Little Venice and Eric Clapton

One of the managers has been more than welcoming and helpful in my first few weeks here. He had invited me to join his family for dinner this evening. The family is a musical one, father plays guitar, his son plays guitar, his daughter plays piano and recorder, and his wife plays as well, but I forget which instrument; as she did not join the us tonight.

After dinner, I suggested that I would like to hear father and son play guitars, and what followed was a wonderful blues impovisational jam based on Clapton songs from the Unplugged album. We even took a stab at "Summer Of 69". They had extra guitars about and I was happy to join in and play along. Perhaps we will put together a Weyermann music show party and serve brews concocted in the Versuchsbrauerei.

There is something so wonderful about laughing and playing music with people.


Altenburg is a castle atop the hills overlooking Bamberg. The Braumeisterin and I delivered some 300 liters of Weyermann brewed Baerenbier to a party here last weekend. The bartender spoke a Bavarian accent so thick you could cook a bratwust with it. In one of those conversations where I understood about 20% of the words, he relayed a story to me.

It seems that some time in the past, between the middle ages and the 1970s, there was a bear that co-inhabited the hilltop along with Altenburg Castle. He was a jolly bear and drank lager beer with the local Franconians. One day he got a cranky, King of the Hill feeling. He insisted someone brew him his own style of lager beer, and specified the grain bill, hop additions scedule and everything. Today, the Weyermann Versuchsbrauerei still brews this recipe in his honor, and there is a party this weekend in his honor. At least, that's what I understood from the conversation.

Brewing is a job that has a mixture of Frankensteinian birthing science, public relations, and lots of elbow grease. Most of the time, a brewer is cleaning and disinfecting his brewery. In a small brewery, all of the malt is weighed by hand and manually added to the mill. Then manually added to the mash kettle. Kegs are filled from lagertanks, and lifted into trucks. Other times, we sit over a coffee and discuss the enzymatic chemistry behind our next recipe. I truly enjoy this mixture of honest toil and science.


This is a picture of the Bamberg Rathaus, a historical townhall built in the days when the Church had power and sway, even in the relatively religiously free land of Franconia. The story goes: the churchy side of town was battling the proletariat side for who would have the townhall built on their side of the River Regnitz.

A compromise was made and the Rathaus was constructed in the middle of the river. This is the tourist brochure picture of Bamberg.

The river Regnitz, in the photo above, flows into the Main, which connects to the Rhein. There is a canal that connects the river Danube with the Rhein. Amazingly, you can travel from the Black Sea to the North Sea via waterways. Once quite important for trade, the speed of rail and truck transport has begun to override the canal.

The Danube-Rhein canal passes through Bamberg, and along it is a nice bike path. I can ride at least as far as Nurnbug, I have been told. So far I have only ridden 15 km south, bringing me to the town of Buttenheim.

The Beginning

It is appropriate that whilst I compose my first blogesque communique, I drink a Bavarian Helles lager bier, brewed by one of at least 14 breweries within walking distance from my apartment. A Helles is a light colored lager, more mello than Pils, delicate as an evening barley field awaft with breeze, and practically my favorite right now. And of course you've never had anything like in the States.

For those who are unclear as to my whereabouts and whatwhoosits, an overview: I have come to Germany for one year to work as an intern at Weyermann Malt. I live in Bamberg, a World Heritage-class town of about 70,000 people, located in Northern Bavaria, just north of Nurnberg, in a land called Franconia. Franconia is one of the evolutionary centers of beermaking, speaking of which it's time for another Helles.

...Ahhh, much better. So, a bit about beer, skip this paragraph if disinclined. Malting is the first step in the beer making process; in the past, beermakers were both maltsters and brewers. The last hundred years has individualized the two processes. So what is malting? Simpy put, malting is the steeping, germination, and kilning of a grain, which promotes the development of enzymes that help the brewing process later on. Barley is the best suited grain for the job and dominates the business. Last year I malted buckwheat in my kitchen, a glutan-free grain to make a GF beer for Josh and Jen's wedding present.

Weyermann Malt is the best specialty malt house in the world. Specialty malts are the dark, the sweet, the red, the sour, the smoky, the chocolate, and the roasted malts brewers use to define their beers. Weyermann Malt provides malts to breweries from Portland to Poland to China to Brazil. I have come to Germany to learn from the best Malzerei in the world.