Zötler Bier Kaliningrad: Buy One and Get One Free!

I don’t often see double before I start drinking

28 November 2025 – Zötler Bier Kaliningrad: Buy One and Get One Free!

There is a place in New Orleans, but I bet you can’t buy one beer there and get one free, whereas, in Kaliningrad there is, and you can.

Not that the prospect of two beers for the price of one is any inducement, but where, hypothetically speaking, would one find this establishment if one wanted to spectate this phenomenal practice? More to the point, what is this place called?

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Zötler Bier Kaliningrad

I am itching to write ‘Zotler Beer’, but the actual name of the beer restaurant, which, when spelt Germanely using an umlaut (ö), not to be confused with an omelette, is Zötler Bier, and just to confuse you more, there are two of them in Kaliningrad: one in the centre on Leninsky Avenue and the other somewhere else, in another part of the city, on Gorky Street to be exact.

This review concerns the Gorky Street establishment. I would like to say that it is tucked away, as the expression ‘tucked away’ is such a nice one, isn’t it? But as Gorky Street is a fairly busy thoroughfare, a more accurate description would be that it’s off the predictable tourist route.

Allowing for the fact that my three visits to this establishment have been lunchtime and early-evening encounters, on all three occasions Bavaria in Gorky Street has been a lot quieter and more sedate than its city-centre counterpart. So, if you want the same, or similar, and would rather have it quieter, Gorky Street is the place for you.

Zötler Bier Kaliningrad

Zötler Bier Restaurant, both of them, in fact, are often described by trip advising and restaurant review sites as ‘offering an authentic German atmosphere’; this description is not entirely true. What you get at both branches is a themed Bavarian fantasy that owes its quintessential German impression to the caricatured Bavarian interior and the presence of often comely waitresses dressed like German Heidis. I say, chaps, we are not about to argue with that, are we!

An olde-world décor is echoed in both Zötler Bier establishments, with retro half-timbered wall fretwork, replica metal advertising plaques, shelf-displayed and wall-mounted curios and framed prints of various kinds. The dark-wood veneering of the 1980s/1990s has primarily been eschewed in Zötler in preference for a light pine or beechwood, and the salient gimmick, which is Zötler’s branding icon, is the prevalent inclusion of semi-private booth seating created in the image of giant beer barrels. The visual impact that these seats have leaves a lasting impression. I am not suggesting that you climb into them from the top; their design is cross-sectional, each with a panel cutaway, making it easier to get into them than a Watney’s Party Seven.

Mick Hart and Olga Hart at Zötler Bier Kaliningrad

From any angle, they look like giant, wooden fairground waltzers, the essential difference being that their only motion in Zötler is when you might have had one too many, which, of course, being something I’ve never experienced, I rely on you tell me about.

Pretending that you are sitting inside a giant beer barrel is as good a reason as any I can think of for going to a particular bar, but it’s not the be-all and end-all of all reasons. For example, meat eaters, of which I am not one, are lured to Zötler by its reputation for such Bavarian-billed dishes as fragrant pork knuckle with real stewed German cabbage and delicious sausages. The sausages are big, long, curling German ones. I cannot comment on the pork knuckle, as I haven’t caught sight of it personally. I saw a lot of knuckle in Rushden pubs, but they were usually attached to the end of very large tattooed hands and arms, some of which came flying in my direction even though I am vegetarian. “You wouldn’t hit a vegetarian who would rather be drinking out of glasses than wearing them, would you?” Pass the Band-Aid.

Here is a direct link to the Zötler menu > Bavarian restaurant Zötler

Once upon a time, there was an advertising slogan in the UK that went something like, “I’m only here for the beer!” According to Zötler’s website, the family-owned Zötler Brewery has been providing PAs like me (PA, as you know, being an initialism for a Perfectionist Ale drinker) with mighty fine beers since 1447 – that’s a long time, and I don’t mean since just gone a quarter to three.

Mick Hart with retro sign in Kaliningrad beer bar

Unlike Coca-Cola, there is no myth surrounding Zötler’s secret to brewing beers of a superior quality. This might be because Zötler’s ‘Three secrets of excellent beer’ is hardly a secret, although they publicise it as such.

The first secret that isn’t is pasteurisation, and that secret is no pasteurisation! “After the foam is poured into barrels and bottles, it should get into the consumer’s glass as soon as possible.”

I’m certainly with them on that one!

Secret number 2: “Shivers of our own production.” That’s not ‘shivers’ in the sense of what runs through one like a lightning conductor in full conduction mode when, having signed off a publication, you notice after the fact that the name of the sponsor is spelt incorrectly. (Don’t worry about it; it’s a publishing thing.) Zötler goes on to clarify, “In order for the product to be of the highest quality, manufacturers use shivers of their own production, which are applied only once. In comparison, many breweries use the same yeast 10 to 15 times.”

We’re really talking freshness here!

Secret number 3: “The purest alpine water.” This is not the sort of thing you wouldn’t want to hear. Elaboration: “The production is located at the foot of Mount Grünten, one of the most famous mountains in the Bavarian Alps. Locals attribute magical charm to the Alps and life-giving properties to the water.”

Do you know, I’m rather pleased to hear that, for it brings me round quite nicely to my opening paragraph, in which I state, somewhat glibly you might opine, that I have discovered somewhere where when you buy one beer, you get one free. Sounds too good to be true? Well, fact is sometimes better than fiction, and truth is often more true than a lie. At Zötler in good old Gorky Street, Kaliningrad, Wednesday, all day, is promotional Wednesday: for each beer you buy, you get another one free. All that extra life-giving water free!

I am notoriously poor at maths, which possibly explains why when I ordered four pints (half-litres to be precise) of Zötler’s non-filtered beer, at the end of the evening and the next day, as odd as it sounds, I had the distinct feeling of having consumed double that amount. I cannot attribute it to the pork knuckles or to overdoing it with a large German sausage, as I only had a baked potato. Would it make me a local if I attributed the experience of drinking and seeing double to the magical charm of the Alps and the life-giving properties of their special water?

Good beer. Good grub. Great Bavarian ladies. And all to be enjoyed whilst sitting inside a beer barrel!

Zötler Bier (Beer) Restaurants. Frequentable at any time, and on Wednesdays you drink in stereo.