Straight Wodka

So I'm a bit behind...

Tuesday, January 17th, we had a free morning so Amanda and I did some shopping. Her shoes had broken so she got some new ones, and I picked up a few souvenirs. In the afternoon, we went to Paulaner Brewery. To start our tour, he gave us all 0.5 L of beer. I got their wheat beer and it smelled pretty banana-y, but it tasted so good. There wasn't too much carbonation and it was smooth, creamy, and slightly sweet. Paulaner’s practices were very similar to the other smaller breweries we had toured, except Paulaner originally started as a monastic brewery, which was extremely topical, since Keith’s presentation afterwards was on monastic brewing.

After Keith’s presentation, some of us went over to one of the Augustiner Brauhaus locations. They were showing a game of handball—Germany against Macedonia. I think people in America play it, but I had never seen it before. It was kind of like a cross between soccer and basketball, and moved pretty fast. Germany won by one point and the guy we were sharing the table with got us all shots.

We then decided to go out to the big Augustiner where they actually brew their beer, and I got a “lemonada” which turned out to be like Sprite but with less carbonation. Because of the low amount of carbonation, everyone kept joking that I was drinking straight wodka. Some of the group continued to bar hop (pun intended) but my roommates and I just went straight to bed.Keith’s presentation was really interesting—I had no clue before on the restrictions and reasons behind monastic brewing. I really enjoyed a story he told us about how the monks originally made this super delicious and super strong beer that they would drink during lent, but thought it might be too indulgent so they sent it to the pope to see what he thought. Of course, in these times, they had to send it by horse-drawn carriage which mixed it around and it was in the sunlight all that time, so when it got to the pope, it wasn’t very good—so of course he said it was fine to have during lent! So if you want the pope to approve of something, send it on a long journey first!