A visit to the Schloss Kaltenberg brewery

Some confusion over arrangements for the study tour of Germany lead to a stroke of serendipity. We weren't due to visit the Kaltenberg castle brewery but mistakenly though the castle cafe would be open for coffee. As it happens it wasn't, but when a curious brewer popped out to ask why exactly a load of people were milling around outside we soon managed to talk ourselves into an impromptu tour.

As well as containing a brewery the castle is also home to Prince Luitpold of Bavaria, who I met at Thornbridge brewery. Due to the inbred nature of royal families he's only a couple of dead cousins away from being the Jacobite pretender.

Craig working on his photo bombing

Loitering with intent

Rebuilt in 1870

Not much to see of the brewery from outside

Forlornly looking in the window

Can't get decent pictures through it though

And we're in!

Getting better

And here he is in all his glory

I think that's another ex-Manx between the tanks

There was a better class of old crap cluttering up this brewery

The castle brewery produces 100,000 hl of lager. The brew length is 140hl with four to five brews per day. Fermentation is for seven days then four weeks in the conditioning tank.

Filtration is carried out on site but since 1980 when the prince bought another brewery no packaging has been carried out on site (filtering before shipping the beer out sounds a trifle irregular to me but I guess they know what they're doing).