Inside hops
The creators of the German Museum of Hops (Deutsches Hopfenmuseum) in Wolnzach claim the cone below is the largest in the world.
My initial thought was “Is this bigger than the giant cone in the middle of a turnabout outside Poperinge in Belgium (pictured above). Upon further review, it seems it is. Keepers of the museum note that the scale of a hop cone to this cone is 1 to 1 million, although it is hard to imagine packing a million cones in this one.
You can walk inside the five-meter high cone (the photo below was taken looking straight up), and if you push the right button a mist smelling of Hallertau Mittelfruh emerges.
Wolnzach sits in the middle of Hallertau, the largest hops growing region in the world. One third of all the beer in the world is brewed with hops from Hallertau. When hops were still picked by hand, 200,000 pickers came to the area to harvest the annual crop.
The museum, opened in June after 20 years of planning, covers 11,000 square feet and a basic tour lasts 90 minutes. There’s more to the story - later.
