Brewing in Patagonia

In the mid-1800s, German settlers came to southern Chile and brought their brewing with them. Today Valdivia and Bariloche are known as the beer capitals of Chile and Argentina. Students follow beer from hop field to fermentation tank, and the immigrants who started it all.

What students will learn

• Understand the microbiology and chemistry of fermentation
• Trace German immigration to southern Chile and its legacy
• Follow a supply chain from hop farm to brewery to market
• Learn how small breweries start, grow and get bought

Day by day

1. Day 1, Puerto Varas: The Lake District. Arrive in Puerto Montt and transfer to Puerto Varas, on Lake Llanquihue under the Osorno volcano.
2. Day 2, Frutillar: German Chile. The German Colonial Museum in Frutillar and the story of the settlers the Chilean state brought to the south from the 1840s onwards.
3. Day 3–4, Valdivia: Beer capital of Chile. Valdivia, where Carl Anwandter founded one of Chile’s first breweries in 1851. Brewery visits, a fermentation session with food scientists, the Spanish river forts, and the sunken forests left by the 1960 earthquake, the strongest ever recorded.
4. Day 5, Bariloche: Over the Andes. Across the Cardenal Samoré pass to Villa La Angostura and Bariloche.
5. Day 6, El Bolsón: Where the hops grow. A day in El Bolsón, at the heart of Argentina’s hop farming.
6. Day 7, Bariloche: Starting a brewery. A panel with brewery founders on starting, scaling and selling a brand, and Bariloche’s Alpine-style civic centre, which tells the town’s own immigrant story.
7. Day 8, Bariloche: Departure. Flights from Bariloche.