Paulaner Brewery

Another weekend in the middle of November, on a foggy Saturday morning, I ventured over the Isar River to a part of the city I had never been to for a tour of the Paulaner Brewery. After waiting outside in the extreme cold (and extreme smell) for an hour :// (I hadn't yet bought my big furry jacket and the club tutor was late) we finally went inside to start our tour with a video of the brewing process, in which the guy had the strangest almost American?? accent I had ever heard. Then we were herded back outside to the well the brewery draws their water from. It was very new-agey and looked basically like that glass pyramid in front of the Louvre, except much smaller and had few intertwining pipes inside in it that went down into the ground. They showed us the giant silos where they store the malt and barley and then took us inside to the origin of the awful smell. The boiling room:
(disclaimer: I'm sure this isn't the actual name)

There were about eight of these contraptions. I think they were boiling hops? and it smelled dreadful. Inside there were also these giant mixer whisk things that went it a giant circle to mix it all up.

I had to climb up a step ladder to be able to see into this window, which was also massive. I probably could have curled up into a ball on top of it. It was also gloriously warm standing next to it.

This was the control panel along the wall of the room. I had a major nerd out moment (perpetual? ...nobody answer that) and was following all the pipes and symbols and control switches. I think that was my favorite part, other than the food at the end (:

After this we went into a long tunnel that goes under the hill "Nockherberg" to the giant storage tanks they have and the bottling room. Background note: All the beer bottles at the store are glass, and I had noticed that most of them have rings worn into them on the bottom lip and where the neck starts to curve in. I never really thought about it, but alas, it's because they reuse the bottles. They get all banged up on the conveyor belt, so you can tell how old your bottle is by how worn the ring is. The tour guide said they can generally reuse them 12 or so times.

They use temperature controlled metal tanks to store the beer nowadays, but they have the old barrel lids on display:

The second one is for Hacker-Pschorr, another one of the famous six Munich breweries, which joined with Paulaner. None of the six breweries are privately owned anymore, but they still use the original brews.

And last but CERTAINLY not least, the lunch:

Special "Brew Master" Edition, pretty gooood.

That is the majority of a pretzel (Brezn), Leberkäse, and Kartoffelsalat. I guess it's kind of like Spam but is made of actual meat and tastes infinitely better. "Leberkäse" literally translates to "liver-cheese" but it is made of neither, thank goodness. It was a magical lunch, and it was freeee. Well sorta, it was included in the tour price :)