Study Tour Day 5: Warsteiner and Uerige

Day 5: Friday! This means that we made it through the first week and will have a weekend in Dusseldorf to recover.

Bus pulling up to Warsteiner. They are a massive brewery, they can just put copper kettles everywhere cause that is how they roll

Entrance to the visitors center...copper kettle

 

Inside is an awesome display of old bottles, also they like their copper kettles

 

Outside in their biergarden...you guessed it, gazebos made out of copper kettles

Whoa, its not a copper kettle. But it is massive. Funny thing is that they don't even use it anymore.

The place is so massive, that their regular tour is on a bus that actually drives through the buildings!

Also not made out of copper, but still very impressive

Now those are some huge fermenters!

This is their beer cellar. They keep samples of each beer as a reference and to quality check

After Warsteiner, we headed to Dusseldorf where an evening at Uerige was awaiting

Dusseldorf is how of the Altbier and Uerige is considered to be the gold standard. Served in a similar manner as Kolsch in neighboring Cologne with small glasses and quick service. The beer however is very different.

As you can see, the Altbier is much darker in color and has both more malt and hop flavor. One of my favorite German beer styles for sure.

Alt means "old" in German, meaning that the Altbier is really old aged beer...just kidding, it means that is the old style of making beer. Although, they do have slight oxidation from some of the techniques that are still used.

Above we have one of their beautiful copper kettles on display. On the right you can see that they still use a coolship to begin cooling the wort after boiling.

Dedication to the old way is very important to Altbier producers, but that does not mean they can't have cool lights in their fermentation room

Bales of hops!

We were invited by the brewery to enjoy one of their schweinshaxe, which was phenomenal. It was actually the best schweinshaxe I have had anywhere in Germany, including Bavaria.

At this point in the journey, a massive plague was surging through the bus (massive plague= a cold). Although I had avoided it previously, early in the day, I felt it start to take hold. After dinner, I went directly to bed, did not pass go, did not collect more Altbier. Good thing there were no plans for the weekend so I could rest up.