Our tour today began at Krones. Krones is a manufacturer of brewing equipment: most notably, bottling lines. We started our tour with a presentation on different types of filling lines and business statistics. The first part felt a lot like a sales pitch, but it was interesting nonetheless. After looking at a lot of sales charts and stats, we talked about low pressure evaporation systems that could potentially revolutionize the brewing industry. The systems cut energy input by reducing evaporation temperatures and utilizing pressure to strip volatile compounds found in malt. After our presentations, we walked through the factory and observed engineers assembling bottling lines and boilers. We ended our tour with a lunch in the Krones cafeteria.
Our next stop was Schneider Weisse. They gave us the best tourer have had yet. They showed us their 5 vessel brewhouse and they even gave us just about enough information to recreate their recipes. They then took us to their barrel aging room and told us what types of barrels they use for which beers. The only beers they are barrel aging now are their weizenbock and their eisbock and they only use strong red-wine barrels from France. After the barrel room, we got to see their open fermenters. Wheat beers are typically fermented in shallow, open fermentation vessels. Typically, the only people allowed in the fermentation cellar are the 6 brewers at Schneider Weisse, so for our class to be allowed in was pretty special. I did take pics, but I cannot upload them right now on our bus. The last thing we did was drink 6 of the beers from their Tap series. The most popular one with the Americans was the hopfenweisse, but my personally favorite was the blonde weisse. All of the beers are fermented with the same yeast and very similar malt bills, but they were all very unique. It was a great tour. Now, it is time for a break from class. I'll be going to Cantillon tomorrow and then heading up to Amsterdam for the weekend. It's going to be great!
Thursday, April 17, 2014
Wednesday, April 16, 2014
Tour Day 2 and 3
I never got a chance to blog yesterday as a result of a beer dinner late last night. This tour so far has been partially a study tour and partially a beer drinking marathon. Each brewery we have visited has shown us great hospitality, feeding us, and giving us lots of samples.
Yesterday, we started the day at Zipf. They were a fairly large brewery, similar to Stiegl two days ago. They are owned by Heineken and they told us a lot about brewery safety. Since selling out to Heineken, they have not had an accident in the brewery that resulted in injury. Previous to the buyout, they had about 15 injuries per year. They made us wear orange vests so that we were visible to forklifts and they had walking areas designated with paint. After our tour of the brewery, they gave each of us a coupon book with coupons for 4 beers and a lunch. I personally was not ready to drink 2 liters of beer at 11:30 a.m. so I only used two of my beer coupons and got a lunch.
Next, we got on the bus to Eggenberg. They had a really cool brewery in a castle, and they even had a chapel where they host special Mass and Weddings. Their brewhouse was pretty modern and mostly automated. They had a seperate building for their lauter tun as a result of running out of space when they recently expanded. At the end of that tour, they let us try their Marzen lager and they also gave us a sample of the beer that used to be the strongest beer in the world at 14% ABV.
To end the night, we went to the Bierkulinarium where we had one of the best dinners I have ever had. It was a 5 course beer pairing led by the highest ranking beer sommelier in the world. Each course was very well paired with the beers they served us and the food was great. We also were able to buy beers from pub and I just happened to stumble upon a bottle of Westy 12. It was exciting to get to try it for the first time.
This morning we toured the Schlagl monestary. Their brewhouse would have been considered very modern and innovative 50 years ago. They had an "automated" system that used valves and a control panel that looked like it came out of a 1960's Martian movie. Their brew kettle was actually rhombus shaped and doubled as a mash cooker. In addition to brewing beer to support their monestary, they also contract bottle for some other breweries and they bottle juice as well. They let us try their limited edition naturally carbonated Doppelbock (served from a 3 liter bottle), their Marzen and their Dunkel and they fed us lunch. The food was good and the beer was great.
After Schlagl, we headed to Baumgartner. It was a modern brewery and fairly large. The tour guide was the actual brewmaster and he was very friendly. Their brewery has won a few awards at the World Beer Cup and we got to try 4 of them to end our tour there. We had a pilsner, an unfiltered lager, a Dunkel, and a Marzen. All of the beers were very good and it was nice to have the brewmaster sitting and drinking with us.
Yesterday, we started the day at Zipf. They were a fairly large brewery, similar to Stiegl two days ago. They are owned by Heineken and they told us a lot about brewery safety. Since selling out to Heineken, they have not had an accident in the brewery that resulted in injury. Previous to the buyout, they had about 15 injuries per year. They made us wear orange vests so that we were visible to forklifts and they had walking areas designated with paint. After our tour of the brewery, they gave each of us a coupon book with coupons for 4 beers and a lunch. I personally was not ready to drink 2 liters of beer at 11:30 a.m. so I only used two of my beer coupons and got a lunch.
Next, we got on the bus to Eggenberg. They had a really cool brewery in a castle, and they even had a chapel where they host special Mass and Weddings. Their brewhouse was pretty modern and mostly automated. They had a seperate building for their lauter tun as a result of running out of space when they recently expanded. At the end of that tour, they let us try their Marzen lager and they also gave us a sample of the beer that used to be the strongest beer in the world at 14% ABV.
To end the night, we went to the Bierkulinarium where we had one of the best dinners I have ever had. It was a 5 course beer pairing led by the highest ranking beer sommelier in the world. Each course was very well paired with the beers they served us and the food was great. We also were able to buy beers from pub and I just happened to stumble upon a bottle of Westy 12. It was exciting to get to try it for the first time.
This morning we toured the Schlagl monestary. Their brewhouse would have been considered very modern and innovative 50 years ago. They had an "automated" system that used valves and a control panel that looked like it came out of a 1960's Martian movie. Their brew kettle was actually rhombus shaped and doubled as a mash cooker. In addition to brewing beer to support their monestary, they also contract bottle for some other breweries and they bottle juice as well. They let us try their limited edition naturally carbonated Doppelbock (served from a 3 liter bottle), their Marzen and their Dunkel and they fed us lunch. The food was good and the beer was great.
After Schlagl, we headed to Baumgartner. It was a modern brewery and fairly large. The tour guide was the actual brewmaster and he was very friendly. Their brewery has won a few awards at the World Beer Cup and we got to try 4 of them to end our tour there. We had a pilsner, an unfiltered lager, a Dunkel, and a Marzen. All of the beers were very good and it was nice to have the brewmaster sitting and drinking with us.
Monday, April 14, 2014
Brewery Tour Day One
We began our European Brewery Study Tour today. The first brewery we went to was Stiegl in Salzburg, Austria. It was by far the biggest brewery I have been to. They brew 1.2 million hectoliters a year (a little more than Sierra Nevada in the USA). The cool thing about Spiegl though was that in addition to their 5-vessel 700 hectoliter brewhouse, they have a ten hectoliter brewhouse for special release beers and on that system, they brew about the same amount each year as we did at Blue Pants this year. A lot of their beers are put into a cellar and aged, along with hundreds of beers from other breweries. They have an area for their aged beers to be drank in the cellar, and it was a really neat environment. They were very friendly and they let us sample their beers, drink a half liter, and they fed us lunch.
After Stiegl, we went to Augustiner Brau. This was kind of the opposite end of the spectrum. They have a new brewhouse, but the rest of their equipment was very old. They use an open air cool ship for chilling wort, open faced wort chillers for the second stage, and then they only had two fermenters. However, they had around 50 conditioning tanks where they naturally carbonate the beer. After carbonating, they filter their beer using the oldest plate and frame filter I have ever seen. In fact, cellulose pads aren't even made for that type of filter anymore, so they have to clean and press their own cellulose sheets. The majority of their beer is served directly from wooden barrels (which are lined with pitch), although they do a small amount of bottling, and a little bit of kegging. Despite all of this archaic equipment, they still brew more beer than any Alabama brewery annually.
Tonight, we are all heading over to the Alchemist to enjoy some belgian style ales, but until then, I am going to enjoy some peace and quiet now that I have a room to myself for the first time in 10 weeks!
After Stiegl, we went to Augustiner Brau. This was kind of the opposite end of the spectrum. They have a new brewhouse, but the rest of their equipment was very old. They use an open air cool ship for chilling wort, open faced wort chillers for the second stage, and then they only had two fermenters. However, they had around 50 conditioning tanks where they naturally carbonate the beer. After carbonating, they filter their beer using the oldest plate and frame filter I have ever seen. In fact, cellulose pads aren't even made for that type of filter anymore, so they have to clean and press their own cellulose sheets. The majority of their beer is served directly from wooden barrels (which are lined with pitch), although they do a small amount of bottling, and a little bit of kegging. Despite all of this archaic equipment, they still brew more beer than any Alabama brewery annually.
Tonight, we are all heading over to the Alchemist to enjoy some belgian style ales, but until then, I am going to enjoy some peace and quiet now that I have a room to myself for the first time in 10 weeks!
Saturday, April 12, 2014
Last Week of Class and Final Exam
We just wrapped up our last week of classroom lectures and took our final. It was a huge relief to get the final exam over with.
Throughout the week we did mostly hands on activities. We filtered, brewed, learned about draft systems, and we bottled the wheat beers that we brewed a few weeks ago. It was a bit of a bummer that we had so many people doing each activity because it meant a lot of people watched as others were doing things. Especially for brewing, we had groups of 10, but it is a mostly automated system that really only requires one person. As a result, a lot of the brewday was spent studying for the final and asking questions about various processes and techniques.
I had anticipated the final exam being pretty easy, but there was still a huge sense of anxiety going into the exam. We had 7 questions and we had to answer 5 of them. Two of the questions were calculations, and the other five were all essay questions. The questions were things like "Write an essay on the utilization of sugar by brewing yeast." Or "Write about the chemical composition of enzymes, the factors that influence their performance, and the role enzymes play in the brewing process." Unfortunately, I ended up filling up two pages with my responses, and our ten minute warning for turning in papers came much quicker than expected. As a result, I had to rush through the last question and a half. I still think the final went well for me, but I do wish that I could have had more time for my last response.
Now we have two more weeks to complete the program, and these last weeks are the part that we all look forward to the most. We will begin touring around Austria and Germany, visiting three breweries or brewing related companies each day. We have a break in the middle of the two weeks for a few days that will alow me to go to Belgium, Amsterdam, and Cologne. I can't wait to see what we have in store for the next two weeks, and then get back and start brewing again!
Throughout the week we did mostly hands on activities. We filtered, brewed, learned about draft systems, and we bottled the wheat beers that we brewed a few weeks ago. It was a bit of a bummer that we had so many people doing each activity because it meant a lot of people watched as others were doing things. Especially for brewing, we had groups of 10, but it is a mostly automated system that really only requires one person. As a result, a lot of the brewday was spent studying for the final and asking questions about various processes and techniques.
I had anticipated the final exam being pretty easy, but there was still a huge sense of anxiety going into the exam. We had 7 questions and we had to answer 5 of them. Two of the questions were calculations, and the other five were all essay questions. The questions were things like "Write an essay on the utilization of sugar by brewing yeast." Or "Write about the chemical composition of enzymes, the factors that influence their performance, and the role enzymes play in the brewing process." Unfortunately, I ended up filling up two pages with my responses, and our ten minute warning for turning in papers came much quicker than expected. As a result, I had to rush through the last question and a half. I still think the final went well for me, but I do wish that I could have had more time for my last response.
Now we have two more weeks to complete the program, and these last weeks are the part that we all look forward to the most. We will begin touring around Austria and Germany, visiting three breweries or brewing related companies each day. We have a break in the middle of the two weeks for a few days that will alow me to go to Belgium, Amsterdam, and Cologne. I can't wait to see what we have in store for the next two weeks, and then get back and start brewing again!
Monday, April 7, 2014
Filtering
Today our class split into three groups. One brewed, one learned about draught systems, and my group filtered. Filtering was really quick, so we only had a half day of class today as a result. The filter we used was a plate and frame filter (basically, the frame holds plates, and sheets of cellulose are placed in between the sheets to form a filter bed). We used diatomaceous earth as a prefilter to help remove some of the yeast before the beer reached the cellulose sheets. This helps prevent the filter from clogging and creating a pressure spike. The beer we filtered was a hefeweizen (the yeast will be added back into the beer for bottle fermentation) and it was sterile filtered.
Sterile filtration means that the beer was filtered through a very fine filter (.45 micron), and all of the yeast, protein, and potential bacteria was taken out. This type of filtration is the most commonly complained about type by beer geeks because of the perceived loss of flavor. My theory is that the flavor doesn't change, but the mouthfeel does as a result of stripping out proteins and smaller yeast cells which contribute to the viscosity and body of beer. It was definitely a good day for a half day since it is 75 degrees and sunny here in Munich!
Sterile filtration means that the beer was filtered through a very fine filter (.45 micron), and all of the yeast, protein, and potential bacteria was taken out. This type of filtration is the most commonly complained about type by beer geeks because of the perceived loss of flavor. My theory is that the flavor doesn't change, but the mouthfeel does as a result of stripping out proteins and smaller yeast cells which contribute to the viscosity and body of beer. It was definitely a good day for a half day since it is 75 degrees and sunny here in Munich!
Saturday, April 5, 2014
Catching Up
I decided to take a few days off from blogging, partially because of the material we've been covering has not been stuff that most people will want to read about, and partially because we have been going out after class a lot more frequently. I'll try to get caught back up now...
On Thursday, we spent the entire day looking at Doemens Academy's packaging area. We were shown how to turn on the steam to the bottling facility (used for sanitizing), the bottle washer (75% of beer bottles in Germany are recycled and consumers pay deposits on them...), the crate washer (... And they come in crates, which also are washed and reused and consumers pay a deposit for), the bottle filler and conveyor belts, a PET filler, and a PET washer. The most interesting part of the day for me, was seeing what PET bottles look like when they get to the packaging facility. 1 liter bottles actually look like 3 inch vials, before they are heated, and inflated to the full one liter. This saves a lot of space in the packaging facility. We will be taking turns running the bottler next week as we bottle the beers we brewed last week.
Yesterday, we had a half day (Fridays are always half days at Doemens). The entire day was sensory analysis, meaning when we got to class in the morning, we started sampling beers almost right away. Sounds fun right? Wrong! We were drinking beers in our first session that had been spiked with off flavors. We drank less common off flavors, but ones that do still show up on occasion. The flavors ranged from metallic to stinky feet to lemon pledge and to garlic. After the gross part was over though, we did get to do a fun activity. It was a kind of beer geeks board game. We had a board that had attributes written on it. "Top Fermented/Bottom Fermented", "Alcohol range", "Country Of Origin", "Type of Style", and "Name the Brand". We were given beers in a blind tasting and told to place a chip on anyone of the spots. If we got it right, we got to keep our chip and got more based on the ring in which we placed the chip. I did ok, with my guessing, but I played a little too safe in the early rounds and realized too late that I needed to take more risks in order to win the game. It would be something fun to play again with some beer geeks back home.
After class, a lot of us went to Andechs and visited the monestary and Biergarten. It was really pretty, up on top of a hill overlooking a small town and a lot of hilly farmland. The beer was ok, the food was great, and the scenery was awesome.
Today was by far the most exciting day I have had in Bavaria. I woke up early this morning and headed to the Bavarian Alps for some snowboarding. The mountain was Zugspitze, which is the tallest mountain in Germany. The slopes were incredibly challenging, very fast, and unforgiving. It was nice after I was done to find a bar in an igloo to sit and enjoy a few Lowenbrau lagers.
Next week, we are doing a lot more hands on activities, and it doubt I will go out too often since we are getting into crunch week before we take our final exams on Friday, so I should have plenty to write about.
On Thursday, we spent the entire day looking at Doemens Academy's packaging area. We were shown how to turn on the steam to the bottling facility (used for sanitizing), the bottle washer (75% of beer bottles in Germany are recycled and consumers pay deposits on them...), the crate washer (... And they come in crates, which also are washed and reused and consumers pay a deposit for), the bottle filler and conveyor belts, a PET filler, and a PET washer. The most interesting part of the day for me, was seeing what PET bottles look like when they get to the packaging facility. 1 liter bottles actually look like 3 inch vials, before they are heated, and inflated to the full one liter. This saves a lot of space in the packaging facility. We will be taking turns running the bottler next week as we bottle the beers we brewed last week.
Yesterday, we had a half day (Fridays are always half days at Doemens). The entire day was sensory analysis, meaning when we got to class in the morning, we started sampling beers almost right away. Sounds fun right? Wrong! We were drinking beers in our first session that had been spiked with off flavors. We drank less common off flavors, but ones that do still show up on occasion. The flavors ranged from metallic to stinky feet to lemon pledge and to garlic. After the gross part was over though, we did get to do a fun activity. It was a kind of beer geeks board game. We had a board that had attributes written on it. "Top Fermented/Bottom Fermented", "Alcohol range", "Country Of Origin", "Type of Style", and "Name the Brand". We were given beers in a blind tasting and told to place a chip on anyone of the spots. If we got it right, we got to keep our chip and got more based on the ring in which we placed the chip. I did ok, with my guessing, but I played a little too safe in the early rounds and realized too late that I needed to take more risks in order to win the game. It would be something fun to play again with some beer geeks back home.
After class, a lot of us went to Andechs and visited the monestary and Biergarten. It was really pretty, up on top of a hill overlooking a small town and a lot of hilly farmland. The beer was ok, the food was great, and the scenery was awesome.
Today was by far the most exciting day I have had in Bavaria. I woke up early this morning and headed to the Bavarian Alps for some snowboarding. The mountain was Zugspitze, which is the tallest mountain in Germany. The slopes were incredibly challenging, very fast, and unforgiving. It was nice after I was done to find a bar in an igloo to sit and enjoy a few Lowenbrau lagers.
Next week, we are doing a lot more hands on activities, and it doubt I will go out too often since we are getting into crunch week before we take our final exams on Friday, so I should have plenty to write about.
Wednesday, April 2, 2014
Wort Analysis, Yeast, and Sensory
Yesterday was a great day with more chemical analysis, dry yeast handling, and sensory training. Our chemical analysis was about wort and which parameters we should be checking and trying to control. These include concentration of dissolved sugar, pH, starches (checked with an iodine test), color, and attenuation limit (using a forced fermentation).
After our chemical analysis lecture, we talked about dry yeast handling. Each time we talk about dry yeast here, I am more convinced that it should be kept out of production breweries and left for small brewpubs and homebrewers, one of the big issues I have with it is that when the yeast is shipped, between 30-40% of the yeast cells are already dead and commonly misshapen. To me, the disadvantages outweigh the advantages by a lot, not that great beer can't be brewed with dry yeast.
Afterwards, we moved on to a mock tasting panel in which we did a few different types of tastings. The most interesting one, we tried three different pilsners, gave certain attributes numerical values, and made charts of how our tasting panel felt about the beers. This could be a great way of doing recipe development in the future with a tasting panel at home.
After our chemical analysis lecture, we talked about dry yeast handling. Each time we talk about dry yeast here, I am more convinced that it should be kept out of production breweries and left for small brewpubs and homebrewers, one of the big issues I have with it is that when the yeast is shipped, between 30-40% of the yeast cells are already dead and commonly misshapen. To me, the disadvantages outweigh the advantages by a lot, not that great beer can't be brewed with dry yeast.
Afterwards, we moved on to a mock tasting panel in which we did a few different types of tastings. The most interesting one, we tried three different pilsners, gave certain attributes numerical values, and made charts of how our tasting panel felt about the beers. This could be a great way of doing recipe development in the future with a tasting panel at home.
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