Weekend in Bed / Dusseldorf and Day 6

Last time we left off with me being sick, it was a doozy of a cold. I am very lucky that I had the weekend to recover, and recover I did. I slept all Saturday, I left the room to eat one meal and that was it. The recovery time paid off and I was able to at least enjoy the city on Sunday.

Was able to try some of the other local Altbier. Schlussel was really good and could give Uerige a run for favorite Altbier.

Then we walked about and did some sightseeing

Really nice day as well and we walked the Rhine River

We of course end up back at Uerige and spend the afternoon people watching. Each one of the marks on the coaster is to keep track of the beer for the table. We were there for a while, but then I needed to get more rest before the last leg of the journey.

 Monday morning, first stop is Krombacher

We watched a super cheezy marketing video that was entertaining at least. Then we started the tour. They make a lot of beer here... 5.8 million hectaliters to be exact (about 4.94 million US bbls)

 If you look wayyyy out in the distance, the tower that is on the Krombacher logo is on top of the hill

Bottom cones of their fermenters and Eder dropping more knowledge

 Impressive filtering setup. They may or may not treat the beer they export differently than the beer that stays within Europe for stabilization purposes (coughPVPP). They may or may not also truck that beer to another near by brewery to package it in NR bottles. No worries though, they only export 1.5% of their overall production.

 Sampling time and a little snack before heading out to Binding Brewery

 This was the first thing we see when we enter the plant. It is a massive lauter tun with a diameter of 11.8 meters (38.7 feet)

 

 Really nice copper vessels, how do they keep these so clean!? From this point forward we were not allowed to take any pictures. They make a wide variety of products including Binding, Henniger, Schöfferhofer, and probably most notable in the US, Clausthaler. Many people know of Clausthaler from their non-alcoholic offerings, which is much more difficult than one would assume. This would be the last huge industrial brewery of the tour, so looking forward to suppliers and smaller producers.