Study Tour Day 2: One Day, Three Countires

Ok, lets get on with this. More pictures, less words...

Day 2

We began today in Cologne, but got an early start on our drive to The Netherlands. There we visited La Trappe!

 

Pulling up it was rather impressive. We even saw some monks through the gate when we were leaving.

 

  It is a fantastic Trappist Brewery that makes some fantastic Belgian style beers.

 Copper kettles...

 with stainless steel kettles.

 Here is the brewmaster with a big bag of hops and showing us the bottom of one of the fermenters

 Pressure gauge to monitor bottle conditioning of their special barrel aged series beer. They use this method with all their beers.

 Wow how artistic!

 They are aging beer in a variety of barrels. You could tell that the brewmaster enjoyed playing around with barrel aging considering the relative standard Trappist styles he has been brewing for years

 Then we sampled their beers and had an amazing lunch, so good I forgot to take pictures of the food

 After lunch it was on to Bosteels in Belgium

 More copper and...

 A lot of stainless! They recently finished renovations and added all this piping, yikes!

 Then we tried their beers including Kwak, Triple Karmelite, and Deus

 Me, the furry thing on my face, and the brewmaster

 

Then on to Antwerp to check into our hotel. This is where our bus parked, neato.

Beside the great view, this was the highlight of the hotel.

 It was recommended that we go to a great beer bar called Kulminator. It lived up to expectations.

 I had Cantillon Iris, which make me a happy person and my taste buds did a happy dance.

The view walking at sunset. Europe really has amazing structures everywhere you look.

 More to come!