Sustainable Brewing the German Way

by Abram Goldman-Armstrong

From our editors:

Portland Looks to great beers from around the world this week with the arrival of the Portland International Beerfest (this weekend July 14 to 16th). Here is a story straight from our Guest on Tap correspondent at the World Cup Games in Germany, Abram Goldman-Armstrong. Portland says "Prost, Cheers" to good beers from around the world!

Oregon brewers have long looked to traditional European breweries for innovation, but now even brewers in Germany are embracing the spirit of ingenuity of American craft brewers.
Asked to brew a special beer to celebrate the new year, Schweinsbrau’s Christian Lange brewed a stout, a style virtually unknown in Germany. The reception was so good, he now brews the stout year-round.
“Have you had a beautiful pig today?” the brewer’s T-shirt asks in German. “It’s a German expression for having good luck,” brewmaster Lange explains.
We’re standing in the brewery on the Hermannsdorfer Landwerk farm in southern Bavaria, which bears a striking resemblance to Yamhill County. Each year, Lange brews 650 hectolitres (about 455 U.S. barrels, or 14,000 gallons) of organic beer, sold in organic shops in the Munich area.
Hermannsdorfer was founded 20 years ago by Karl Ludwig Schweisfurth, who had owned Germany’s largest meatpacking company. A sculpture in the company’s office depicts four women kneeling before a globe rent by the ravages of industry, grieving for hundreds of hungry faces inside. Schweisfurth set out to change the way food was raised.
Schoolchildren visit the farm, help care for the animals, and learn about farming and traditional foods. There is also an on-site kindergarten class, which raises its own goats and chickens, and in a new program children will camp in nomadic shelters and learn about primitive baking, cheese and sausage making.
Organic crops are grown on the farm’s 150 hectares of land for the company’s on-farm restaurant and 10 organic shops throughout Munich, and to feed the farm’s 400 pigs. Three cheeses are made on the farm, with milk from cows fed on the brewery’s spent grain; and about 30 different kinds of sausage come from the pigs.
The brewery was added to the farm 13 years ago and produces six styles of beer in steel-lined wooden open fermentors, including Hell, Dunkel, a wheat beer, a spelt beer, possibly the only stout in Germany, with roasty chocolate notes in the aroma and bittersweet chocolate notes in the full body, and a rotating seasonal.
Sitting in the farm’s lush green courtyard watching goats play, eating the house-made raw-milk cheeses and charcuterie, drinking Lange’s dunkel with its milk chocolate and toasty breadlike notes, I truly have had a schoenes Schwein this day.
by Honorary Beer Scribe to Guest on Tap
Abram Goldman-Armstrong

Beer News:


A Big Happy Birthday to you! Don Younger of Horse Brass fame, Scott Willis of Point-Blank Distributing fame and our own Honorary Beer Scribe, Lisa Morrison, share a birthday, Today, lucky 7-11 (July 11). And between the three of us, we are 150 years old this year. That's 21 in beer years. Buy them a beer today!

It’s Beerfest Time! If you missed it, the Portland International Beerfest is this weekend in the North Park Blocks. On the locally brewed beer front, 5th ANNUAL ROADHOUSE BREWFEST at McMenamins Cornelius Pass Roadhouse puts the “brewer” back in brewfest! The beerfest where eight enjoyable ales from eight McMenamins breweries are gathered on Imbrie’s tranquil six-acre farmstead. The brewfest runs from 4 p.m. to 11 p.m. All ages are welcome; guests must be 21 or over to sample beers. McMenamins Cornelius Pass Roadhouse and Imbrie Hall are located at 4045 N.W. Cornelius Pass Road, Hillsboro, Oregon. Call (503) 640-6174 or visit.www.mcmenamins.com for more information.

New Beers around town: The Mash Tun now has 5 beers on tap! The Mash Tun’s IPA is going well. Porter is good. Look for the Mash Tun Pilsner next month. And from Laurelwood, Workhorse IPA, the most voted on in the Dream IPA contest. Workhorse is a true West Coast IPA, featuring over-the-top hop flavor and aroma. Generous hop additions in the kettle, hop back and fermenter make this a hop head's dream beer.