Flotzinger Brau mmmmmm,

Friday after class we took the Bahn to Rosenheim to meet up with our good friend and teacher Dr, Michael Zepf. Mike's the brewmaster at Flotzinger Brau and had us over for a backstage tour, some wonderful food and, of course, beer. The murky liquid that Zak and Brian are drinking is an acidified wort. Due to the German purity law Reinheinsgebot, brewers here cannot add anything that isn't malt, hops, yeast and water. Sometimes a brewer desires a low pH mash. How the Germans got around this was allowing the bacteria found naturally on the malt to acidify a solution. They keep tanks of acidified wort around to mix with fresh mash.

The brewery was beautiful and dates back to 1904. The family has brewed there since 1543. We saw traditional equipment next to state of the art Steinecker vessels. At the end of the tour Mike took us into the maturation rooms to have a glass of Helles unfiltered, straight from the tank. It always confused me that the BJCP made a score sheet for beer that was on a scale of up to fifty, but no beers ever got a fifty. I thought some beers should be that good. This beer and the experience is why the beer scores go up to fifty. It was the best beer of my life. Fifty out of fifty, hands down.

After the tour we went to the lunch hall where Mike and his wife had made us livercheese, sausage salad and pretzels. Oh yeah, and a barrel of Marzen. We had a fun night, but I shouldn't go into details.