Hofbrauhaus Columbus

I was invited to dine at Hofbrauhaus Columbus and compensated for this post. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

A little piece of Munich, Germany resides right here in Columbus, Ohio. You might not be able to ask for more than bier cheese, pretzels, and beer, but they offer lots more!

I’ve been to three locations of Hofbrauhaus in my life thus far, the first being Cincinatti, OH (technically Newport, KY and oddly enough I was still living in Memphis, TN at the time), the second in Berlin, Germany, and most recently my current town of Columbus, OH. Did you know there are only 8 locations in the US and three (if you count Newport since it’s on the border) are in Ohio. Told you Ohio isn’t a flew-over state! But let’s stay on topic.

On my recent visit to Hofbrauhaus with some of my fellow CbusFoodBloggers, we ordered an array of items from what you’d expect to see on the menu like sausage and schnitzel, to things like salmon and salads. So just in case someone wants to go to Hofbrauhaus and someone else doesn’t want German food, there’s no excuse because they have other options! But in reality, can you really turn down pretzels and bier cheese?

But seriously, to make sure we didn’t miss anything we started with the “yard” sampler consisting of fried pickles with Ranch, potato pancakes with applesauce, sauerkraut balls with honey mustard, and of course pretzels with bier cheese. We may have ordered some extra pretzels for good measure.

As per usual I had a hard time deciding what to order and thankfully Caroline sitting next to me was debating the same two menu items as I was so we ordered one of each and split them! Sure they are not drastically different, but that’s why it was that much more difficult to pick between the two! Yes they were both delicious, but my favorite discovery was bier cheese covered spaetzle – omg. But like I mentioned earlier, if you’re not feeling the heavy stuff, they also have a black and bleu steak salad that looked incredible as well as pan sear salmon topped with a Dunkel bourbon glaze.

So yes all the food was splendidly delicious and total comfort food perfect for this time of year, especially since we seemed to have skipped fall and have gone straight into winter (requiring more comfort than usual). But of course in my world you can’t have a meal without dessert so we then ordered an array of their desserts offerings as well. This included an apfel strudel, cinnamon sugar pretzel, and a variety of cream puffs including strawberry, Boston cream, and chocolate.

So I’ve talked a lot about the food thus far, but you might notice something is missing. Oh right the beer! Silly me. Yes we have Hofbrauhaus beer brewed locally right in Columbus, OH (and at the other 7 lucky spots in the US). And they make a lot of it! Here are some interesting facts that we learned while taking a quick tour of their facility located on site.

As you might have guessed, it’s busy season right now for breweries like Hobrauhaus, producing about 20,000 liters of beer per month.  (in slower seasons they still make 10-15 liters/month). To break it down, that means they are making two to three 2,000 liter batches every week! For perspective, how much do you consume in a week?

If you think the US made beer can’t possibly taste like the original in Munich, this again. In order to maintain the flavor, all of the ingredients except for the water are imported from Germany. Granted, the water can impact the flavor but I think we can all agree that importing water for brewing beer would be insane (especially being in a city where another big brewing company who-shall-not-be-named already spent the money to install a water system for the entire city making our water ideal for brewing beer).

Other fun facts that I cannot work into a conversational manner:

• Like many breweries, the spent grain is given to farmers who use it in their feed.
• They utilize something called the green tea leaf paradox to remove solids from the beer by spinning, causing the solids to collect in the center while the pull the filter beer out from the sides. Try it with your next cup of loose leaf tea, you’ll see that the solids collect in the middle when you swirl it around!
• All of their beer is naturally carbonated, which means they are not adding CO2 to produce those bubbles, it’s from the hard working yeast!
• None of their beers are ever kegged, instead the beer goes straight to the taps at the bar.

So the take home of my visit? Go there for the bier cheese and pretzels bigger than the size of your head and stay for the beer also served in glasses bigger than the size of your head.

Three years ago: Slow Cooker BBQ Pork Chili

Four years ago: Bagel Quiche

Five years ago: Easy Peanut Butter and Dark Chocolate Fudge

Six years ago: Guacamole Seasoning

Four years ago: Breakfast Quesadillas