May 28, 2011 in the small Bavarian town of Oettingen. We are outside OeTTINGER Brewery’s Brauhaus Nord, standing beneath the enormous fermentation and storage tanks. It is Saturday evening, just before midnight. Then, all of a sudden: A loud bang! Hiss! A jet of beer streams into the air, surrounding us with its unmistakable aroma. The dreams of many a beer lover have finally come true: It’s raining beer!
For a few seconds, anyway. For a brief moment, Oettingen was home to a real-life beer fountain 30 meters high!
Fortunately, the excess pressure in our old fermentation and storage tanks subsequently eased enough for us to be able to reseal the hole created by the tank’s ruptured burst plate. Until this moment, however, several hectoliters of beer merrily trickled down the tank for a few hours. Thankfully, nobody was harmed.
Only a few people were lucky enough to witness the OeTTINGER beer fountain with their own eyes. Among them were firemen from Oettingen, who even managed to snap a few photos from the scene: A spectacle that occurred just before midnight one May evening eleven years ago – the night that it really did rain beer!
