Breweries, Breweries

Since my last post we have visited four breweries: two brew pubs and two big brew factories. On Sunday we went to Brauhaus Spandau in Berlin and saw the old copper brewing kettles they've been using forever, along with a visible open fermentation room which was really cool and the only one we've seen. All others are closed fermentation. We got to taste both their light and dark lagers and both were delicious. The tour was really interesting as it had a very similar set up to the old brewery at the museum. Then we had the afternoon free so most of us went to the Jewish Museum which not only had exhibits on the holocaust, but also the history of the Jewish people in Germany and their culture. I found it both fascinating and moving, especially the holocaust tower, a dark, unheated room with the only light a small slit in a corner near the ceiling. Being alone in the near black room that towered overhead made me feel overwhelmingly small and a bit frightened alone. It was a relief to step back into the museum that was well lit and full of people. There was also the Garden of Exile which was outside and was a bunch of square stone columns with trees growing out of the top on slanted ground. The slantedness of the garden made it difficult to walk through the columns and though you wanted to walk under the trees it was very dark and slippery and I usually had to catch myself on the stone to keep from falling. It gave me a very strange feeling that I'm not sure I could describe.

On Monday we went to VLB, the German brewing school in Berlin where you can become a certified brewer. We were there on the first day of classes for the international students so not only did we get a tour and a sensory panel to test our tasting abilities, we also went to an open forum with some of the big wigs of the brewing industry, including marketing and equipment production and distribution. I think my favorite part was the tour of the laboratories where the tested the different characteristics and ingredients in the beer. I found myself planning how to turn one of our labs at Linfield into a beer-testing lab. We already have most of the equipment so it would be very easy. It was very interesting, but I was too tired after to stay for the reception which I'm slightly sad I missed. I did get to back to the hotel and nap though so I could go out for karaoke! We went to the Irish pub not far from the hotel and I sang "Killing in the Name" by Rage Against the Machine. I thought it was awesome and it seemed to pump up the energy in the place as all we were hearing since we came in were slow songs. After being unable to convince my fellow students to sing something, I also did Billy Joel's "Still Rock and Roll to me" but it was not quite as energetic. I had a black and tan at the pub and then a regular Guinness, which tastes very different from the Guinness we get in the US. The foam almost tasted like chocolate, it was so rich and creamy. The whole beer was. 

Yesterday we took a train to Leipzig where we toured two breweries: Reudnitzer Brewery and Bayerischer Banhof. The Reudnitzer Brewery was the first big brewery we had seen and it was huge! One of the fermentation tanks could hold more beer than one person could drink in a life time if they started at infancy and drank 33 0.3L beers a day until they died of very old age. And they had a lot of them. Bottle everywhere too! The assembly line of the bottling plant was mesmorizing. I found it funny that even though everything is bigger, the process is exactly the same: mill the grain, mash the wort, boil for an hour adding hops, cool, ferment, condition, and bottle/serve. 7 steps that I feel will be repeated over and over as we tour more breweries, but it will be interesting to see the differences in machinery and small parts of the process. For the first time we got to see hop extract as the other brewery had hop pellets, and it smelled strong! Also the Reudnitzer had a cultish beer called Sternburg which the fans had created an entire room and much more for. It kind of felt like hipter's love for PBR, but with a beer that is actually drinkable. Then we went to Bayerischer Banhoff which is a small brew pub that is housed in an old train station that was badly damaged in the war and remodeled after reunification. There we had lunch and tried Gose, a sour/salty beer that is only found in this area. It was actually very drinkable, and not as salty as I had expected but still sour. The brew master that gave us a tour even said they export some to 24 of the states so I suggest you take a look! It is very unique and you might not like it because of the sourness that comes from lactic acid made by bacteria. In the old days the bacteria was put live into the beer to make the lactic acid and it gave people the runs, but don't worry. Nowadays we know better and the lactic acid bacteria are kept separate while they do their thing and the lactic acid is extracted and cleaned before being put in the beer :) I really like the brewmaster at this pub as you could just feel his passion for beer as he took us proudly through his pub and explained all the equipment and processes. I must say the day was a lot of walking as we didn't have public transport passes in Leiptzig and had to traipse back and forth across the town to the breweries. This made us very tired so of course we had to stop and have more beer! We got to go to the bar under the city hall, which has a special name but I can't remember it. It was very nice under there and I had a nice dark beer. Most of the others had another Gose but from a different brewer and they said it was much more salty and they didn't like it as much.

Today we went to the Schultheiss Brewery and went on a tour there. I thought it was very similar to Reudnitzer, though it was much bigger, but the equipment and process was much the same. However they had a cool PowerPoint that helped explain things in detail and laid out the whole process at once which was very helpful. They also make a very fine powdery wort which they then have to filter before boiling, a little different from the last brewery. We then got to taste all of their different beers, all of which I liked an many of which I had already bought in Berlin as they are a Berlin brewery. The Markescher Landmann is still my favorite by far but the Berliner Kindl bock is also very good, as was the Berliner Pilsner. Now it's off to pack as we are going to Munich tomorrow! I'm sorry I don't have time to post pics now, but I will get them up as soon as I can!