Red-hot iron meets ice-cold beer
A slightly sulphurous smell rises to your nose before you drink. The warm foam wets your lips before you feel the cool beer on them. Cold beer and warm foam mix in your mouth, releasing a full-bodied, intense flavour. ‘Almost everyone finds the taste of spiked beer interesting, some really like it and a few turn up their noses,’ says Klaus Fürst-Elmecker. For several years now, he has been taking his guests to the old town smithy and showing them the ancient ritual of ‘beer spiking’.
The poker as a beer warmer
In contrast to the smithy, whose history goes back at least 800 years, beer pricking is still relatively young, says the Freistadt city guide: ‘With the advent of industrial refrigeration systems 150 years ago, beer was often cooled down too much.’ It was a resourceful landlady who had the right answer to a guest's complaint about the drink being too cold: she is said to have warmed a poker in the oven and then held it in the guest's mug, Fürst-Elmecker explains. Not only did this warm the beer, it is also said to have suddenly tasted excellent.
Sweet, intense and smooth
It is impossible to verify how much truth there is in this story today. However, the change in the taste of the beer can certainly be verified. When the red-hot iron is immersed in the beer, the residual sugar caramelises and the carbon dioxide evaporates. The beer not only becomes slightly warmer, but also sweeter, more intense and more drinkable. The fine-pored head and the slight sulphur smell round off the unique taste experience. Stronger beers and especially bock beer are particularly suitable for beer spiking, says Klaus Fürst-Elmecker: ‘They have a higher residual sugar content, which makes the taste more intense.’
Beer tapping is certainly the tasteful highlight of a visit to the Stadtschmiede. But the history of the building, which today, together with the Scheiblingturm tower, is privately owned, is also very interesting. For centuries, horseshoes were forged and carts repaired in the only smithy within the city walls of Freistadt. The smithy was in operation until the mid-1970s. Machines such as the electric motor and the 30 kg hammer are now almost 100 years old – and still work. Retired blacksmith Karl Pölz demonstrates this even today when he skilfully forges the red-hot iron into nails or horseshoes.
For Klaus Fürst-Elmecker, not only the old town smithy but the entire old town of Freistadt is a ‘unique gem’ of the Mühlviertel hills. He wants to bring this uniqueness closer to visitors during city tours, tours of the historic cellars or even while tapping beer. The 60-year-old's passion is also professionally motivated: in his day job as an architect, Fürst-Elmecker is an expert in historic buildings.
Kontakt und Service
Tourismusverband Mühlviertler Alm FreistadtLebensquellplatz 1
4283 Bad Zell
Phone + 43 50 7263
E-Mail anfrage@muehlviertel.at
Web www.muehlviertel-urlaub.at
