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Well friends, our secret is out. This past Thursday night my wife Steph and I took a walk around the neighborhood, over to Buon Appetito for a slice, down to the waterfront, back up through Paulus Hook and eventually to our destination, Zeppelin Hall. As we approached from the back, still a good hundred yards away we began to hear the low rumble rising up from the beer garden against the backdrop of beats pounding from, what we assumed, was Jay-Z performing a sound check at Liberty State Park.

When we turned the corner and approached the place the noise got louder and louder, and when we were finally inside we found that we were among literally hundreds. I’d heard Thursday night was the new Friday, but this was ridiculous. Now, I’m not one of those people who is going to grumble and complain about all the Hoboken-ers invading our territory (plenty of folks over at JC List are doing that), but it is worth noting that even on a weeknight Zeppelin Hall is packed now. I say, good for them.

Anyway, its beer time…and tonight we feature two German beers. (I figure if we’re ever going to get through this thing I better start hitting more than just one brew a week.) After our long walk I was feeling the need for immediate refreshment so I went for a light and somewhat fruity pilsner, Radeberger. Steph, always the fan of dessert, even in her beer, chose an Aventinus, a particularly tasty wheat doppelbock by Schneider-Weisse that neither of us had tried before.

The Radeberger hit the spot. It went down easy, but I wouldn’t call it light by any stretch, just refreshing with a slightly bitter ending. And you know how I love a bitter ending. Being that it’s just so damn drinkable I finished by beer long before my wife even reached the halfway mark of her half liter. Clearly I would need to assist her.

Aventinus is pretty much the polar opposite of Radeberger with its dark brown color and its heavy dessert-like body. One whiff and Steph (whose senses are much more attuned then mine — if she liked beer half as much as I do I’d have to hand the whole column over to her) described it as banana bread. And she was right! Aventinus smells and tastes like banana bread. This pleasant surprise, in addition to the fact that we kept handing the mug back and forth and saying, “What about this sip? Still banana bread?” meant that I took down too much Aventinus in too little time, making it feel like I was carrying about 20 extra pounds for the short walk home. Also I should mention that Aventinus has an 8.2% alcohol by volume ratio, nearly twice Radeberger’s 4.8.

Our guest blogger from last week, KG (who will be back with me for future posts), said last week that he feels obliged to sample all the German beers that our German biergarten has to offer before moving on to the others. This sounded reasonable to me and then I immediately felt silly when I realized that, with the exception of a mention of Hofbrau Hefeweizen on my first go (actually, Steph’s choice), I had completely shunned German beers. Keep reading; we will remedy this.