Need a good beer? Hop off the Forest M train stop and amble past Bosna Express — with its enormous Balkan burgers — to the entrance of Gotscheer Hall, an old German outpost that looks like a funeral hall. Hidden bathrooms, multiple floors, and thick carpeting suggests a Milwaukee church, circa 1972. But the bar is a magical place, a Lynchian waterhole with good German brews on tap, more in the bottle, and ageing German stalwarts from the neighborhood.

	Gottscheer Hall 657 Fairview Ave. (at Linden) 718-366-3030 Food: Thu-Sat 5-11 pm Bar: Mon, Tue, Thu, Fri open from 4pm | Wed, Sat, Sun open from 1pm
	Schnitzel with red cabbage and fried potatoes. (Scarlett Lindeman/BushwickBK) view slideshow>>

Since the early 1940s the hall has served the German community in Ridgewood as a cultural hub — for relief society gatherings, company parties, and when there’s not a boisterous wedding celebration, a quiet place to get a drink. Step inside the hall and gaze upward — framed photos of frauleins from years past, with their satiny Gottscheer ribbons, beam down from their ring around the ceiling. Inside the faux-wood paneled bar an incredible turquoise refrigerator from the early 20th century hulks in the corner. The two TVs are tuned to game shows while old men talk on iPhones. The new bartender is learning how to make his first martini. Gosser, Spaten, and Bud are on tap and Gluh wine, spiced, sweet, and warm, comes in glass teacups.

The kitchen offers heavy, honest fare: corned beef, onion soup, German-style potato salad, and dense pancakes with applesauce. Sauerbrauten, traditionally the worst cut or horse meat, is marinated in a spicy vinegar slosh, “for like a week,” our barkeep laughed. There are sausages, of course, brat or krainerwurst from a pork store nearby. “Where’s Morsher’s?” the barkeep called to the bar. The three guys hunched over glasses of wine pointed to the right, in unison.

The sausages are good, propped up on beds of braised sauerkraut, mild and winey. Melted onions and tomato paste lend their hand to goulash, a beef stew made for soaking into spaetzle, the squiggly German noodles. Even better is the baked spaetzle, encased in three cheeses and béchamel in a huge crock, crunchy around the edges.  This is brawny food. Winter-fighting food. Kitchen-table staples you can still find at church mixers and potlucks in the Midwest. If it’s available, get the schnitzel. Pork or chicken, even when it’s blonde on one side and a dark brunette on the other, it is juicy and densely crisp; red cabbage, braised into the intersection of sour and sweet, is the perfect accompaniment. The plates are clunky, sometimes luke-warm, and in desperate need of salt.

But the jukebox is always loaded and may be the best classic rock box in Brooklyn, slipping out CCR and Dire Straights with your kraitwurst.  Marmalade-filled crepes with Jim Morrison? They never tasted so sweet.