg, Aufseß, Forchheim and Bayreuth. Those are kept whatever else you change; the nights, the meals and the stops in between are chosen for the road you actually end up on.

Upper Franconia has more breweries per head than anywhere in the world, and most of them are a village pub with a copper kettle in the back and a family name over the door. The beer is unfiltered, unpasteurised, and mostly never leaves the parish. You do not tour it so much as walk from one to the next. Bamberg is the capital of it: a whole old town on the UNESCO list, a cathedral on one hill and Schlenkerla on the other, where the Rauchbier tastes of the beechwood smoke the malt was dried over and the tavern has been serving it since the fifteenth century. Out in the villages, Aufseß holds the record for breweries per inhabitant and links its four with a walking path; Forchheim keeps its beer cold in cellars dug into a hillside, and in summer the whole hill becomes one long beer garden under the trees. The kellers open in the afternoon and close when it gets dark. Sleep in Bamberg, drive out in the morning, and let the day's driver drink Fränkisches Bier the way the locals do it — at the end, sitting down, with a Brotzeit board.

The places this trip exists for

Pinned, not suggested — the planner is required to include every one of them.

Bamberg
🇩🇪 Germany
The old town on the UNESCO list, and Schlenkerla's smoked beer in a tavern from the fifteenth century.
Aufseß
🇩🇪 Germany
Four breweries in a village of 1,300 people, joined by a walking path through the fields.
Forchheim
🇩🇪 Germany
The Kellerwald: beer cellars cut into the hill, and in summer one long beer garden under the oaks.
Bayreuth
🇩🇪 Germany
Wagner's town, and Maisel's brewery museum for anyone who wants to see how the wheat beer is made.

These are kept whatever you change. Everything else the planner picks is chosen for the road you end up on, and can be swapped.

Aufseß — Hagar66 based on work of TUBS · Public domain

Bayreuth — Michael Sander · CC BY-SA 3.0

One way it works out

From Amsterdam · 4 days · about €509

A real plan, priced the way every trip here is: fuel per country you cross, tolls and vignettes from published tariffs, beds and food from derived local rates. It is one example, not an average — from another town it is a different trip, which is the point of the button below.

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All 4 pinned places are kept — you set the start, the days and who's coming, and the road and the figures are worked out for your door.

The figures above were measured from Amsterdam — yours will differ.