A visit to Trumer brewery

The Trumer brewery was the next stop on the study tour. I'd prepared for this visit by having a few pints (half litres probably) of Trumer Pils the day before the tour started in, of all things, an Irish pub in Vienna. It wasn't a place I would have picked myself, but my colleague who's more clued up on Austrian beer had it on his list and it was dead good. The beer was good too, very clean and easy drinking. The brewery dates from 1601 and has been owned by the Sigl family for 250 years. They're now on to their eighth Josef Sigl as boss!

Annual production at Trumer is 80,000hl, spread over seven brands though the focus is pilsner. The European (Austrian and German?) Beer Sommeliers started at Trumer, with the aim of getting more of that wine language into beer. It seems to be doing better than the British version, which I think recently had its second re-launch. 

The old 100hl brewhouse was built in 1910 and used until the 80s. The kettle was directly heated with coal. Apparenty it could  still be used, but they're not going to because why would they?

The new two vessel 240hl brewhouse was built by Huppmann in 1985. Raw materials come from Austria and Bavaria, including hops from Hallertau and north Austria. Four tonnes of malt are used and hops are added in four stages. The have their own wells in the village and blend 70% well water (3 presumably German degrees of hardness) with reverse osmosis treated water. 

They have a six roller mill from 1965 and use the Kubessa method when brewing. Named after the brewer from Cologne that patented it in 1903, in the Kubessa method the husk is separated from the endosperm during milling. It is not added to the Mash Conversion Vessel during the early stages of mashing, only being added prior to lautering so it can help with wort separation. It means less husk polyphenols get in the beer. It's said to make a beer taste more elegant, and certainly the Trumer Pils in Vienna was very smooth. We had John Brauer, EBC grand fromage, explain to us on the coach that in fact little difference can be detected in fresh beer, but the Kubessa method give greater flavour stability so its advantages become more apparent over time. 

They have one shift brewing Monday to Wednesday, with typically two and half brews required to fill an FV. The minimum brewlength is 100hl. The fermentation block dates from 2006. 

Top view

Sales are slowly rising and they've left room for expansion.

Bottom view

They have branched  out into other products though, and also make oat milk. For the Pils they have open fermenters.

This allows them to skim off the dirty head (brandhefe) at the end of fermentation which helps with the clean taste of the Pils. Fermentation is for a week with at least four weeks of maturation. They don't measure diacetyl but do have a two day warm rest at 14°C. They are Slow Brewing certified, which is guess is related to the Slow Food movement. 

Total beer storage capacity is 10,000hl. They propagate and harvest the yeast. An ale yeast is used for a seasonal beer. 65% of the beer is packaged into keg by a 460 keg per hour filler according to my notes. It sounds a lot, but the breweries we'd been round did have flashy packaging equipment. The other 35% of the beer is bottled. They use perlite and cellulose for filtration and the beer is not pasteurised.

Storks on top of an brewery old chimney

Nice brewery , but I must confess though that the bottled beer we were given to drink weren't as good as the draught I'd had in Vienna. The carbonation on the Pils was much higher which gave it a harsher taste. It probably didn't help that we were drinking straight from the bottle. So, a rare example of me recommending a keg beer. But fear not, I was in Austria and they have different brewing traditions there so my immortal soul is not at risk.