Touring In Style

I still don't know if I won't have to take an oral exam on the 30th, but I'm having a great time touring Germany and Austria this week.
On the first day, we saw the Steineker brewhouse plant, and it was great to see how all of the beautiful vessels are made. I wasn't able to take pictures in the plant, but it still was a unique experience that not many people get.
We saw Johann Barth & Sohn next, the largest hop processing plant in the world. If you buy hop pellets from Germany, they surely came from this plant. Their production was in full swing, and we saw the entire pelletizing process from hop cone to foil bag. All of the hops in the entire warehouse were already sold, showing clearly how tight the hop market is this year.
On Tuesday, we visited Krones, the parent company of Steineker and the largest filling line producer in the world. Their warehouses that we toured through were massive, and I will soon post pictures of the many types of filling lines that we had the opportunity to see.
We then went to a medium sized brewery called Birchofshof that had a nearly new Steineker system. They showed us through the entire array of vessels and processes, and their dunkel and bock beers were supurb at the end of the tour. The ultimate mark of a hospitable tour was the brewer bringing a couple of cases of his beer for our bus trip, and we seem to judge tours largely on this extra bonus. The brewery is actually owned by the local Catholic archdiocese, but it does nothing to hurt their beer quality if not improve it.

I'll recount the rest of my week later, but I'm now in Heidelburg and need to find a beer at the nearest brewpub before I'm the last one left at the hotel.