Goose Island and the European Brewing Tour Schedule

The last update was rather wordy, so this one will be mostly pictures and descriptions! We recently went on a behind the scenes brewery tour at Chicago's largest craft brewery, Goose Island. Most brewery tours are pretty basic, they tell you how beer is made and show you some big stainless steel vessels and then you sample some beer and call it a day. Since we are in brewing school and all, we get to go on "Siebel tours", which basically consist of "ask me any questions you could possibly think of and I will answer it." The willingness of these awesome folks to share information with us is a really cool perk, though not unexpected as most of them are alumni! Lets get to the pictures:





This is the upper portion of Goose Island's brewery. Here is where the "hot side" of the brewing process goes on.





Their little tasting area at the top of their brewhouse which overlooks the brewing vessels. Awesome little perch!





The inside of their boil kettle (an internal calandria). Awesome way to get rid of volatiles! I think it was a 50 barrel kettle.





Big plate heat exchanger from the boil kettle to the fermenters.





Fermenters. The large ones are 200-300 barrel fermenters and the smaller ones are for specialty beers.





Yeast propagator





Centrifuge. One of the most impressive parts about modern breweries is the pipework that connects all this stuff together. Some of it is amazing!





Sexy pipe work.





I think all these were 300 barrel fermenters. Off to the upper right is where the brewhouse is.





Bourbon barrel aging as well as some experimentation.





Bottling line. They are working 24 hours a day 350+ days a year. This place is rocking.





Bottles on their way into the filler.





Depalletizer.





Siebel's little pilot brewery! Students do not get to brew on this but it is used by Siebel for test batches for their other business units.

On Tuesday we got the list of the places that we will be visiting on our European brewery tour. We will be visiting German and Austrian breweries as well as a malting facility, a manufacturer of brewing equipment, and a hop distributor. I am just going to list them on here for you guys!

Steinecker (Manufacturer of brewing equipment)
Hopsteiner (Hops and Hop products)
Krones AG (Packaging and brewing equipment)
Bischofshof (Brewery)
Kaspar Shulz (Manufacturer of brewing equipment)
Weyerman (Malting Facility)
Schneider (Brewery known for Wheat Beers)
Kuchibauer (Brewery known for Wheat Beers)
Stiegl Brauerei (Brewery)
Augustiner Brau (Brewery)
Gusswerk (Brewery)
Eggenberg (Brewery known for Samiclaus)
Brauerei Hofstetten (Brewery)
Bierkullnarium (Beer and Food pairing)
Schlagl (Brewery)
Flottweg (Manufacturer of centrifuges)

Obviously as we visit these places I will give you more of an update on each of them individually. Also, if you know anything about these places be sure to email me or leave a comment! I am going to do as much research as I can before I get to each but any additional info is welcome!

Location:Chicago, IL