Annual Masters of Booze Upper Austria Association Excursion 2014

SDeurope

Being a Master of Booze (MoB) pretty much automatically makes you join the Master of Booze association of your province, which organizes annual all-day excursions to visit popular micro distilleries throughout Austria, making it possible to have a look on how others do their craft, exchange thoughts and ideas on all about distilling, make new friends and have a good time. Such event just took place a week ago, with 25 Masters of Booze of Upper Austria (including @Sunshine and me) participating on that extraordinary trip that brought us as far as Bavaria.

We boarded our specially chartered bus at 7:00 AM which made its way south-west through Salzburg and passing the border to Bavaria. Have a look at our whole day experience with the booze (almost no spitting involved!), mouse-over the pictures for more info on what's shown.

First Stop: Hofbräuhaus Traunstein

Imperial Brewery HB Traunstein since 1612. The city of Traunstein pretty much is built around that traditional family-owned brewery, and everything there is about fine beer brewed in accordance with the German Purity Law of 1516 established by Duke Wilhelm IV. What's better than Bavarian veal sausage with pretzel and beer in the morning? More beer of course! We tasted some very nice wheat beer and dark unfiltered Pils while watching a film about the brewery. I must have been influenced by the early alcohol, which explains the lack of proper pictures, I nevertheless managed to shoot a few.

Second Stop: Siegfried Herzog Destillate in Saalfelden

Multiple awarded master distiller Siegfried Herzog has an idyllic location in the countryside of Salzburg at the indulgence route via culinaria, where he creates his variety of fine spirits. He is not only a great distiller but a true distilling artist of international fame.

SDeurope

Drive through Austrian Valleys with changing Weather

Third Stop: Brennerei Primushäusl in Abersee at Wolfgangsee

Beautiful location directly at Lake Wolfgang with not only one but two stills on the same property, which usually is not possible due to the law, but family Rieger made it happen with the trick that one unbonded is used agriculturally whereas the other is a small bonded one used commercially.

Unfortunately we had to leave family Rieger way too soon due to our bus driver exceeding his daily bus operation limit, we all could have spent several hours longer at their beautiful location.

Some Pictures of Austrian Lakeland on the Way Home

Our Yield of that Day

From left to right:

• Siegfried Herzog's Bock Beer Distillate
• Siegfried Herzog's Barrel Aged Gypsy Sour Cherry Distillate
• Distillery Primushäusl's Swiss Stone Pine Distillate
• Distillery Primushäusl's Barrique Aged Dried Plum Distillate
• Distillery Primushäusl's Special Edition Williams Pear with 51.5% ABV (usually not for sale!)
• Siegfried Herzog's Gin
• Distillery Primushäusl's Apricot Distillate
• In the Front Two of Herzog's Cheese Creations

Needless to say that we were having a blast! From fine beer to fine spirits all day long accompanied by fellow comrades in staggering ambience, what more can a Master of Booze's heart desire? :-bd

grim

What a great photojournalism tour! Austria really does love Kothe.

SDeurope

@grim said: What a great photojournalism tour! Austria really does love Kothe.

Yes, the popular German manufacturers seem to have Austria in a tight grip, something we'd like to change, though this is about turn-key stills which come at a price versus affordable DIY, not quite fitting the same target audience. We'll see it later on if we are going to offer turn-key solutions as well.

Sunshine

Interestingly both of the highly decorated distillers don't filter any more. They think, too much flavor is removed by filtering. If the brandy clouds at the customer, they argue it's natural. I like this way of thinking.

Smaug

Looks like a spectacular outing.

Sadi

Beautiful country. :)