Beer Styles

The city's flagship beer is Pilsner: a pale, bottom-fermented beer with pronounced bitterness, named after the Bohemian city of Pilsen, where the first batch was brewed in 1842. In Stuttgart, it's the standard pour in pubs and breweries alike—Dinkelacker's CD-Pils still carries the initials of founder Carl Dinkelacker.

How does Pilsner differ from Helles? Helles is softer, maltier, and less heavily hopped. A German Pilsner typically falls between 22 and 40 IBU, the scale measuring bitterness, while a Helles sits at just 16 to 22. The original gravity, however, barely differs between the two, both landing around eleven to twelve degrees Plato.

The city's second major beer is Festbier. It's paler and stronger than a regular lager, golden in color with around six percent alcohol. It's brewed specifically for the Cannstatter Volksfest and poured in the festival tents during the celebration. So the term Festbier describes more of an occasion than a fixed recipe—the figures above are simply a general range.

In Stuttgart, Festbier may not be called Oktoberfestbier. That name has been protected as a PGI since 2022 and applies only to breweries within Munich's city limits. On the Wasen, the beer goes by Volksfestbier or simply Festbier.

The third beer is Zwickel, also known as Kellerbier. It isn't a distinct style with fixed parameters but rather a naturally cloudy, unfiltered version of a base style, usually Helles or Pilsner. Schwaben Bräu carries it in its lineup as Zwickl.