A visit to the König Ludwig brewery

After getting a right result with our bonus trip to the Kaltenberg castle brewery it was on to the main bigger brewery in Fürstenfeldbruck. It has a brew length of 200hl and they can brew eight times a day. They start on Sunday evening and brew through to Friday morning, 36 a week in total. It's fully automated and only two brewers are on each shift, organising the cellar according to my notes which doesn't seen quite right.

Only wheat beer is brewed here, made with a grist of 66% wheat. It's mashed in at 55°C and in the three hour mash a single decoction takes place, with the temperature raised to 78°C for  mashing out. The masischbottich (Mash Conversion Vessel I guess) is copper, the rest are copper clad stainless steel.

All copper that is

They ferment with a top fermenting yeast at 23°C. They produce 240,000 hl a year. All beers are flash pasteurised for 30 seconds at 72-73°C on the way to the Bright Beer Tank.

And to my surprise it's finally happened: the bottling line was a thing of beauty.

I've never cared much for seeing bottling lines before, though the things whizzing round are all good fun. I've seen so many stopped though, with lights flashing and people staring gormlessly at them I'd begun to suspect that they were really some sort of care in the community scheme.

But no more. I've been bitten by the bottling bug. On this one there are 144 filling heads and an 18 head capper. It runs at at rate of 45,000 bottles per hour and has a grand total of two staff: one on the filler, one cleaning.

Revel in its beauty: