The World's first Floating Brewery

The most recent addition to the Weyermann® family of brewery customers is at home nowhere and everywhere: It is the brand new, 252-meter (827 foot) cruise ship AIDAblu of AIDA Cruises. Though malts from Weyermann® Specialty Malts in Bamberg, Bavaria, are quite accustomed to being ferried across the seas, this is the first time they are turned into beer during, not after, their ocean voyage...because the AIDAblu has, on one of its 14 decks, the world's first floating brewery!

Even on the ocean blue, a beer is not complete without a good dose of malt from Weyermann®! Here, brew master Hegny of the cruise ship AIDAblu adds Weyermann® Carahell®, a blond caramel malt, to a mash on the high seas.The AIDAblu on-board brewery is on deck 10. The brew house is made of glass and is capable of producing up to 500 litres of beer per day. The ship's on-board copper fermentation and lagering tanks have a capacity of up to 13,000 litres. The entire brewery operation is under the expert control of 27-year old brew-master Andreas Hegny, Germany's first brew-master on the high seas. Brew-master Hegny's pride and joy, among the beers he makes, is AIDA-Zwickel, brewed with Weyermann® malt. Zwickel is brewer's jargon for "sampling cock," a little faucet-like spigot that allows the brew-master to draw a sample of the brew as it is fermenting and maturing.

Zwickelbier is an old German beer style, which is always served fresh and unfiltered. It has a rich caramel malt note and a pleasant noble hop aroma - a perfect showcase for the specialty malts for which Weyermann® has developed a reputation for more than 130 years. The AIDAblu keeps seven malt varieties on board, in two storage facilities, and on brew day they are milled fresh for the mash.

Andreas Hegny also makes several rotating specialty brews. His current offering is an Eisbock, a strong and malty Bavarian lager, whose alcohol content has been raised by freezing the finished brew in the tank until ice crystals form. The remaining liquid is then drained off the slush. Because water freezes before alcohol does, the resulting beer is a particularly potent and heart-warming beverage. The Eisbock (as the first AIDAblu special) is a fitting choice, considering that the ship (having been christened at the beginning of February 2010) had to postpone its maiden voyage to Mallorca, because it was briefly trapped by excessive ice formations in the mouth of the Elbe River.

A Brew of Sea Water and Weyermann® Malt
Brewing on board is no different from brewing on land says brew master Hegny, as he wipes his hands on his leather apron, because yeast will do its work of turning wort into beer even on the high seas. The real secret, however, is technological: after much tinkering, brew system designers were able to configure the brewery vessels so that their content would not be affected by the ship's rolling and pitching. Raw materials, too needed careful consideration, and AIDA Cruises selected Weyermann® malt because of its proven quality. As for water, there is, of course, no lack of it around a cruise liner.

That's why the brewing water used on the AIDAblu is actually sea water, which is stripped of its salt content by the ship's own desalinification plant. The water is then cleaned and enriched with minerals.

"This water is just right for beer-making," says brew master Hegny, "because it is very soft."  Soft water enhances the hops‘ mild, gentle bitterness which, when balanced with some aromatic maltiness from Weyermann® malt, produces a sublime taste experience for the passengers.