EBG Rating: 8.6/10

Choice/Quality of Drinks:
❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
Their own light and dark beers with some bottles and seasonal specials, while also offering their own Schnapps/brandies from their distillery.

Style/Décor:
❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
Wonderfully conceived traditional pub with adjoining events hall. Much of this stemmed from a successful 1980s renovation but many of the choices would lead you to believe it stems back a long time before that. They have done a careful job to leave traces and hints of their original early 20th century conception. Pub room is in the entrance with long bar down a corridor leading to the events hall and bowling alley.

Atmosphere/Character:
❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
A lovely, low-key main pub room with locals chatting and playing games, with friendly engaging service. More gregarious in the events room.

Amenities/Events:
❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
Own brewed beer and spirits, merchandise, live events, bowling alley, snacks, outdoor seating, brewery tours and tastings, guestrooms.

Value For Money:
❤️❤️❤️
Typical prices for the area.

Description:
Nolte’s Inn, a family-run venture stretching back to 1906 incorporated a brewery on their premises in 1993, one of the first wave of post-reunification brewpubs.

Today, you’ll find one of the best examples of a hospitality business understanding what parts to preserve and what new to introduce.

Based in the former town of Hagen, now a district of Lüneburg, you’ll need to take a bus here unless you’re going direct from the train station (in which case it’s a manageable walk). It’s suburban and given the location, town and region, the last place you’d think to find a business of this nature.

Retaining an events hall (and bowling alley), a brewkit that is so well integrated it looks like it was always there, and a traditional pub, the setup feels more similar to something you’d find in Franconia – about the highest praise you could lavish on a German brewpub.

Some of you will be wondering by this point what the beer is like. Their Helles is unfiltered, zingy and peppery, with some of the North German influences evidence. Their Dunkel is brown going on reddish and full flavoured, both commendable. They also do a bottle range including some craft styles, stout etc. These are all certified Organic.

They also have a Brennerei, a distillery where they distil Schnapps among a few other treats.

As a pub-restaurant their food hits the mark, and they have won Slow Food awards, ensuring less microwaved stuff and instead home-cooked food where all ingredients are source and listed on their website.

A 1 hour tour of the brewery and beer tasting session can also be arranged in advance if you desire,

The hall hosts film festivals, music nights, quizzes and miscellaneous other events, providing constant reasons to come back.

Just as you think they’ve exhausted amenities, they also offer rooms, it’s an Inn too.

Unfortunately, like most of the region they aren’t open on Sundays and Mondays, so keep that in mind.

That small blemish aside, the array of reasons to visit Nolte is frankly outstanding, while the simplest, and primary reason – a place to go for a beer with friends, is executed with panache.

Just by writing this up we’ve stored up a deep desire to return. This is a truly superb operation among the best in Europe.