The view just outside our last hotel.

Netherlands/Belgium

On days three through five of our tour, we visited several breweries in the Netherlands and Belgium: Heineken, La Trappe, Bavaria, Duvel Moortgat, Cantillon, 3 Fonteinen.  Due to poor weather and not being allowed to take weather at some places, I have no pictures from Bavaria or 3 Fonteinen.  Here are some of the pictures I was able to take:

All of the pictures I took over those three days are here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/14686131@N07/sets/72157622892834070/

Ziemann-Bauer/Uerige

On the second day of the tour, we visited Ziemann-Bauer in the morning.  Z-B manufactures tanks for the brewing and food industries.  They normally make anything from mash mixers to fermentation tanks for breweries, but while we were there, they were making enormous vessels to hold orange juice that is being exported by boat from South America.  I was unable to take any photos at Z-B, but it was a very impressive facility working with more stainless steel than I’ve ever seen.  Our next stop was a large brewpub in Dusseldorf.  We were treated to an amazing pork knuckle dinner and some fantastic alt bier that they brew.  Also, the tour was awesome.  They brew with a neat mix of very traditional techniques, such as chilling the beer with a cool ship and a surface chiller, and more modern techniques.  We were also invited to taste some whiskey that they distill from some of their beer.  It was very tasty and a nice treat.  Here are some of the pictures I took at Uerige:

I have posted all the pictures I took here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/14686131@N07/sets/72157622770994493/

Hopsteiner/Weyermann

For the past week, I’ve been cruising around with my class in a tour bus stopping at some major brewing-related companies in Europe.  Our first stop was at Hopsteiner in the Hallertau region of Germany, which is a major hop-growing area.  Hallertau felt like the wine country of hops with tons of small hop farms everywhere.  It was really neat to see.  Hopsteiner is of the world’s largest hop suppliers.  It was an awesome first stop where we got to see more hops than any of us had seen before.  Their storage facility is extremely impressive and is completely automated.  The next stop that day was at Weyermann, a large producer of specialty malt in Bamburg, Germany.  Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to take pictures inside their production facility, but I did get a few pictures of their awesome pilot brewery and their pub where we were treated to the biggest dinner I’ve ever had.  Here are some pictures from day one of our bus tour:

I’ve posted all of the pictures I took the first day here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/14686131@N07/sets/72157622751202535/

Bus Trip

I’m getting all packed up for the next leg of my trip. We’re taking a bus tour throughout Europe and we’ll be making a lot of brewing-related stops. Here is a bad picture of the list of places we’ll be visiting over the next two weeks.

Bottling Day!

Today, we bottled 10 of the 20 hectoliters of beer we brewed: 5hl of Dunkelweizen that my group brewed and 5hl of Hefeweizen brewed by the other group.  It was a great leaning experience because I’ve never seen a bottling line in action.  Since Germany uses returnable bottles, Doemens has a bottle washer to clean the bottles being returned instead of using new bottles.  I’ll try to post the pictures in the order that the actions occur down the line.

I posted the rest of the pictures here: (http://www.flickr.com/photos/14686131@N07/sets/72157622711217299/)

Bottling Today

Scored Some Free Steins!

Visiting the Pope’s House and a Castle

Sunday, Ralph took me to see where the Pope was born (Marktl) then we visited a really cool old town with a medieval castle (Burghausen).  The pictures of the river are showing Austria.  We stopped over there for gas.  In all it was a great weekend where I got to experience Bavaria as a local rather than a tourist.

I posted more pictures here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/14686131@N07/sets/72157622814471680/

Regensburg

This weekend, I was lucky to have the opportunity to visit my brother’s friend who studies in Regensburg. The town is about an hour and a half from Munich and it’s amazing. All these pictures were taken no more than one hundred feet from Ralph’s door.

I posted more pictures here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/14686131@N07/sets/72157622814308994/