Ruppaner - Carrying bottles on a bike trip

Dear beer enthusiasts,

today I bring to you the 330ml bottles of two beers produced by the Ruppaner brewery: the 1414 Extra, a naturtrüb with 5,3% alcohol and the Schimmele, a Pilsen with 5,0%

Both are listed as specialties in the website, they're quite good clear beers, with the typical German touch - a very full and sustaining body.

Ruppaner's 1414 Extra and Schimmele Pils

The Ruppaner brewery is located in the city of Constance, which lays in the north end of the Lake Constance (Bodensee in German), the third biggest lake in central Europe. I was there in 2014 after crossing the Black Forest by bike.

Whenever you travel long distances by bike, weight is a fundamental factor, and a hobby like collecting beer bottles becomes almost unpracticable...

Almost...

I had done something similar before, when I backpacked through northern Germany for about one month adding new tastes and new bottles to my collection and ended up carrying around 30 empty bottles back home... at the occasion I had brought one extra luggage which was strategically placed in Aachen, where I could pass by and drop my load every week, but this time I could not afford to carry an extra luggage.

I could only count with some extra space left purposedly in my backpack so I could carry some of the local goods back to Karlsruhe once my trip was done. So I had to be a bit picky, I could not afford to buy six-packs or any kind of bundles, I had to go for single bottles...

The owner of the hostel I was staying, Gerry Mayr, recommended me the Ruppaner restaurant, near to the brewery, where I could also buy some bottles later. After a meal at the restaurant, I went to the small office at the brewery, knowing that I had to choose only two bottles to take with me.

It was not my first time buying beer directly from the brewery, and this time the language barrier was not a problem. Once I had payed for the two single bottles, I went to collect them at the loading docks, where several pallets full with crates of beer were being loaded to trucks.

I apporached the man whose face fit the description given to me by the guy in the office and handed him the piece of paper that served as proof of my purchase... he looked at me in slight desbelief and with a hearthy laugh said something like:

"Bottles? Two BOTTLES? I deal with CRATES as units here, seriously, who buys two bottles in a brewery? Are you a student or what?"

As I explained my problems were about space and weight and not of a monetary nature, he gave me the bottles. We chatted a little bit more while I packed my new acquisitions and prepared to ride my bike back to the hostel.

Later on that trip I also crossed the border to Switzerland for some more bottles... but that's for another story...

Cheers