BBQ, Boilermaker & Bowery with ÜberQuell & Bulleit (Event)

Here in Hamburg, a boilermaker is called a “Herrengedeck”. You can order it in every bar or tavern, no matter how run-down the place or how small their assortment. When you ask for it, you will normally receive a bottle of Holsten or Astra and a shot of hard liquor. While these two components do rarely bring out any special flavors in each other, they do at least get you drunk. Mission accomplished. Thankfully, the fine folks of ÜberQuell micro-brewery are a bit more ambitious. For their recent BBQ, Boilermaker & Bowery event, the creative craft beer makers from Northern Germany teamed up with none other than Diageo-owned bourbon brand Bulleit from Kentucky to offer their guests four exclusive beer and whiskey pairings – plus chilled vibes, yummy food and fun side activities in one of Hamburg’s best brewpubs.

Prior to the actual event, the ÜberQuell and Bulleit boys already huddled together with whisky blogger Michael Lutz and barkeeper Pät Barten as well as online journalists Lisa Knauer and Merle Hagelüken to identify the perfect beers to be served alongside the spicy Bulleit Bourbon and the smooth Bulleit 95 Rye. For each of these two bottles, the tasting crew selected one in-house beer and one guest beer. This resulted in the bourbon being offered together with ÜberQuell’s powerful Supadupa IPA or Stone’s winterly Xocoveza and the rye being paired with ÜberQuell’s bitter-fruity Palim Palim Pale Ale or Kuehn Kunz Rosen’s aromatic Festland. I wish I could go a bit more into detail on how the individual elements of each boilermaker harmonized with, or contrasted against, each other. But I had such a good time at the ÜberQuell’s get-together with Bulleit that I ended up trying all four beer’n’whiskey sets plus a few more shots. So when I went home at almost 0:30am, I might have been a bit too buzzed to recall all of the evening’s details in their entirety. Well, sometimes that is just the way things go.

Luckily, there is one takeaway from the event that my scrappy memory did not steal from me: The whole thing was super-good fun and the people involved did a fantastic job at giving their guests an amazing time! The place was packed, the spirits were high and the bevvies were delicious. While it was more of a nonchalant gathering than a guided tasting, everyone at ÜberQuell including the owner and the head brewer mingled with the crowd and answered whatever questions there were. The Bulleit representatives as well as Michael and Pät did the same, openly approaching the attendees and engaging in lively conversations on beer, whiskey and all kinds of other things. Besides enjoying delish drinks with cool people in a cracking environment, you could also get a free refill from a bourbon-laden high striker, have your glasses individualized by a comic artist or grab a mini-flask with an extra slug of Bulleit Bourbon as a souvenir. To sum things up and carry on with the alliteration: BBQ, Boilermaker & Bowery was bodacious, beautiful and bloody brilliant!

by Tobi

The whiskies:

Bulleit Bourbon (Bourbon / USA / NAS / 40% / ~20.00 Euro)
Bulleit 95 Rye (Rye Whiskey / USA / NAS / 45% / ~23.00 Euro)

The beers:

ÜberQuell Supadupa IPA (IPA / Germany / 50 IBU / 6% / ~2.50 Euro)
ÜberQuell Palim Palim Pale Ale (Pale Ale / Germany / 39 IBU / 5.3% / ~2.50 Euro)
Stone Xocoveza (Mokka Stout / Germany / 50 IBU / 8.1% / ~3.00 Euro)
Kuehn Kunz Rosen Festland (Bockbier / Germany / 15 IBU / 6.8% / ~3.00 Euro)