Bassman

Recipes 

Last night I went to an Austrian restaurant in Manhattan. It's an excellent gourmet restaurant. They only had 1 austrian beer, Goesser ( don't know how to do an umlaut ), the rest were German. They did have a few wheat beers including a Berliner Weisse ( forgot the brand ). I thought that when you have a Berliner Weisse you have it with a sweet syrup added and that is called "mit schuss". I figured that would be a great drink to have to get started. But when I asked the waiter if they served the Berliner Weisse mit schuss he just looked at me oddly and said they have a nice lager on tap. My German pronunciation is decent so I am sure I said it correctly. I also don't think he was pretending to not understand me, like I committed a faux pas. I honestly think he did not know what I meant. This was a fancy restaurant and more of weinbar. I ended up having a Hefe-Dunkel ( I don't remember the brewery), which was what I drank the whole time. Afterwards we went to a bar that had listed Schneider-Brooklyner Hopfen-Weisse. I had a couple of those, it was quite a contrast with the Hefe-Dunkel.

So is it standard to have a Berliner Weisse mit schuss or is that a touristy thing or only a Berline thing?

remilard

Recipes 

It is standard in Berlin to the point that even people who speak German proficiently (or even Germans) that aren't from Berlin are assumed to be stupid if they order it without the shot.

In the US, some pubs will brew one and have raspberry or woodruff syrup. It's a good situation for them, it's the chick beer and it appeals to beer geeks without the shot.

My guess is this was the Weihenstehphan 1809, which is common in beer bars in the US and not likely to be served with woodruff or raspberry, in my experience.

My preference is to drink it without. My guess is the waiter wasn't familiar with how Berliner Weiss is served in Berlin and not that your pronunciation was wrong or that you said the wrong thing (you did not).