Weihenstephen Brewery

Now could I resist going to a brewery that claims to be the oldest in the world?  That's right, I couldn't.  The cascade of my bad timing with brewery tours continues (and will continue into next week), but I still got to try the beer at the source.

According to my bad translation (all errors are with the original text, and are not my own), as well as the broken English testimony of some locals, a long time ago Korbinian discovered a source of water here with a divining rod.

This saved the monks much pain hauling water from the river at the bottom of the hill.  The hill is not big enough to make you think it's technically too far to fetch water, but I bet it would get old pretty quick, so if I was one of those monks I'd have nominated him for sainthood too.

You can hear the gurgling of the water here.  According to the sign, the water has healing properties, and the locals tell me it's good for your eyes.  I'll never know because it's behind a locked steel gate.  Why aren't they making magic beer out of this?  This is what I want to know.

Eventually some monks got around to building a chapel on the site.  The locals tell me this was razed by evil secularists I'm the 1800s.

But the secularists didn't, for some strange reason, destroy the brewery.  I don't know if the chimney predates all these shenanigans, but I'm pretty sure that big stainless steel kettle does.

No brewery tour for me.  At the restaurant I was offered the choice of biergarten, a table with a window, or the cellar.

Normally in Germany you just go plonk yourself down somewhere, so they must be used to dealing with foreign tourists like me.

The waiter recommended the weizenbock.  I sure hope I don't get brain damage like the glass suggests.

The locals who'd given me the juice on the ruins told the beer to get was the Korbinian doppelbock.  They were right, it was very good.  This is not to suggest the waiter was wrong, though.  Both were fine beers.

If some random person searchng Google finds this while planning places to visit around Munich, do what I didn't do and find out about brewery tours well ahead of time, and book.  As far as I could tell, at the time of year I went there are only a few days a week that you can get one.  Getting a tour in English might even be harder.  Check early.  I enjoyed it even without the tour.