Although I really like what I have found in Qingdao, I had no idea any of it existed. I only came for one reason - to visit the Tsingtao Brewery. It is fair to say that a few glasses of their product have forced their way between my lips over the years. I really don’t know why I waited until my third day to visit, but it wasn’t until Wednesday that I went there. Since it is only a few km from where I was staying, I walked - thankfully, the weather was cooperative.
I only put this picture here because it will be the cover art for the post. It was actually at the end of my time at the brewery. As I think I have mentioned, the brewery was set up within a few years of the German invasion in 1897 - they extracted a concession from the Chinese Government of the day to run Qingdao, established a lot of the central old city and set up this brewery.
The site has grown enormously since then, and the original brewery building is only used as a museum. The first stage was weird - a series of videos which didn’t have much relationship to beer, or each other. Maybe it was an art installation. Strangest of all, there was a mock up of a sailing ship’s prow, with a video of the turbulent ocean through which the ship was progressing - but they had a live woman, just sitting in the prow without moving - I had to watch for a while to make sure it wasn’t a mannequin, but she blinked too often for that.
Once in the brewery proper, they have left a lot of the original equipment and given a shout out to a fellow called Emil Christian Hansen, a Danish fermentation physiologist who learned how to isolate and grow individual cells of yeast - which opened the door to the industrial production of consistent beer. There’s a claim on Wikipedia that all lagers owe their existence to his one true yeast cell, but that sounds a bit biblical to me. There was no label, but it seems that fermentation in those days involved open vats rather than the stainless steal towers of today.
Unlike most (every?) brewery tours, there was a mid-point pause for a sample of the product and some peanuts. I was a bit disappointed as I thought this was the end of things, but no. After that, the path took us past the more modern equipment. This didn’t include the bottling plant, but I did get to see where the bottles gat labelled and packaged - this was mesmerising, as there were thousands of bottles on the march (well, conveyor belts) around quite a large space before eventually finding their way into six packs.
After seeing everything, it was time for another sample in another bar, this one open to the public - it was very busy. Since I decided to linger a bit and buy a larger sample, I shared a table with a succession of locals - some wanted a photo with me, one just wanted to cheers with me. Since I qualified for the senior rate, this was an excellent value experience for 30 yuan (half the normal rate, and then there are various VIP packages.
I wasn’t really up for a walk all the way back, so caught the metro. On the way there, I noticed a hole in the wall bakery - just a doorway, a big oven and a few storage racks. A woman was taking trays of small loaves of bread - about the size of 250 grams of butter - out of the oven as I walked past. I couldn’t resist - even without butter (which would have made it exceptional), the fresh bread was wonderfully crisp on the outside and fluffy on the inside. I didn’t really eat much at all that day - the bread, and the remainder of about a kg of grapes I had bought the day before.
I’ll finish with yet another cafe picture - it wasn’t a cat cafe as such, but did have a resident cat, with whom I had to have a wee chat about curiosity. She wasn’t a very loyal friend - as soon as some new people came in to the cafe, I was abandoned.
Cheers.