Munich, September 2025

I went to Munich with Pedro Joaquín Icaza, brewer and owner of Cervecería Legítima, who makes IPAs and German lagers. We were there for two things at once, which is how these trips tend to go.

One was Oktoberfest. The other was drinktec, the beverage industry fair held in Munich every four years, where you see in one go where the whole trade is heading — equipment, ingredients, yeasts, and the people who make them.

And I took the chance for a third, which was not on the programme. When the hall closed I made my way out to Weihenstephan, the oldest brewery on earth and now also one of the most important yeast collections there is. I was shown around by Dr. Juan Ignacio Eizaguirre, a friend and colleague, from the Yeast Hunting project. That visit turned out to be what I brought home, for a reason I had not expected: the yeast that makes German beer is not German. That is told in full in The Yeast That Was Already Home, where the story meets a coffee I fermented in the Río Caldera.

And the trip ended in Bamberg, at Weyermann, with Alirio Weyermann. The tanks behind us in that photograph are lagering tanks: the lagern this whole thing is about, cold and unhurried.