Technology Museum and Spandau Brewery

The past two days have yet again brought more memories and I have learned a great deal about the brewing process as a whole as well as some very specific beers that are available in Berlin.

Yesterday, we attended the German Technological Museum which had an exhibition of a brewery.  This brewery was a replica of an older brewery.  The security man who was watching over the brewery replica ended up giving us an in depth tour of the entire building and showed us all of the brewing equipment and explained the process of brewing.  This was an exciting and informative tour.  The man who was giving us this spontaneous tour explained that the equipment was used as a test brewery.  This means that different recipes for various beer styles were tested using that very equipment.  The most interesting portion of this tour was all of the equipment that we got to see.  Every element was made out of copper metal and was very beautiful but also functional.

Emma also gave a great presentation on the Berliner Weisse beer which is a beer known as the "Champagne of the North."  This beer is a light and somewhat sour wheat beer that is often sweetened with different types of syrup.  The most interesting aspect of this beer is that it is top fermented with both yeast and lactobacillus which gives the beer the sour flavor.



Today, we toured Spandau Brauhaus in Spandou a suburb of Berlin.  This was a smaller brauhaus and hotel.  This was an interesting tour because the head brewer showed us all of the brewing equipment and explained "the mash" that they do every time they brew beer.  This is an important stage when brewing beers if you are not using a malt extract.  The mash involves crushing and steeping malted grains in water of a specific temperature in order to activate various proteins within the grains.  This allows the starches from the grains to be released into the water.  These sugars will then be used for fuel in the fermentation process and will eventually be converted into alcohol by the yeast.  We also had an awesome german style lunch at this brauhaus.  We were also able to tast a couple of their beers including Plotz-Blitz beer.  This was a dark (dunkel) beer that was 12% alcohol!