Bavarian Brewery Tour

On our way to Oktoberfest in Munich, we spent an afternoon touring the Eringer brewery. I highly recommend it - very thoroughly done and at the end you not only can try any 8 beers you want, but you get pretzels AND weisswurst (white sausage). Quite a bargain at 12 Euros.

When Matt and I were lost looking for parking, we ended up next to giant stacks of crates, so we had to take a picture (one of the last with our Focus!)

We're in Germany. That means safety vests for everyone! No hard hats required.

Sadly the guys had just stopped these machines, but they were still steaming.

This is part of the bottling area...

...and also where they clean the crates.

Speaking of crates... when the beers are put into the bottles and then into the crates, they live here where they get all good and tasty before being shipped away.

Everything in the red crates is for Germany-area consumption (because they will get the crates back). It's hard to see, but in the top shelf in the photo below, there are some wrapped crates that are shipped worldwide that don't include the red crates.

A description of all the beers they make.

We're all fascinated by the robot who keeps moving around and putting crates on shelves.

Next, on to the tasting! We were allowed to have ANY 8 beers they had on tap and sit there for about 2 hours. There were enough pretzels for each of us to have two at the table.

Content.

And oh, the sausages.... these babies are usually a Bavarian breakfast item and served with a pretzel, sweet mustard and beer (that's right, beer for breakfast). We were all stuffed, and they had the nerve to come around again and ask if anyone wanted MORE than the two sausages they already distributed to each person! Gah! I wish, they were awesome. I think this is one of my favorite German meals.

A mighty fine way to spend the afternoon.