Sunday, September 5, 2010

Beck's Brewery Tour and Tasting

On Thursday, I went on a 2 1/2 hour tour of Bremen's own Beck's Brewery. I learned a LOT about the beer-brewing process that I never knew before.




Here was our tour guide (his name escapes me), a very German, very sarcastic, yet very informative Beck's expert. Here, he was describing the process of first boiling malt with fresh spring water.



This is an old-fashioned wort boiler. According to German law, beer brewing is some serious business: beer is ONLY allowed to be made with 4 ingredients: malt, water and hops (yeast was later added to the list).



One of the first kegs to hold Beck's beer


A miniature replica of the original Beck's Brewery (which was called Kaiserbrauerei!) 


Thousands of Beck's beers on their way out to the masses.


After the tour, Steffi (left), Kerstie (right) and Laura (not shown) and I enjoyed a mystery tasting: we had to guess which beers were were tasting between Beck's regular, Beck's nonalcoholic, and Haake Beck. 

We failed miserably. But, we enjoyed the beer.



They also served steaming hot pretzels, or brezels, as they call them here. YUM YUM.


Overall, it was a great tour. I would highly recommend it to anyone visiting Bremen. 

The Haake Beck 12 was my favorite beer on the menu. It had tasted of grassy hops and had a creamy barley malt aroma. I'd give it 3/4 YUMS.

  

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