Top Day trip from Munich, Oktoberfest: German Beer History from the 2 Oldest Breweries in the World

Hi guys, I'm Terrell and welcome back to the Gala of Anthropologists. So, you have decided to go to Oktoberfest. I think that is a really great idea, but I will tell you, and you can learn by going to the video above us, probably two to three days is enough for Oktoberfest itself and maybe for your wallet. And so, there are so many more things to do in Bavaria and they all can have to do with beer. So we went on a trip that we called Albstoberfest and did some amazing things. Yeah, Albstoberfest is amazing. We're going to be talking about the next couple of weeks some of the things you can do from Oktoberfest, but the first one was probably my favorite. We went to the two oldest breweries in the entire world and had some really amazing beer. And if you think that you recognize me and you haven't been watching the Gala of Anthropologists for a little while, maybe it was from my pilot where I played a beer archaeologist, except for that never got onto the air. But anyway, believe me, when I talk about beer I do know at least a little bit about it. So this is going to turn a little bit into a beer history type of episode, but how many times in your life do you get to go to the two oldest breweries in the world? It was an awesome experience. I'm so glad we got to learn a little bit of history, but also taste that awesome beer. And so, what we actually suggest you go to first is Weltenberg Abbey, which is actually the second oldest brewery. The reason we say that is because you really should do both of them on the same day. So go to the one that's furthest away, and then on your way back go to the second one. And man, it is well worth it. I think that I like the beer the most, but also it's just so beautiful. Here at Weltenberg Abbey they've been making beer since 1050, and the thing that they're the most famous for is their dunkel. And this dunkel in particular wins major awards, like every four years it seems like. Back in 2004, 2008, 2012, it was said to be the best dunkel in the world. And I'm not always a fan of a dunkel, but you can tell that this one is really well done. The IBUs I would estimate at about 35, and it's got a nice sweet breadiness to it, which is what it's supposed to taste like. So I can see why it wins an award. Weltenberg Abbey is a really cool place. It's actually the site of a Benedictine monastery that was built in 617. And a lot of the buildings here obviously aren't from 617, those were probably made of wood. These are from 1716 to 1739, but it's really great ambiance and really delicious beer. Beautiful place to have a beer. I'm sure it was a great place to have a beer back when it was wood. It was actually like sacked like 10 times, burnt to the ground, and earthquakes, and all this stuff, and every time they just came back. So that was kind of cool. There are people in the world that say that this is the world's oldest brewery that's still active. We are going to one that claims to be 10 years earlier, but either way it's kind of gorgeous. They win a lot of awards for their beer here. They make good beer, so we'll see who makes the best beer when we get to Weihenstephan in just a minute. Prost! Make sure you come by here if you're in Germany at all. Absolutely. This is the Marzen. This is the original apparently from Anjo 1050, and it's a Marzen, which means it's a beer that had to be made in March, stored over the summer, and then opened in September or October. Now that's confusing to me because the reason for a Marzen is a law that's passed like 700 years after 1050. They made it illegal to brew during the summer, but that wasn't until like 1670 or something like that, so I don't know if they were really making a Marzen in 1050. Aren't there some interesting like drinking laws here? Oh there's some really cool drinking laws, but there's some really not cool drinking laws. So I have been pretty much nursing the same beer this whole time because I'm driving, and their drinking and driving laws are no joke. So if you are going to drive here, spend some time going and looking at the beautiful church afterwards, find a partner like Victoria who's sitting over here to drink most of your beer, or just look around, enjoy the beauty here, fly your drone if you can and it's not raining, but come be responsible when you get here. I do not think I will be driving the next couple of nights when we're partying. One thing you can do if you've had too many beers and you want to check out a cool city, is you can just walk the road to Kelheim and then take the boat back. Yeah, we're not going to do that though. We're going to go on a little hike though. The beer here was really delicious, but what I think I liked most about it was the surrounding area. So definitely take some time, check out the little chapel, it's really pretty, and then you want to go and go on the little hikes. And so there's this one hike that goes up the hill, and there's another church there, and then it goes down by the water, and there's a bunch of walking by the water, and even like the surrounding town, there's statues and greenery, and it's a really awesome time. Especially because there was a small group of us, it was just a great time to talk, and drink beer, and have a great time, which I think is what this area is all about. Monks no longer make the beer here. It was modernized and secularized over a hundred years ago, but they still use the same recipes supposedly, and they really do a good beer, so you should definitely come out here when you're in the country of Germany and Bavaria in specific. It is quite the destination for beer lovers. Another cool thing about this brewery is you can actually take a ferry ride on one of the prettiest parts of the Danube River. It looked awesome, unfortunately we didn't have enough time to do it this time. This is a really beautiful corner of the Danube River, and you can pay I think it's $13.50 round trip, and you can go on one of these ferry boats, and they'll take you up the river and then back. It's really beautiful. We're here in Weihensteffen Brewery, which is the oldest brewery in the world. Supposed to have a lot of really good beers too, so looking forward to checking that out. When we were just at, the Weltenberg Abbey was founded. They started selling beer in 1050. This one they actually started selling beer in 1040. Now they were making beer well before that. They actually have a record in 768. They were making beer, but they weren't selling it. They had to pay their 10% to farm the hops, so they would pay their 10% in hops, and the monks here started brewing at that point. But it wasn't until 1040 that they actually started selling it, because they had to get a license to do that. But that was the earliest license on record here in Bavaria, and they're still going strong today. This is called the oldest brewery in the world, but there was definitely brewing going on beforehand. And there's all this debate on whether it was China, or whether it was in Samaria, or this, or that, or 12 others. The one thing I can tell you from the archaeological record is it seems like the first concrete evidence of brewing happened in the Levant Valley about 13,000 years ago. If the Levant Valley sounds familiar, it probably should if you're a follower, because we just put a video out of the Levant Valley just a couple weeks ago, and it was awesome to experience that and kind of see the history in the making. We got to crawl around in caves and just kind of live like maybe they did thousands of years ago. We don't just love food and drink and all that kind of thing. We do love history. It sits deep into our heart, and there's a whole lot of beer history for you to learn. And the next step was it actually getting to the area of Germany. When beer came to Germany is really debatable. It probably was here a long time ago, but what happens is when the Romans take over here, they prefer wine, and beer is not that important to them. And so it wasn't until the fall of Rome in this area in the 5th century that you have the Germanic tribes bringing in their beer, and we finally get beer here. We do know that before that in Britain there were people brewing, and it started out kind of as like the housewives wanting to know what to do with leftover barley and things like that, and they'd make like this, I don't know, porridge type of alcohol, and that was early beer in Britain. And then they started doing groots, where they would add a lot of herbs and stuff for preservation, and it gave you kind of like a saison flavor to it or whatever. And then eventually the guys took it over, and eventually the Catholics who didn't like beer at first, they said, well if you can't beat them, join them. And then the monks become like the premier brewers of their day, and places like this come into fame because the monks make really good beer, and you should definitely have a lot of monk beer. And we have probably recorded long enough, so let's go have some monk beer. We didn't know which beer we wanted, so we got the sampler, and it's got three different kinds of beers. We have the original Hell, and we have a Dark, and we have a Wheat. So I'm going to start with the Hell, and then I'll move to the Wheat, and then I'll do the Dark next. You should always start from light to dark when you're doing a sampler, because it'll be less interruption, and make sure you have something to change your palate. I'm thinking I'll like the Wheat. I usually like Wheat. Yeah, the Wheat's not bad. It definitely has a little bit of like Belgian hops. You get that bubble gummy flavor to it, which is not my favorite, but it's pretty toned down. This is supposedly their original beer. It's really similar to their original beer, and since this is the original brewery that's still going, this is the one I'm probably most looking forward to as kind of a beer nerd, but I'm going to probably like the darker one more, and pass on the Wheat. This is just clean and refreshing, and probably pretty sessionable. It's a nice beer though. You can tell they've been doing it for a while. I don't know if they've been doing it for a thousand years. Exactly the same, but it's good. So it's called a Hell, but it's one of the original beers made by a monastery? Yeah, I don't know if it was actually called a Hell's beer at that point, but I'm not even sure that Hell translates exactly the same, but if you wanted to stay away from Hell, I thought. Let's do the last of the sampler. This is the darkest beer. It's good. It's got a really good malt, really low IBUs. It's really nice. This is my favorite of the three, for sure. And I got the Vetus, which smells kind of fruity. This is a really, really good banana bread beer. I don't absolutely love banana bread beer, so I got a really big beer that I can tell is really well done, but it's not really my wheelhouse. And so the story goes for here that this was started by a guy named Saint Carinian. When Saint Carinian came here, he struck the ground with his holy staff and holy water bubbled out, and so I guess holy water makes really good beer. I'm not sure it was really good beer, but it was well made and certain people like those kind of beers. It wasn't my favorite, but one thing you will find here that you don't see at Weldenburg Abbey is food, and they actually have really good food, especially considering like beer slash brewery stereotypical food. The time has finally arrived. I am so hungry I could chew my own arm off, so we got this enormous platter full of wonderful meat, some soft cheese, some red onion, of course, pretzels, and I cannot wait to dig in. So I'm gonna go ahead and hit up, I think, maybe the soft cheese first. Give that a little taste. I like bruschetta, I like salsa. It's got some nice friesies. It's a good tomato though. I think it's called os...obasto? Sorry I messed that up. Does anybody want to try any? It's really good on the pretzel. And it was nice that we got to eat a lot because I did drink maybe a little bit more than I should have with me having to drive after that, but the good thing about this, I would say, was it definitely was pretty affordable considering where we were and the atmosphere and how good the food was. And, you know, it's nice to be in a place that's really that historically significant, and for beer lovers it doesn't get any more significant than that. Right here at the church in Weinhensteffen, Duke Wilhelm IV made the laws known as Reinheitsgebot and they had a lot of like beer regulations. For one thing you could only have water, barley, and hops. They didn't really know about yeast. The other thing is it limited the price of beer. I kind of wish that was still a thing because I know when we're going to Oktoberfest soon it's going to be like $15 a liter. I would have would have liked to have cheaper prices from Reinheitsgebot. And that'll be about a wrap on our History 101 of beer. I hope you guys had fun and learned a whole lot. Thank you for watching this wholeheartedly. We really appreciate your support, especially on our Oktoberfest video. Last night we hit 20,000 views, which for right now is a big deal for us. So hopefully all of you guys like this and watch it like 12 times and subscribe and do all those things that YouTubers wish you would do. And I also hope that you find yourself in Bavaria soon over the next two weeks. We're going to give you some other ideas of really amazing things that you can do when you're in that area. Yeah, Oktoberfest is awesome. Make sure that you do spend some time in Bavaria. I can't wait to share those videos with you because there's really just so much to do there. Either way, if you're going to Oktoberfest now or you're going to Oktoberfest next year, I hope you guys have an awesome time and maybe we'll see you there. Yeah, so we're going to be back there in a couple of years on our carbon neutral drive around the world. And then we'll probably go like every couple of years from now on. It was just that epic and that amazing. And we hope that you find yourself there maybe with us and we can do an Eindrossen together or whatever. But as always, find yourself on a journey.