In a Viennese retirement home, the residents brew their own beer

Mostly sold out
“Grandma” and “Grandpa”: In a Viennese retirement home, the residents brew their own beer

Six pensioners meet once a week in the Viennese retirement home to brew beer together.

© Matthias Roeder / DPA

A truly unique product is created in a Viennese retirement home: the beer “Grandma” and “Grandpa”. For this purpose, six residents come together once a week to brew beer.

Memory training, coffee parties, bingo – the classic offers for pensioners are complemented in a Viennese retirement home: almost every Thursday at 9 a.m. beer is brewed in the basement of the house with around 250 residential and care places.

A good two years ago, a concrete project matured from a crazy idea during a job interview, says co-initiator Robert Guschelbauer, head of the gastronomic area of ​​the 30 “Houses to Live In”.

The bottom-fermented brands “Oma” and “Opa” with 5.2 percent alcohol have now been supplemented by the slightly lighter variants “Hellmut” and “Hellga”. “We are considering expanding production again,” says Guschelbauer. The 300 bottles per week should then become 600 bottles.

Crash course with a beer sommelier

“They’re a hit,” says Helmut Riegerbauer. According to his own statements, the 82-year-old former painter was not really a big beer fan all his life, but finds it lucky in old age to drink beer from his own production. “The brewing is also a welcome change.”

A group of six residents, some of whom are very old, meet in the basement. Sometimes there are more, sometimes fewer hobby brewers. Under the guidance of project manager Christoph Gruber, they stir in the malt, add the hops, seal the bottles and stick on the label. “I enjoy labelling, it’s quick,” says 92-year-old Ingeborg Zeller.

The necessary knowledge was acquired in a crash course given by a beer sommelier, says Gruber. After procuring the equipment such as fermentation tanks and brewing kettles, the team approached the task. So far, one batch out of 170 brewing processes has only had to be thrown away once due to a production error.

Beer very popular with residents and staff

A spokesman for the facility said about the idea that they were generally open to innovations. For example, he referred to a current experiment in which the mushy, unappealing food for residents with chewing and swallowing difficulties is shaped appetizingly by a 3D printer.

Sales of the private label beer seem secure. 13,500 people work in the 30 houses of the Board of Trustees, and their families sometimes come by to buy “Oma”, “Opa”, “Hellmut” or “Hellga”. But they need luck or good timing for this – because one often gets stuck Sign in front of the refrigerated section: “Sold out”

lz
DPA

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