A visit to Augustiner brewery

Having been on a few brewery study tours I've noticed it's always an unexpected brewery that turns out to be my favourite. And so it was this time. Augustiner brewery, which I know beer geeks rave about, was the only one I'd heard of. Or so I thought. But in fact we were going to the Augistiner brewery in Salzburg, not the Augustiner brewery in Munich. So I really had no idea, but I'm pleased to say it was glorious!

The Augustinian bit is due to the monks (or I think more accurately friars). The Head Brewer said a monk is the boss. I don't know how much non-Trappist orders are involved in brewing. Living in a proddy country probably doesn't help, though we do have a Trappist brewery in Britain now. I once visited Buckfast Abbey, home of the tonic wine beloved by Glaswegian alcoholics, and was surprised to see several beers for sale that certainly appeared to be brewed by different religious orders. And I don't know how strict Augustinians are about beer made in their name, but I suspect less so than Trappists, who split away from a strict order for not being strict enough. But enough religious twaddle, it's not like their differences will be as interesting and important as say, those between Chalcedonianism and Nestorianism.

The brewery was like catnip to me, being gleaming copper and old techniques. The brewery dates from 1621. It makes 27,000hl a year, so small regional brewery in size and their bräustüberl (brewery tap) is immense.

The brewhouse

They have a gleaming copper two vessel 90hl brewhouse. Amazingly it's from 2012, so this brewery is not a working museum, they're actively keeping it like how it has been. They do double decoction, with a temperature profile 60-64-74-78°C, not the most traditional one so I guess the malt's fairly well modified. Brewing is from 5am to 4pm, with eight hour shifts.

The still use a coolship. This isn't new, dates from 1907. No gleaming copper though, it's made of mild steel. Temperature here drops from 100°C to 40-50°C in, my notes say, 30 minutes. A lot of evaporation happens here. The beer gets stronger and darker and trub drops out. The coolship is cleaned by hand every day. 

The mild steel coolship

But the coolship's not enough so they've got Baudelot coolers, vertical copper coolers that look like radiators and sound like they belong in a knocking shop. Cold water flows inside and hot wort runs down the outside. The Head Brewer got a bit cagey about answering questions about temperatures at this point. I'm not sure why, it's not like anyone is going to copy what they do. There's two sections. The top has river water flowing through it and the bottom section chilled water. I think the water's at 10°C in the upper section, 1°C in the lower. The are cleaned four times a day, before and after each use. 

Baudelot coolers

They have open fermenters, with the pitching temperature less than 10°C and lagering at less than 4°C. Fermentaion lasts for a week. Yeast is used ten times and is acid washed to kill bacteria, which given all the open equipment in this brewery is probably for the best. Lagering is carried out in 16 x 320hl tanks.

They have a plate and frame filter that dates from 1890:

Antique plate and frame filter

And slightly incongruously a centrifuge for the beer going to cask. 

Centrifuge

Yes, you did read that right. Cask beer! The draught beer here comes in pitch lined wooden casks, served as god intended without extraneous CO2. The pitch is something tree resin based that lines the casks so the beer doesn't come into contact with the wood. I did try taking a picture inside a cask but didn't manage it. I guess the yellow crap around the shive hole is pitch though. They have a cask population of 2,200 casks (25, 50 and 100L) and re-pitch them 4-5 times a year. Apparently it affects the taste but I can't say I noticed anything. 

Shive hole with pitch?

They have a 7,000 bpa bottling line they run once or twice a week, and of course a Profipack robot for loading and unloading crates. The bottled beer has a two month best before date!

We had the traditional find a victim to tap the cask, but all went well.

The beer was served in earthenware mugs so don't know what it looked like. Nice view from the window though.

The view from Augustiner Salzburg

They only close four days a year (two days as xmas and two at new year), which is handy as I was so impressed with this place I'd love to come back and drink more of the beer.