Happy Thanksgiving to my Canadian friends!
We drove north to the town of Elzach to take a craft brewery tour with Dave Decker at Lowenbrauerei Elzach, owned by Johannes Dold.
We drove north to the town of Elzach to take a craft brewery tour with Dave Decker at Lowenbrauerei Elzach, owned by Johannes Dold.
This is a town none of us had been to before so we chose a traditional German restaurant and it was very good called Gasthaus Zur Krone. We wandered a bit, had a coffee before meeting up Dave at the brewery. Dave owns, with two partners, www.deckerbier.de. They network with five local breweries to bring fresh and innovative beers to their “garage” where they sell them, hold courses and tastings. Lowenbrauerei Elzach is one of the micro-breweries they work with.
On with the tour. Met owner Johannes Dold and he told us some of the 160 years history, he is fifth generation in running it and the location was chosen to make use of tunnels into the mountain adjacent to keep the beer cool. http://loewenbrauerei-elzach.de/index.html
First they showed us a canning operation temporarily set up to test how that was going to work, or not, for the brewery, that was unusual to see, we just happened to be there on the day of trial.
Then walked through the entire plant so see the various tanks, bottling apparatus, basically from start to finish of making beer.
Dave translated Johannes the entire time. Then, of course, there was the tasting, of a couple of the brews from the brewery and then one that was created by Decker but brewed by Löwenbrauerei Elzach.
What is notable is that all the beer sold is done so by both parties in an approximate radius of 50 square kilometres. It is generally not available at the grocery stores. The brewery used to make home deliveries, I’ve never heard of that except for dairy products (showing my age here).
It was an eye opener for me and, you probably know, I do enjoy seeing and learning about production facilities or factories. Ryan and Angela said it was one of the best tours they’d been on, which is saying a lot with their hopsmash project. http://hopsmash.co/
That was our brewery tour. Cheers, Bev and Lexi who didn't come along...
Dave translated Johannes the entire time. Then, of course, there was the tasting, of a couple of the brews from the brewery and then one that was created by Decker but brewed by Löwenbrauerei Elzach.
What is notable is that all the beer sold is done so by both parties in an approximate radius of 50 square kilometres. It is generally not available at the grocery stores. The brewery used to make home deliveries, I’ve never heard of that except for dairy products (showing my age here).
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| Dave Decker Left, Johannes Dold Right |
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| Hops hanging from the ceiling in the shop. |
That was our brewery tour. Cheers, Bev and Lexi who didn't come along...
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