Weihenstephan Brewery Tour

Our friends from Atlanta came to visit -- so we drove to Salzburg and the boys trained in Munich's Olympic pool.

One other request they had was to get a brewery tour.  Frau A and I have toured a Bavarian microbrewery,
and a mid-sized brewery (both in "hopfenland" in northern Bavaria), but had not yet toured a brewery in Munich.

We blogged a bit about Weihenstephan before... first when we heard that they were collaborating with Sam Adams in the U.S. to brew a champagne beer, and then when we procured a bottle of "Infinium" and taste-tested it.

Things worked out just right:  they had only a morning on the last day before their flight out, but the Weihenstephan brewery had a morning tour -- and the brewery is located only 10 minutes from the airport!

First, Weihenstephan deserves some background.  We served their helles at our wedding, and we wrote/printed a handout for our guests at the reception that gave some background about the brewery's history and the beer:

"Weihenstephan makes a credible claim to be the oldest continuously-operated brewery in the world.

The formal brewery was established in 1040, about 972 years ago!  It has survived four fires (where it burned to the ground), three plagues, various famines, an earthquake, and being plundered during the 30 Years War and War of the Spanish Succession.  It has evolved from a monks' brewery, to the Royal Bavarian Brewery, and today is owned by the State of Bavaria (so they are only allowed to use Bavarian ingredients - water, malt, and hops, plus their secret strain of yeast).  Weihenstephan also has a science center and brewing school that is part of the Technical University of Munich.  People come from around the world to study with the scientists here, and their graduates find work as brewmasters with firms around the globe.  Despite the long tradition and award-winning variety of beers, Weihenstephaner is not allowed to have festival tents at Oktoberfest, because their brewery is not located within the city limits of Munich."

 A little of the Weihenstephan history and timeline

  725:            Small church established in Freising, with a Benedictine monk’s cell attached.

  768:            Earliest written records of beer brewing on site – local hops gardens make tithes to the church.

  811:             Augustinian Monastery formally established (in 1021 it became a Benedictine abbey).

 955:             Huns attack and plunder the monastery.  The first of many reconstructions required.

1040:            Formal brewery of Weihenstephaner founded, with a license to brew beer in the City of Freising.

1516:             The Rheinheitsgebot (Beer Purity Law) is established in Bavaria, first posted in Freising.

1803:            Monastery dissolved; state takes the assets and continues to run the farming/brewing activities.

1852:            An agricultural school transfers to Freising, together with students studying the art of brewing.

1919:            School elevated to the University for Agriculture and Brewing, and made part of TU Munich.

We met our tour guide, and he led us into a room for the introductory video.  The boys posed near the sign:

Our guide was no ordinary tourist baby-sitter.  He had already graduated from the Technical University of Munich with his brewing degree, and was now working on his PhD in nanofilters (with brewing application, or course)!

Our first stop was the mash house.  The thing that really impressed me was the incredible information and detail the guide gave -- we spent at least 20 minutes here, while he described the process in depth.  In fact, he asked who was a homebrewer.  One guy in our group was, and the guide went into complex chemistry points for him, about the steps in the process (removing certain byproducts, impact of other variables on the taste...).  He's a real expert!

The brewery was built on a hill, typical for "castles" hundreds of years ago.  There is also a spring 300m below from which the brewery gets its water, but today the cost of brewing on a hill is higher (e.g. water pumping, shipping).

We looked into the stainless steel kettles to see the mashing process in action.  (Our guide also explained why stainless steel is best, despite the traditional use of copper.)  I wish I had not been so busy snapping photographs...
I missed a lot of his detailed / science points about the brewing process.  Clearly I have to take the tour again...

One of the boys needed a little help in order to look into the kettles:

From the mashing room we moved to the fermenting room:

Note: above photo was bracketed and HDR/tonemapped using Photomatix

After the fermenting room, it was on to the bottling and kegging (and warehouse & shipping) area.

One difference between the U.S. and Germany is reusable bottles.  The U.S. recycles glass after one use, if I heard it correctly.  The bottles in Germany can be reused a dozen times or so (higher standards of wear).  But this means that they have to be collected, cleaned & shipped.  this video shows workers loading them onto the filling line:

Before filling, of course, bottles are cleaned both inside and out.  The cleaning process takes only about 2 shots of water per bottle, so it is quite efficient!  Any residual label paper is collected and spit out by this machine:

The plastic crates in which bottles are shipped are also washed by another gravity-fed machine:

Clean bottles line up on conveyors before the filling station:

This video tries to show a little of everything going on:  bottles on their way to the cleaning maching in the foreground.  In the background:  crates and clean bottles moving towards the filling machines. 

Finally, we saw the warehouse.  The yellow cases are Kirin Ichiban!  Weihenstephan brews it for them here:

The kegs are filled nearby.  A robot arm grabs four empty at a time for filling, then stacks them automatically:

After the tour's end, we headed to the biergarten for lunch and some beer, of course:

The biergarten is small but lovely.  The view atop the hill is nice.  Plus, our guide joined us for a beer!

As a bonus, Weihenstephan provides water for any dogs you bring to their biergarten:

It was a great tour, especially because the guide was a real expert and so friendly as to join us afterwards!

It is a highly recommended activity when you're in Munich, especially as a last-minute pre-airport event.

Wedding Week - Part 4

After a fun week of visiting friends, luncheons and rehearsal dinners, and the wedding ceremony itself, we could take a deep breath, relax, and enjoy the festivities. 

When we first talked about the wedding, we both immediately thought "wouldn't it be fun if we could bring Oktoberfest to Charleston?"  Well, we couldn't do quite that, but we did bring some Bavaria to the festivities. 

We held the reception back in Charleston, at the Old Exchange and Provost Dungeon. Not only is a beautiful and historic venue, but we also thought it would be pretty cool to offer a dungeon tour at our wedding reception!  So, during the cocktail our, the guests had a tour of the dungeon, where pirates and confiscated British tea were held and also where you can see the only remaining parts of Charleston's old city walls. I had no idea Charleston was a walled city, or that the water used to come up to the building. 

One of our hopes was to figure out how to get hops and good German beer. Luckily our wonderful florist and caterer were able to come through for us!  We decided to offer a selection of Munich beers - a Weihenstephaner helles, a Paulaner Weissbier, and a Franziskaner Dunkelweissbier. 

And of course some mini pretzels to snack on before the reception began. 

While our guests enjoyed beer and pretzels and a tour of the museum, Herr J and I stopped at our hotel to change into our Bavarian party clothes. 


Our bartender gets into the spirit, thanks to some dirndl and lederhosen aprons Herr J found online. 

However, my favorite party favor he found online was the Maβ coozy, lederhosen style.  (Luckily he saved one for me, and it took a trip to Oktoberfest this year)



Again, Sara, our awesome florist somehow divined from my explanations and random Pinterest ideas exactly what I envisioned for simple centerpieces... of course in Maβ glasses. 

Luckily the lebkuchenherzen we had shipped over arrived at the last minute and we were able to put them out on the table as decorations and more fun Bavarian things to take home. 


The father of the bride and ushers. 



Two of my favorite things about the room were the two fireplaces on each end, and the gorgeous caribbean blue ceiling that you can see in the mirror. 


And one of the moment's we'd been eagerly awaiting....the cake. Again, another example of a wonderful vendor who was able to create exactly what we wanted from what I'm sure was a very poor description.  If anyone in the Charleston area needs a cake (birthday, wedding, otherwise), I highly recommend our baker Tammy at Cakes by Kasarda... especially the "moist chocolate" flavor.  If you're getting married in the area, it's worth a visit to sample her cakes. We were blown away by the taste and by the presentation.  This was my first cake tasting ever, though Herr J had been with friends and to the wedding expo with his brother. So, when she brought out little slices of several types of cake, and then a plate of scoops of several frostings, and yet another plate of several fillings....well, I thought that was the normal way cake tasting went and was pretty excited for the next one. Though I did think it would be hard to top her cake - at least 3 flavors were the best example of that flavor cake I've ever tasted. 

Herr J tried to warn me that we should probably just cancel the other appointment and book Tammy, but I thought cake tasting was fun. As usual, he was right. The next place just brought out different samples of pre-frosted and assembled cakes. And they all had pretty much the same frosting and taste and I was wishing we'd skipped it.  

I will say that choosing the cake was really difficult, but we got exactly what we wanted thanks to Tammy's tasting where we could mix and match. And when I was having trouble deciding between the American buttercream that was just too sweet and the Swiss buttercream that could be a tiny bit sweeter, she suggested that she often just blends the two. So, we created a cake with perfect frosting and were able to alternate layers of cake - alternating vanilla and almond on the bottom tier, alternating vanilla and strawberry (and she blends fresh strawberries into the batter), and chocolate on top. I don't remember if the chocolate is mixed with vanilla or not....we'll see when we next visit my parents and take it out of the freezer! 





A toast by the best man...

... and the maid of honor.  We realized with a laugh when they signed the marriage book as witnesses for us that we chose well...between the two of them, we have attorneys licensed to practice in at least 3 states. 

And then it was time for the dances. First, father and daughter.
 

 And then our first dance together.

And then, time to eat!  When we started this process, I was a little worried we wouldn't find German food. I'd found what looked like a good German restaurant in town, but it had closed. And caterers mostly focused on Asian, Mexican, or Southern food.  Had we gotten married 3 hours west in Spartanburg (home of the BMW plant), I think we would have had a plethora of options for Bavarian food. But, luckily my father found a local caterer who said "you want to do Oktoberfest for your reception? We've never done German before, but that sounds fun!" And when she came back with a proposed menu based on internet research, she said that the one dish that kept popping up as classic German food was this thing call currywurst.  

In the end, we went with our favorite German dish (actually Schwabisch, not Bavarian), zwiebelrostbraten and käsespätzle. For those who haven't had the pleasure, it's basically steak with fried onions on top. It's often served with a beer sauce and with käsespätzle, which I like to call German artisanal mac and cheese. Yum!  

 

And we did have a sausage and sauerkraut bar. They found some great bratwurst and served it on a bun with mustard or as currywurst. And did a realy good job with the sauerkraut. We also had some green asparagus, rice pilaf, and baked apples.  We weren't sure how it would work, but Cru Catering did a fantastic job. They also managed to serve incredibly tender steak, which is always a big risk to cook for such a large party. 

 
I think we should have practiced cutting the cake - I had no idea it would be so difficult to get the slice out of there! 

 

One thing that was difficult to find in Germany for an American wedding was a cake cutter. I'm not well versed enough in German weddings to know if a ceremonial cake cutter isn't normally used, or if the cutting of the cake just isn't a big thing (or the cake itself).  In any event, when we described to a sales lady at a big kitchen store what we were looking for, she said they didn't carry anything like that, but they did have a ceremonial knife for cutting stollen. Dresdner stollen, to be precise. We figured it was pretty cool and sword-looking and we could combine another German state into the mix, so why not?

Apparently this is a replica of the Giant Dresden Stollen Knife, which was 1.6 meters long.  Augustus the Strong, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, was said to love holding festivals. In 1730, he held a magnificent baroque festival for which he commissioned an 1.8 ton (18 yards long by 8 yards wide) stollen (traditional Christmas cake).  It took 8 horses to bring the stollen to the table and in order to cut such a cake, he had a 12 kg silver knife forged. 

After going into the Saxon treasury and surviving the November Revolution, it was lost after being hidden away from the advancing Red Army at the end of World War II. 

After much research, a replica was created and they market more manageable sized versions.  Next Christmas, we'll be cutting our stollen in style and remembering our wedding day. 
 

We had the chance to catch up with family and friends, some of whom we hadn't seen in too long.  And to learn something new about some....for example that our cousins knew every song and every dance....we were impressed!

 

A little more dancing before the night ended. 

And the last minute gummis we'd ordered to replace the favor bags that hadn't arrived.... 

....but luckily arrived the morning of the wedding!

 
After the reception ended, we went up to the rooftop of the Vendue Inn for a drink with friends.  

We then returned to the hotel, just to add a little more laughter to the week.  After we'd finally cleared off everything we'd left on the bed in our haste to get ready, we finally went to bed. I thought it was strange the duvet was wet, but it seemed to just be water, and it wouldn't surprise me if I left a wet towel or spilled water on it or something like that. Not 5 minutes later I jump up as something wet starts coming out of the ceiling. The mystery of the wet duvet is solved by the water leaking out of the vent in the ceiling. Luckily they had a vacant room across the hall and we just slept there - in a nice clean and uncluttered room. 

The next morning we hurried to pack everything up and met some Dallas friends at High Cotton for breakfast before we all headed out of town. 

I can't say enough about the food in the area. There are so many great restaurants around, and not only in downtown Charleston. Here's a sampling of the wonderful breakfast. 

Johnny Cakes
 Biscuits and Cornbread (with sweet butter)

Chicken and Waffles

Corned beef and hash

 

shrimp and grits

And one of the most thoughtful (and tasty) gifts we've ever seen.  My oldest friend (we go back to 3rd grade) came to the wedding. She's a pretty excellent baker and cookie decorator and she left a box of homemade love heart cookies for us at the hotel.  And she took the time to look up a bunch of different love sayings in German to write on the hearts. So cute! And they were really tasty, melt in your mouth shortbread kind of cookies. 

 

 

With full bellies and a few hours before I had to fly out for business meetings (sad to leave my new hubby, but he was flying home the next day), we decided to go back to Frankie's Fun Park for some mini-golf. We didn't have time for golf the day we drove the go-karts.  

This time, with wedding rings!

I've always been pretty terrible at air hockey, but I think getting married changed that. Best air hockey performance of my life!

 

We finished up the day with this crazy Speed of Light game they have. We took a video of some other people playing it. You compete against each other and earn points for hitting the lighted buttons. I think you get more points depending on how quickly you hit them in a row and may lose points for mistakes. And then there's a bonus round to hit as many as you can in a short time. It's out of control and addictive and fun. 

And then Herr J dropped me at the airport and I spent the week in New York.  We had a friend getting married the following weekend in another part of Germany, so I flew into Frankfurt. Coincidentally another friend from London was attending the wedding and flying in from New York, so Herr J picked us up in Frankfurt and we all went to the wedding. 

And when we finally returned to Munich that Sunday, we dropped off the rental car and had our first meal in Munich as husband and wife and had our first Oktoberfest beer of the season. A lovely evening at Augustiner am Dom

dining on our favorite zwiebelrostbraten!

A huge thanks to all of our family and friends who travelled to celebrate with us, and to all of our amazing vendors who made this work for two crazy people trying to arrange a wedding by phone and internet. And to our wonderful pastor who was willing to work outside the box and did many of our pre-wedding counseling sessions by Skype.  With everyone's help, we had our dream wedding!

All photos of reception by Marni Rothschild.

A Schnitzelbahn History: the beer blogs

We've received some feedback from readers that we should add "index" pages for specific content.
An index page is better than the Categories ("Navigation" on the right side of this page) because
you don't have to scroll through entries you've already seen -- instead, just go to the entry you want.

So, here is a brief index of our blog entries about beer:

- We put together a NCAA Basketball Tournament-style, 64-beer bracket, and tasted down to a champion.
   The "beer tournament" has its own index here going through every round of the competition.

- We tasted the starkbiers (bockbiers) from four of Munich's big breweries.

- Pope Benedict XVI is Bavarian, so naturally we blogged about the Pope Beer.
  This would go perfectly with the beer stein with the Lord's Prayer on it.

- Frau A made me a Christmas Advent calendar:  a case of beer.  24 in total, a different one each day.

- Companies are experimenting with champagne-style beers, such as these from...
   -  Sam Adams and Weihenstephaner (follow-up tasting here) and
   -  Sylter Hopfen

- In another German-U.S. collaboration, Schneider Weisse and Brooklyn Brewery joined forces to create a
   "pale weissbock".  We tasted this and report on it here.

- One German company tried using American-style longneck bottles with an opener on the bottom.
  In the same post, a couple of videos show you how to correctly pour a weissbier.

- Passing through Barcelona, we tested two Spanish beers (A.K. Damm and Estrelladamm).

We have also had some fun & interesting brewery and other related tours:

- We took a tour of the Kuchlbauer brewery and the crazy/unique "beer & art" Hundertwasser tower.
   Part 1 is here, and Part 2 is here.

- The owner of the Lamplbräu microbrewery, in the heart of hops country, gave us a great walk-through.

- In the Hallertau region of Germany, we walked through hops fields and later through the Hops Museum.

We'll keep adding to this index page as more blog posts fall into this category...

Bored guys put underwater camera in beer

One could probably fill an encyclopedia of YouTube videos created by bored guys.

I found this one because I'm looking into getting a "tough" compact camera -- waterproof to 10m, drop-proof, freeze-proof, etc.  (There seem to be some decent models by Panasonic, Olympus, and Canon.)

In this video, they take the Olympus TG-1, turn on the video recording, and dunk it in a pitcher of lager:

I'm wondering two things...

1)  Where did they film this?  It looks like a chemistry lab from 1920.

2)  Did they drink the beer afterwards?

Schneiderweisse Meets Brooklyn

Over Christmas, we made a trip to the Charleston Beer Exchange to see what kind of German beers they had.  While we were pleased to see they carried Augustiner Edelstof Export, we were more excited to try a couple of the beers we'd heard about but hadn't been able to find here. First, we tried the Sam Adams - Weihenstephaner Infinium collaboration.  Given that it was a bit of a novelty (a champagne beer), we were more excited to see that they carried the Schneiderweisse-Brooklyn Brewery collaboration. 

I've generally enjoyed the Brooklyn brews that I've tried in NY restaurants when travelling. Please don't ask me to tell you which ones, but they are usually a solid choice when you don't know any of the beers on the menu.  And I really like Schneider's dunkleweissbier. 

Before we get to the collaboration, a bit about Schneider.  Officially known as G. Schneider & Sohn, this is Munich's oldest weissbier brewery (founded in 1872) and is still owned by the Schneider family today.

After several expansions and destruction of the Munich facilities in WWII, its beers are produced across Bavaria, with local ingredients such as Hallertau hops. After wheat beer lost its popularity in the mid-1800s, the king decided to sell brewing rights, and the Schneider brewery was born. It's not always the easiest beer to find on store shelves, but it's worth a try. And you can always find it at the historic Schelling Salon. 

Back to the collaboration.... according to the back label:

Schneider & Brooklyner Hopfen-Weisse is a collaboration between brewmasters Hans-Peter Drexler of the Schneider Weissbier Brewery and Garrett Oliver of The Brooklyn Brewery.  Garrett and Hans-Peter have long admired each other's beers.  Now together they bring you a new sensation, a pale weissbock robustly dry-hopped with the Hallertauer Saphir variety grown in the fields near the Schneider brewery.  Hoppy, zesty and supremely refreshing, Schneider & Brooklyner Hopfen-Weisse is a delicious blend of Bavarian craftsmanship and American ingenuity. 

There actually are two versions of this collaboration:

In the first (which is what we tried), Oliver travelled to Schneider's Kelheim brewery and the two brewmasters used Hallertau Saphir hops to dry hop the brew.

Later, Drexler travelled to Brooklyn (bringing his weissbier yeast with him), and they brewed another version using American hops for the dry hopping. 

The dry-hopping technique is also a bit unusual, for a European or a weissbier. Normally, hops are added toward the end of the wort boiling stage. However, this boiling often greatly reduces the aromatic properties of the hops. So, sometimes the brewers add unpasteurized hops to the beer after the wort has cooled in order for the beer to soak up the flavor and aroma of the hops. This is very common for an IPA and is becoming more widely used in the US. It's not very common in Germany, and is quite unusual for a weissbier. In this case, the beer was open fermented for a week, then transferred to another tank to complete the fermentation atop the dry hops. After removing the hops, the beer follows the rest of the weissbier brewing process...adding a little unfermented beer before bottling it and letting a secondary fermentation in the bottles create those lovely little weissbier bubbles.

For any of you home brewers out there, BrewersFriend has some good tips on dry hopping your home brew.

We quite enjoyed this tasting. Collaborations are always fun, and this Hefe-Weizen Ale (8.2% ABV) was something different.  It wasn't bitter, but it was a good weissbier for someone who doesn't love theirs so sweet and banana-clovey. Unfortunately we didn't have the chance to compare both versions, but we did find two guys online who reviewed both. 

Starkbier Tasting

Every year in the weeks leading up to Easter, Munich holds its other beer festival - Starkbierfest. 

This one is a lot of fun, because it still involves beer, chicken, trachten, and schlager, but it's much more relaxed and less crowded than Oktoberfest. Perhaps because there are fewer tourists, or perhaps because it's spread out over multiple venues and runs 3 to 4 weeks.  Whatever the reason, it's a lot of fun!  However, this festival doesn't have all the rides and carnival games and food....no, it's all about the beer. And the beer is strong!

Starkbierfest at Paulaner am Nockherberg

The origins of Starkbierfest date back to the mid-1700s, and starkbier itself a hundred years earlier. The monks at Paulaner started brewing this "liquid bread" (flussiges Brot) and drinking it through Lent, when they had to fast.  The Bavarian rulers of course turned it into a public festival, and Starkbierfest was born. 

Today, many breweries produce a Starkbier, which basically is a doppelbock. Though the "strong" in "starkbier" refers to the wort, it is also worth noting before you head to a festival where beer is served by the liter, that it's also quite strong. Usually around 8% ABV. 

The most popular sites for Starkbierfest are Paulaner's am Nockherberg and the Löwenbräukeller.  There are others, and of course restaurants from most major breweries (Augustiner, Ayinger, Hacker Pschorr, etc) will offer their starkbier seasonally. For some reason, most starkbiers have names ending in -ator, such as Celebrator (Ayinger) or Maximator (Augustiner).

But, we rarely have a chance to compare starkbiers head-to-head. So, we brought home the four we could purchase to go. Paulaner's Salvator is the best-known and is available year round. In fact, it was a huge hit in the Schnitzelbahn Beer Tournament, going all the way to the final four before losing to the eventual champion, Andechs Weissbier. Löwenbräu's Triumphator also is available year round in stores, but Augustiner's Maximator and Hacker-Pschorr's Animator are truly seasonal beers. 

In the first round of our Beer Tournament, we did have Löwenbräu and Paulaner in the Starkbier Round.  But we weren't able to get the others then. So now we have a rematch, with a couple of other competitors. 

First up was Paulaner's Salvator vs Augustiner's Maximator. Note the difference in color? The Paulaner was much lighter than the Augustiner. 

Both were excellent, and it was a split-decision. Herr J preferred the Paulaner, with its distinctive starkbier taste and sweetness. I preferred the Augustiner, which was seemed a little more balanced to me in both hoppiness (not very) and malt flavor. It reminds me of the Traditionsbier served in the historic Oktoberfest tents the past 2 years. And that was good beer!! 

 

Then we tried the Hacker-Pschorr vs the Löwenbräu...no contest. Much to our surprise, the Hacker-Pschorr was a very smooth, malty and drinkable beer. The Löwenbräu was a little bitter and just not so good. 

 

A fun experiment for a rainy evening. We're looking forward to Starkbierfest next year!

On a side note, an American homebrewer last year decided to walk in the Paulaner monks' path (and blog about it) and fasted for Lent, having only doppelbock.  You can see his adventures at Diary of  Part-time Monk.

Champagne Beer Part 2: Infinium

We previously tried the Sylter Hopfen champagne-style beer and have talked about German brewery Weihenstephaner's collaboration with Samuel Adams to create the Inifinium champagne-style beer. 

Finally, we tried it over Christmas. There are two versions available - one produced in Germany and one produced in the US (Boston, of course). 

We tried the US-made one, which we found at the wonderful Charleston Beer Exchange. This is a little beer store in the historic distric of Charleston, which has a wide selection of craft and international beers (they have Augustiner Edelstof Exportbier!!) and holds monthly beer tasting dinners. 

The first thing we noticed was the color, a rich amber hue. Like champagne, it maintained its small bubbles. It poured with quite a significant head, though it's settled down significantly in the picture.

As expected, it definitely had a yeasty flavor. While the smell was a bit more complex, the malt and yeast were what we tasted most. And the "beer" part of the taste was much more of an ale than a lager.  Overall, it's not bad and we're glad we tried it. But it probably isn't a beer we'd buy again. It's more of an interesting idea and something fun to try than a good beer of which you'd want to drink a whole bottle.  (And btw, it's best served cold)

I'm not sure exactly what you're supposed to pair with champagne-style beer, but as we were at my parents' house we tried it with some great Corky's ribs and Dad's famous homemade onion rings. Yum!