A photo a day while I was away: Berliner Kindl Weisse.

My aims these days tend to be modest. Berlin evidently is the über-center for beer geekiness, with numerous new wave breweries and brewers and beers, and with only two days on the ground, I chose instead to ignore them all and honor a solitary indigenous virtue by enjoying a Berliner Weisse.

This I did, sans schuss/syrup, in a beer garden located within the Volkspark Friedrichshain. It's where I worked as a volunteer in 1989, just before the Berlin Wall came down. The more recent beer garden in question stands on the spot where a simpler Imbiss once operated, one serving half-liter mugs of East German-brewed Berliner Kindl Weisse with raspberry syrup for less than 50 cents.

My work crew drank lunch there almost every day in 1989. I had just one in 2014, and enjoyed it very much. My ghosts were just as impressed.

When in Berlin, do as Mikkeller does? Huh?

We may be visiting Berlin during the September holiday in Europe, and accordingly, I conducted a few minutes of web research as to where one might find Berliner Weisse in its purest local form.

Immediately the search engine guided me to a site called Berlin Craft Beer, where I typed "Berliner Weisse" into the search window.

The result? "Nothing Found."

Upon closer examination, it appears this site caters to the New Orthodoxy, i.e., the notion of sought-after, boutique beers on all sides of every ocean, representing styles that formerly were localized, now international (IPA, et al), and which anyone who knows anything wants, right now.

That's all well and good. There's plenty of valuable information at this site. But I'm not sure it tells me very much about the sole beer style, at least to my knowledge, which was conceived in Berlin and is about Berlin. I'm not flying to Chicago, after all.

There'll be two, maybe three days for us there. The places I go, and the beers I drink, probably will not be those found at a designer beer bar catering to cross-national importer-exporter portfolios. I've nothing against these portfolios; it just isn't why I'd go to the trouble and expense of visiting Berlin. rather, I'm more interested in knowing what makes Berlin, Berlin.

I find it amusing that my stating this preference, I'm now once again in the position of being a revolutionary. Thank heavens for this planet's cyclical nature. If anyone reading can offer advice as to where I might experience Berliner Weisse to best effect, in Berlin, please shoot me a mail or comment. Thanks in advance.

Meet the brewers: Post-collaboration Flat12 celebration at the Public House on Thursday, June 28.

The actual brew date for the Flat12 Bierwerks collaboration with NABC is Thursday, June 28. However, rumor has it that the closely guarded process already may have begun. The finished product will be a Black Berliner Weisse.

After the brew day is done, you can meet the Flat12 and NABC brewers at the Public House. The usual lineup of NABC beers will be on tap as always, joined for the occasion by a mini-takeover of a half-dozen choices from Flat12:

Bourbon Barrel-aged Big Black Dog 68 Rye Stout
Moustache Ride Red
Kiwi Kiwi Hefeweizen
Summer Cycle IPA
Karousel Kolsch
F12 Amber