A visit to Malheur brewery

Malheur brewery was the next stop on the study tour of Belgium. A more modest operation than our previous stop, by my calculations they were brewing around 8,000 hl a year.

They have a two vessels brewing system, which makes for a rather involved brewing process. They mash in in the the kettle, then transfer to the lauter, the wort then goes back to the kettle and finally the latuer is used as a hop back.

The fermentation wasn't straight forward either as they use the drauflassen system. Twenty four hours into fermentation, when the yeast is in the exponential phase, a fresh batch of oxygenated wort is added to the fermenter. The yeast must like it as they've been using it for 20 years and even for the strong beers it ferments down to a final gravity of 1-1.2°P.

They owner said he was the first person to have beer made champagne style, with the yeast removed after bottle conditioning. 

Sadly we didn't get to try any of it, but I can't really complain as we were well looked after.