Life In Germany - Breweries

On Friday, my work office took and organizational outing to two breweries. It was a great day. First we went to Kuchlbauers Bierwelt and took a tour of the brewery which also included a tour of the 34 meter-high tower shown below. The tower was conceived and designed by Friedensreich Hundertwasser , who died in 2000, still in the planning phase. The building was built after the death of the architect Hundertwasser Peter Pelikan. They wanted to build the tower to be 70 meters, but in Bavaria, no tower can be taller than the town's church steeple. Pretty crazy eh?

After we left, we picked up fresh spargel (asparagus) and strawberries from a farm and headed to one of my favorite breweries to bring visitors,  Klosterschenke Weltenburg. The monastery, founded by Irish or Scottish monks in about 620, is known as the oldest monastery in Bavaria. It is located on the Danube and you can take a beautiful hike to it or a beautiful short ferry ride down the Danube. Unfortunately, the water was really high from all the crazy rains, so we couldn't take the hike Friday. 

Source

Both these breweries are located in Bavaria, not too far from Regensburg and both are well worth a trip.You can make a day of it and visit both. Have lunch at the Weltenburg Abbey. They serve  great food in a huge beer garden right in the middle of the Abbey.

There are about 1,250 breweries in Germany, almost four times as many as in all other countries of the European Union combined. This number includes brewpubs that produce beer only for their own on-premise sales, packaging breweries that service mostly their local or regional markets, as well as huge breweries that ship their beers all over the world. 

Just about every town and restaurant serves a locally made beer in Bavaria. I honestly can't believe how many awesome beers and breweries they have here. And truly, the cost of a beer is almost always less than a juice, water, or soda. Where we live, sometime a half liter is as little as 1 euro 80 cents. A case of beer (20 half liter recyclable bottles) is only 12 euros. I wish we could catch on to the recycled/refillable glass bottles in the states. It just makes so much more sense.

Which gets me dreaming again about things I want to do in the states whenever we return. Sure would be awesome and amazing to buy a farm, grow hops, and start a nice beer garden/brewery in Kentucky one day.  With great, big half liter recyclable bottles. How about you all? What dream business would you open if you could?