Weihenstephan Brewery
The oldest continually operating brewery in the world
The main reason we wanted to visit Freising is that it's home to the Bayerische Staatsbrauerei Weihenstephan, the world famous Weihenstephan Bavarian State Brewery.
After arriving in Freising, we got settled into our hotel then made the short drive up Weihenstephan Hill so we could try some of these famous beers in the restaurant attached to the brewery.
Side note: this was also where we had the grumpiest waiter we’ve had on the trip to date. As of this writing, he's leading contender for World’s Grumpiest Waiter (spoiler alert: he won).
Side note: Weihenstephan is the brewery. Weihenstephaner is the brand. When ordering a beer, one world say, "I'll have a Weihenstephaner." But when talking about visiting the brewery, one would say, "I visited Weihenstephan."
The Weihenstephan Monastery was founded by Saint Corbinian in 725 and was thought to have been making beer as early as 768. But it was in 1040 when the monks got a license from the city of Freising to make and sell beer — and that's what makes it the oldest still-operating brewery in the world.
The beers, of course, are quite excellent. _Korbinian_, in particular, is (in this writer's opinion), one of the Five Best Beers in the World (or at least that we encountered on our adventure).
We would have toured the brewery proper, but it was the weekend and the tours weren't available, so there's not much else to say about our visit here.
I was going to combine this post with our visit to Dachau, our other main outing in the Freising area. But that was such a massively less joyful experience than visiting a brewery, so they really needed to be separate.
But I will say that after visiting Dachau, we returned to Weihenstephan one more time for some much-needed relief.
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Header Image: Weinhenstepan mascot: A bear that's also a monk carrying two barrels of beer. Image from the author's collection.