1. Augustinerbräu Kloster Mülln
Augustinergasse 4, 5020 Salzburg.. Tel. 0662-31246 Email: info@augustinerbier.at http://www.augustinerbier.at/
Opening hours: Mon - Sat: 15:00-23:00 Sun 14:30-23:00
Number of draught beers: 1
Number of bottled beers: 0
Regular draught beers: Augustiner Märzen Augustiner Bock (Winter)
Food: Snacks, meals. Prices: 2.30 euros for 0.5 l Märzen.
Let's make something clear right from the start: this is the best example of a large beerhall I've seen anywhere in the world. In fact I would go so far as to say it's the best large pub I've ever been in. On my last visit, as soon as I entered the magic came back. I proceeded to spend the happiest three hours of my year so far, before finally managing to drag myself away. It's situated in a real monastery (the only religious establishment in Austria still brewing) in the old suburb of Mülln, a kilometer or so from the city centre. The street entrance is almost unmarked and quite easy to miss, then, once inside, you have to negotiate a couple of flights of stairs before getting to the pub complex itself. At first it's as you've entered a small shopping centre because in this pub not only do they let you bring your own picnic but they also provide the shops to buy the food in. There are four or five of them including a bakers and a couple of butchers, providing the traditional (and probably lethally unhealthy) sausages so loved in all the German-speaking areas of Europe. Once past these, in the proper drinking area, you find a series of huge baroque rooms with vertiginously high ceilings and long, sturdy wooden tables. There is a choice of either queuing up yourself at a self-service counter or paying a little more to have a waiter fetch your beer for you. Either way, the prices are amongst the lowest in town at 4.60 euros for a full litre (self-service price, as of February 2002). The customers are about as varied as you could imaging, ranging from little old grannies in hats (also drinking from litre steins) to complete families, along with all their children, whatever the age. Coincidentally, this makes you realise what a mistake those countries' governors make where children are barred from premises selling alcohol. The presence of complete families makes for a much more relaxed and less violent atmosphere than when young adult men predominate. One particularly innovative idea is a little copper device filled with warm water, which allows you to warm your beer to the correct drinking temperature ( I have a particular dislike of beer served so cold that your tastebuds are numbed for several weeks). The beer itself is served directly from oak barrels and most of the year is limited to a märzen of 12 degrees plato. Around Christmas, they also have a bockbier. Brewery visits in Salzburg gives a glimpse inside, amongst others, the legendary Augustinerbräu Kloster Mülln.
Rating: *****	Public transport:

2. Krimpelstätter
Müllner Haupstrasse 31, 5020 Salzburg Tel. 0662-32274
Opening hours: Tue - Sat: 10:00-24:00
Number of draught beers: 1
Number of bottled beers:
Regular draught beers: Augustiner Märzen 12°
Food: Snacks, meals.
Old pub lying back from the main road with a large beer garden behind. A long corridor leads to an atmospheric smallish room with a vaulted ceiling supported by pillars of local stone. The worn wooden floors, old tables and non-matching chairs give it a cosy and genuinely old air. Apart from a few old prints, there is little in the way of decoration. In one corner is a Stammtisch. Instead of a bar, one wall has a sideboard containing the beer tap, sink and glasses. Overall a distinctive and unusual pub which appears to have changed little over the years. Upstairs there are further rooms.
Rating: ****	Public transport:

3. Bärenwirt
Müllner Hauptstraße 8, 5020 Salzburg.. Tel. 0662-430386
Opening hours: Mon - Tue, Thu - Sun 11:00-14:00, 18:00-23:00, Wednesday closed
Number of draught beers: 1
Number of bottled beers: 1
Regular draught beers: Augustiner Märzen Augustiner Bock (Winter)
Food: Snacks, meals. Prices: Meals €7-11.
This interestingly triangular pub is in a good spot to wait around for the Augustiner Bräustüberl to open, if you arrive a bit too early. You could consider it a bit folksy inside, with the red and white checked tablecloths and pine overload in the furniture department. However, it all seems genuine enough and pretty friendly, too. In the corridor there is a small drinking area, but the main section is more restaurant-like. It also gives you a chance to try out the difference in the Augustiner beer when it's served, as it is here, on top-pressure. Not a patch on the gravity-served beer in the monastery itself, but still a decent drop of beer.
Rating: ****	Public transport:

4. Müllner Stub'n
Müllner Hauptstraße 21A 5020 Salzburg Tel. 0662-431853
Opening hours: Mon - Sat: 18:00-22:00
Number of draught beers: 1
Number of bottled beers: 2
Regular draught beers: Murauer Pils
Food: Snacks.
A small, unassuming pub on the main road through Mülln. There is a small tap room with 3 tables and a few seats at the bar. An even smaller room at the rear has a dartboard and a locked cupboard containing the locals' darts. There's an old print of the main road at the turn of the century - it certainly looks more pleasant without all the cars and lorries which now thunder by the pub. The bar has a classy formica bar top recalling the best in 70's taste. Fairly cheap beer. Sells bottled Murauer Doppelmalz and Stiegl Pils.
Rating: ***	Public transport:

5. Hotel Stieglbräu
Rainerstraße 14 5020 Salzburg Tel. 0662-77692 Email: info@imlauer.com Homepage: http://www.imlauer.com/
Opening hours: Mon - Sun: 11:00-24:00
Number of draught beers: 4
Number of bottled beers:
Regular draught beers: Stiegl-Goldbräu 4,9 % (12° Plato) Paracelsus Naturtrüb (unfiltered) 4,9 % (12° Plato) Stiegl-Pils 4,9 % (11,9° Plato) Stiegl-Weizengold Hefefein 5,4% (12° Plato)
Food: Snacks, meals. Prices: Meals €9-15 euros, beer €2.80 0.5 l.
Stieglbräu is a large hotel/restaurant/bar between the station and the town centre. It was built some time around 1900, but has been much altered and expanded in the intervening years. As you can guess from the name, it's a showcase outlet of the local regional brewery. A small taproom (the Pils-Kanzlei) faces onto the street with a roomier restaurant/bar behind. Deeper into the building are yet more dining rooms, which seem to stretch on to infinity. It's decked out in the usual antiseptic heritage style of shiny pine furniture and tile floors. Everything is a little too modern to look very cosy or genuine. The walls have murals depicting the brewery in various stages of its history. It was recently heavily renovated which accounts for its lack of character. Perhaps a few years of fag smoke and spilt beer will mellow it. There is a small beer garden. You can't complain about the beer range - they have both the soft and tasty unfiltered Paracelsus and a hefeweizen on draught.
Rating: **	Public transport:

6. Zum Hirschen
St. Juleinstr. 21-23, 5020 Salzburg. Tel. 0662 - 88903-47 Fax: 0662 - 88903-58 Email: info@zumhirschen.at Homepage: http://www.zumhirschen.at/ http://www.biowirtshaus.at/
Opening hours: Mon - Sun: 11:00-14:00 & 17:00-24:00
Number of draught beers: 2
Number of bottled beers:
Regular draught beers: Hirter Bio-Bier Hirter Bio-Hefeweizen
Food: Snacks, meals. Prices: Meals €7-15, beer €2.80 for 0.5 l.
Zum Hirschen is where I usually stay when in Salzburg. It's a very comfortable hotel, not too pricey and pretty handily placed between the station and the town centre. To my shame, I hadn't ever paid a great deal of attention to the attached pub, being distracted by the many other delights of Salzburg. I now realise what a mistake this was. The decoration is in a rustic style. There's a red tile floor, beamed ceiling and wood-panelled walls. All fairly simple, but with a few of the obligatory deer skulls hung on the walls, but at least there is a connection with the pub's name in this case. The corner benches, complete with cushions give the feel of a traditional German living room. Very homely. The bar counter - a curved confection of pine and steel - looks as if it was delivered by mistake to the wrong pub. No doubt some trandy café elsewhere in town has an out-of-place old-fashioned wooden bar. There are four connecting rooms, starting with the most pub-like one containing the bar counter. The further 3 rooms are distinctly more restauranty, having tablecloths (my definition of the restauranty). The rustic element is emphsised by the dirndl clad waitresses and primitive carvings of conifer trees. What's particularly unusual about Zum Hirschen is that all the food and drink is organic. This includes an organic apfelmost (the Austrian version of cider) and the bottled beers Lammsbräu Dunkles Weizen and Schladminger Bier. In 2003 a substantial beer garden is due to open.
Rating: ***	Public transport:

7. Pitter Keller
Auerspergstraße 5020 Salzburg Tel.
Opening hours: Mon - Sat: 11:00-01:00 (Closed 14:00 - 17:00)
Number of draught beers: 1
Number of bottled beers:
Regular draught beers: Wieninger Pils
Food: Snacks, meals.
Typical large cellar bar with long pine tables and benches and frescoes on the walls. The gents toilets are decorated with an interesting collection of Edwardian dirty postcards. Beer garden at the rear.
Rating: **	Public transport:

8. Weissbierbrauerei Bernd Tobsch
Rupertgasse 10, 5020 Salzburg. Tel. 0662-8722 460 Fax 0662-8722 464 Email: prost@dieweisse.at http://www.dieweisse.at/
Opening hours: Mon - Fri: 10:30-24:00 Sat-Sun: closed
Number of draught beers: 1
Number of bottled beers: 1
Regular draught beers: Hefeweissbier
Food: Snacks, meals.
Much closer to the centre of town, is another pub brewery, the Weissbierbrauerei. The main building has a couple of reasonably-sized rooms, plus some space for drinking in the corridor. It has a rustic style which is old and inconsistent enough to be neither kitsch nor 'designed'. It's popularity with the young (presumably connected with the prices for food, which are about as cheap as they come in the town centre) means that it's a good idea to turn up reasonably early if you want to get a table. As for the beer, as the name of the establishment suggests, this is a wheat beer. In fact, the brewery is unique in Austria in producing only wheat beer. It's a hefeweizen and to make sure that you don't miss that fact, it's very yeasty, perhaps a little too much. The normal beer served (and apart from around christmas the only beer served) is a 12 degree hefeweissbier. It seems to vary a bit in quality, but when good is very good. Two German beer writers (Höllhuber & Kaub in 'Von München Zum Salzach, Ein Wanderfuehrer für Biertrinker', Verlag Hans Carl, Nuernberg, 1985) rate it as good as the best Bavarian wheat beers. Given how Germans can be chauvinistic about their beer and particularly the way they tend to sneer at Austrian beer due to the lack of a Reinheitsgebot, this was praise indeed.
Rating: *****	Public transport:

9. Weissbräu Bräustüberl
Virgilgasse 9, 5020 Salzburg. Tel. 0662-76481
Opening hours: Mon - Fri: 11:00-23:00 Sat-Sun 10:00-23:00
Number of draught beers: 1
Number of bottled beers: 1
Regular draught beers: Hefeweissbier
Food: Snacks, meals.
From the name, you might well imagine something grander than this shed-like annex to the main pub. This seems mainly designed to serve the beer garden but, rather bizarrely, has longer opening hours than the main building. It has a couple of tiny rooms, more basically decorated than those inside, but quite charming in their unpretentious ,though maybe a little too smoky in the Winter for those without the benefit of leather lungs. There are small snacks available, including some rather tasty looking sausages.
Rating: *****	Public transport:

10. Schnaitl Musik Pub
Bergstraße 5-7, 5020 Salzburg Tel. 0662-878678
Opening hours: Mon - Sun: 18:30- :
Number of draught beers: 1
Number of bottled beers: 10
Regular draught beers: Schnaitl Pils 12%
Food: Snacks.
A rambling student pub with several rooms, a pool table and live music. A central horseshoe-shaped bar serves two of the rooms. It has nice marble-topped cast-iron tables, but some of the other interior fittings are on the tacky side. The bottled beer selection is quite wide and has a particular emphasis on wheat beers from Bavaria. The bottled beers include: Arcobräu Urweisse & Dunkle Weisse, Weizengold Champagner, Erdinger Naturtrüb, Südenauer Dunkle Weisse, Schnaitl Bayrisch Dunkel and Guinness.
Rating: ***	Public transport:

11. Zum fidelen Affen
Priesterhausgasse 8 5020 Salzburg Tel. 0662-77361
Opening hours: Mon - Sat: 17:00-24:00
Number of draught beers: 2
Number of bottled beers:
Regular draught beers: Trumer Pils Weizengold Hefe Hell
Food: Snacks, meals.
Zum fidelen Affen is a single-room pub on the station side of the river. It has a central island bar, which you don't see too often in this part of the world. It's in the usual beerhall style with tiled floor, large wooden tables and benches, a vaulted ceiling supported by stone pillars. Don't be put off by the bland exterior, inside it's much more pleasant inside. Quite a cosy place, but unfortunately it is very popular and hence very crowded. It can be difficult to get a seat. It's especially popular with the young. There are tables outside for the warmer weather.
Rating: ***	Public transport:

12. Gablerbräu
Linzergasse 9, 5020 Salzburg. Tel. 0662-88965 Fax: 0662-8896555 http://www.gablerbrau.com/
Opening hours: Mon - Sun:
Number of draught beers: 4
Number of bottled beers: 3
Regular draught beers: Gablerbräu Kellerbier (unfiltered) Kaiser Märzen Puntigamer Panther Edelweiss Hefetrüb Dunkel
Food: Snacks, meals. Prices: Snacks €3-9, meals €7-19, beer €3.00-3.40 a half litre.
Gablerbräu is the restaurant/bar (with the emphasis very much on the former) of a city-centre hotel. It has the standard vaulted ceiling and wooden furniture that you must be getting bored stiff of me mentioning by now. By the entrance is a taproom of sorts, with high tables and barstools providing seating. Further into the pub is a series of more restauranty rooms. In my original description, I complained of the sterility of this establishment. Imagine my surprise on my last visit, when I dicovered this was no longer the case. A design change has created a much wamer atmosphere. How odd to be saying that a refurbishment has actually improved a pub. This must be a first. Until around the turn of the century it was a brewery (the third largest in Salzburg after Stiegl and Sterbräu), but very little evidence of this remains, apart from the name. The bottled beers on sale are: Weihenstephaner Hefeweissbier Hell, Zipfer Sparkling and Dreher's Schwarzbier.
Rating: ***	Public transport:

13. Sternbräu,
Griesgasse 23, 5020 Salzburg. Tel. 0662-4477261 Email: info@sternbraeu.at Homepage: http://www.sternbraeu.at/
Opening hours: Mon - Sun: 09:00-24:00
Number of draught beers: 7
Number of bottled beers: 5
Regular draught beers: Kaiser Märzen Kaiser Premium Pils Kaltenhauser Bernstein Edelweiss Hefetrüb (in Braumeister Bier Pub): Wieselburger Stammbräu Kaiser Kellerbier (unfiltered) Dreher's Schwarzbier Bottled beers: Kaiser Märzen Kaiser Kurpils Kaiser Doppelmalz Edelweiss Kristallklar Edelweiss Hefetrüb Dunkel
Food: Snacks, meals. Prices: Meals €8-13, €2.90 a half litre.
Sternbräu used to be the main outlet of the brewery which stood behind it, until this was closed in 1959, but it still retains the layout and atmosphere of a brewery tap. The panelled walls in the main room still carry the carved star logo of the old brewery. It has a multiplicity of rooms to choose from, but the Braumeister section is the best bet for the beer-lover as here they also sell an unfiltered kellerbier, which rates much higher than the standard bright, bottom-fermenting Austrian beers. The interior is pretty much standard for these type of pubs: vaulted ceilings, wooden furniture and wood-panelled walls. The clients are also what you would expect: mixed in age, but with the middle-aged predominating a little. It serves a full range of meals, including in season some very tasty game dishes. I can highly recommend the food, which is of outstanding quality.
Rating: ****	Public transport:

15. Zipfer Bierhaus
Sigmund Haffnergasse 12, 5020 Salzburg. Tel. 0662-843101
Opening hours: Mon - Sun: 10:00-24:00
Number of draught beers: 4
Number of bottled beers:
Regular draught beers: Zipfer Urtyp Edelweiß Hefetrüb Zipfer Kellerbier (unfiltered) Zipfer Urtyp Medium
Food: Snacks, meals. Prices: Meals €7-11, beer €2.90 a half litre.
A simple beerhall, handily placed right in the centre of town. There are attractive carved and painted wooden light fittings and carved benches which resemble pews. It offers good, basic central European food (particularly good were the bread dumplings). All in all, you could be in the Czech Republic, which is, after all, where beer-lovers hope to go when they die. Next to the downstairs gents toilet there is an amzing view into a 16th century well.
Rating: ***	Public transport:

16. Stieglkeller
Festungsgasse 10, 5020 Salzburg. Tel. 0662-842681 Fax. 0662-842681 15 http://www.imlauer.com/ Homepage: http://www.imlauer.com/
Opening hours: Mon - Sun: 10:00 - 23:00 (May-Sept only)
Number of draught beers: 3
Number of bottled beers: 3
Regular draught beers: Stiegl Goldbräu 12% Stiegl Paracelsus (unfiltered) Stiegl Weizengold
Food: Snacks, meals. Prices: Beer €2.90 a half litre.
The Stieglkeller is an historic pub half way up the hill between the cathedral and the castle. The building - dating from 1426 - even manages to predate the Stiegl brewery (only founded in 1492 - now there's an easy date to remember) and is built into the town's defences. The interior is in the enormous beerhall style. The high, barrel-vaulted wooden ceilings (how appropriate for a pub), have painted designs and sprout huge chandeliers. The furniture is on a similarly massive scale, some tables being large enough to seat 30 or more people. The decoration, in contrast, is quite restrained and limited to little more than a collection of antlers stuck high on the walls. Note that it is only open in the Summer.
Rating: ***	Public transport:

1. Monopoly
2. Augustinerbräu Kloster Mülln
3. Krimpelstätter
4. Müllner Stub'n
5. Hotel Stieglbräu
6. what used to be Bachmans NOT Zum Hirschen
7. Pitter Keller
8. Weissbierbrauerei Bernd Tobsch
9. Weissbräu Bräustüberl
10. Schnaitl Musik Pub
11. Zum fidelen Affen
12. Gablerbräu
13. Sternbräu
14. Ratsherrnkeller
15. Zipfer Bierhaus
16. Stieglkeller

© Ron Pattinson 1997 - 2004