Premium pilsner with natural gas

Warsteiner Premium Pilsner has been brewed in the family business in the Sauerland region since 1753. A process that requires selected ingredients as well as a lot of skill – and natural gas. GASWINNER staff member Julia Mägdefessel spent a day watching the master brewers in Waldpark brewery at work.

Warsteiner Pilsner has a long journey ahead of it before it is given the Premium Verum label.

It’s hot, almost tropically hot in the upstream heating basement, where three enormous black water boilers stand next to each other. They remind you a bit of steam locomotives, and the ultra modern system also works in a similar manner, despite the boilers’ old-fashioned appearance. About 60 tonnes of steam are generated here each hour with the help of natural gas. This steam is distributed through a widely branching system of ceiling-mounted pipes to the various rooms of the brewery, where around ten million hectoliters of Warsteiner Premium are produced each year in several brewing lines. The gas ensures that the brewery runs continuously, even over Christmas; WINGAS has been supplying this gas since the start of October. Although pilsner is best enjoyed cool, heat is needed to produce it.

This starts in the brew house where the crushed malt – one of the beer’s main ingredients – is mixed with water and boiled in giant mash tuns. This causes the starch to be released from the malt into the water, where enzymes convert it into malt sugar. “But not all water is the same,” explains brewer and maltster Rolf Müller. “The choice of brewing water affects the mineral and salt content of the beer. For instance, the soft, low-lime water of the brewery’s own Kaiserquelle spring is especially suitable for bitter beers like pilsner or Kölsch.” Although the stainless steel tanks are air tight and apart from a small, steamed up porthole, there is almost nothing to see, the air is filled with the heavy, sweet aroma of malt. Depending on the room and temperature you notice it more or less. Ralf Müller no longer smells it. He has been at the job too long for that. “I started at Warsteiner as a young brewer and maltster when you still had to monitor and check every tank manually,” he says. “Now everything is fully automatic.”

It’s all down to the technology



Brewer Rolf Müller controls the brewing process from the control center.

His workplace is a semi-circular computer-based control center. Here, he and his two co-workers monitor the process, enter coordinates and evaluate data. This is why a brewing apprenticeship now also includes technical training. “The brewer and maltster profession has certainly changed a lot over the years,” confirms Müller. In any case, the modern brew house has very little in common with an old-fashioned brewery. Instead of copper, the tanks are stainless steel, instead of coal they are heated with natural gas. And while in the past the floor around the boiler was covered with hop umbels, the hop extract used today leaves no trace whatsoever. Just one single copper boiler opposite the entrance to the brew house – polished brightly and behind glass – reminds visitors of the old days.

Besides the aroma of malt you especially notice the silence. The only sound is the ceiling ventilation. “Don’t worry,” says Müller, laughing, “as soon as you leave the production area and enter the filling lines, you will notice a big difference. There, things literally go round in circles.” It usually takes six to eight weeks until the finished beer is filled into kegs, cans, or bottles. Mashing is just the first step on the way to the finished beer. When the required malt sugar has fully formed, Müller removes the malt residues from the brew. The liquid that is produced, also called wort, is boiled further while hops are added. This gives the beer its special character. The type and quantity of hops have a major impact on the taste: the more hops, the more bitter the finished beer is.

5,000 samples each day ensure the high quality



	The crushed malt is mixed with water and boiled to form malt sugar in leading edge stainless steel tanks.

Around 55,000 cans of Warsteiner Pilsner are filled and stacked on pallets every hour.

The noise at the various systems really is loud. The golden yellow cans rattle along the winding conveyor belts. The cans are cleaned, sterilized with steam and then filled with beer. “This is nothing,” says an employee in a loud voice. “If we were filling bottles today, you wouldn’t understand a single word I’m saying.” You have to wear ear plugs wherever you go. The smell is also different: instead of the sweetish malt aroma in the production areas, you now notice the typical pilsner smell. Metallic, bitter and bit like being in a pub. And it is no longer warm – on the contrary. After all, the beer has to be cooled so that it can develop its typical taste. The orange-red high visibility vests of the employees monitoring the process also keep them warm.

Around 55,000 cans of Warsteiner Premium Verum are filled here every hour; they are then packed on pallets and loaded on to trucks to start their journey to the many pubs, restaurants and supermarkets where they are sold. And this happens 24 hours a day, seven days a week. From Augsburg to Zwickau, from Freiburg to Kiel the family business supplies its customers – as it has been doing for the last 255 years.

More information at: www.warsteiner.de

At a glance

Foundation year: 1753
Founder: Antonius Cramer
(1712–1773)
Employees worldwide:
approx. 2,500
Management: In 2006 Catharina Cramer joined the Warsteiner Group management, the first woman to do so, complementing the rest of the team, Albert Cramer, Peter Himmelsbach, Stephan Fahrig.
Number of export countries: 60

A journey through Sauerland

GASWINNER presents some selected highlights from this region on both sides of the gas pipeline.
more