Not so in Germany.
We pick up the malt, bag by bag. These are not the easy 50 pounders that Briess carries. These are 50 kg which equal about 110#. We wheel them into the truck and take them to the brewpub. From there, I off-loaded the bags while Bernhard wheeled them, two at a time, into the brewpub basement.
As I mentioned before, Bernhard doesn't brew with a huge variety of grain. It was basically Pilsener, Wheat and Munich. Nothing like the 30+ varieties that I keep on hand, but the Germans like to keep things simple. During the trip, we chatted about craft brewing in Germany. The city where Bernhard's main brewpub is is Kaiserslautern. It's about the size of Green Bay, and they do have a soccer team. In fact, "K-Town" was one of the host cities during the 2006 World Cup. Bernhard said that there used to be over 30 brewpubs in K-Town, and now there's only one. I asked why there was such a decline, and the answer was a familiar one. There was much consolidation as the brewpubs and craft breweries were bought out by mega-brewers. Then they started shutting them down, one-by-one. This is exactly what happened in America's brewing history. With any luck, Germany will experience the craft brewing Renaissance that America is seeing now.Once the grain was in place, it was time to head on out to Winnweiler to visit the Bischoff Brewery, which owns the brewpub where Bernhard brews. Unfortunately, their Brewmaster--as well as much of their staff--is on holiday, so I didn't get a chance to meet him. However, I did get to tour the brewery.
They brew 95 hectoliter batches, roughly 2500 gallons or 80 barrels--More than 10 times the amount we brew at a time. Here are a few photos of the "sudhaus":
The insides were immaculate, and that says a lot about the brewery operations here.
From there, we headed to the fermentation area but along the way I saw the "Hefereinzucht" or yeast banking area shown in the photo below. This is where they propogate huge amounts of yeast for brewing. Several vessels prop and store the different strains they use.
Next, I saw the "business end" of the fermenters. In the next picture you will see a series of cones coming through the ceiling above. The fermentation tanks, about 15 in all, protrude through the ceiling and attach to the piping to take the finished beer to the filter room and then to the bright tanks where the beer is either sent to the bottling line or kegging line.
When we were through at Bischoff, we headed back to K-Town to the brewpub because I had brought some St. Francis beer to share with Bernhard. When several of the Pub staff saw that I was bringing bottles out, they flocked, so a bunch of us tried out the Kolsch, Weisse, E.S.B. and Scotch Strong Ale. Now I get nervous bringing beer from the States. When I am doing some informal bottling of single bottles, I just fill them from the taps into sanitized bottles and cap them off. Then I wrap them in bubble wrap and store them in my checked baggage on my travel day. This is probably not legal, but the TSA has inspected my bags in the past and has not seemed to mind the 2-4 bottles that I bring along. However, quality control is out of my hands as soon as I close my suitcase. Of the four, three made the trip just fine. I did taste a bit of diacetyl in the Weisse, so this was not the best representation of that beer. However, the staff and Bernhard didn't seem to mind. The general consensus was very favorable. Bernhard prides himself on his Weisse, and he said that if he doesn't taste banana, it's scheiss! Thankfully, SFB's weisse is not short on banana esters!
On that note, my day with Bernhard had ended. On Thursday, my family and I head to Dublin until the 17th, and then I leave from Dublin to head back to the States. I look forward to trying Guinness the way it was meant to be tasted, and perhaps a nip of whiskey.
Until then.....
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