Just on my way home from a typically beery trip to Bavaria. Most of the week was spent at Tegernsee, sampling the legendary beers brewed along the banks of the lake there. The plan had been to fly via Munich, but it turned out the EasyJet to Memmingen was much cheaper. As a result, we had a day to kill in nearby Augsburg, and the tour of the famous Riegele Brauhaus sounded like an attractive proposition.
The brewery has 600 years of history and, remarkably, has been in the same family for 28 generations. The current brewhouse dates from 1911. It is organised as a gravity system, with the successive stages on lower floors. The tour, then, begins four or five floors up and ends several floors underground with the lagering tanks.
Ingredients: Riegele brews a wide range of beers, including Wiessbier, a top-fermented Kellerbier, and lots of Pilsner and Helles. The malt comes from Pappenheim – and Riegele is clearly a valuable customer for the maltings there.
The malt mill was built by a company in Dresden, now long defunct. Paulaner in Munich have another of the same design, so the two breweries put differences aside when it comes to repair and maintenance, sharing parts and expertise.
Copper vessels in the spectacular Jungenstil brew room. It is a step mash for pretty much everything. They do decoction mashing, but only for strong malt-forward Dunkels. No need for the Helles, it seems.
The yeast lab. Most breweries in these parts rely on external companies to maintain their yeast strains, but Riegele are proud to do so themselves. That is quite a feat, given the number of different styles they produce.
Into the lagering cellars.
An astonishing amount of beer down here. There are three floors like this.
And so the tasting begins. A proper Zwickel, straight out of the tank, fresh and fruity!
The structure of the tour is one hour in the brewhouse followed by two hours tasting. A Brotzeit is laid on – so sausages and a potato salad all round. I went for a Kellerbier: top-fermented, rich and dark, the nearest thing you’ll find round here to an English ale. Then some of the Feines Urhell, again from the tap. They brew a Pilsner too, but Augsburg is a Helles area, so this is the standard beer. It is clean and smooth, but with just enough character to make it moreish.
Finally, a superstrong Speziator Hell, 8.5%. This is a Doppelbock, but they have tried to retain the Helles character. So it is as light-bodied as you’re going to get for 8.5%. It’s deceptively drinkable – fortunately it only comes in small bottles!
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