Need a Drink? Take a Swim in Austria’s Beer Pool

Schloss Starkenberger
Schloss Starkenberger |

Schloss Starkenberger

There are plenty of brewery tours out there, but few can compare with the one at Schloss Starkenberger’s Brewery Castle (the best kind of castle, honestly) in Tarrenz, Austria. It’s not the quality of their explanations on hop science or their free tastings at the end, either. It’s because they have swimming pools filled with beer, as The West Australian reports.

Artist Wernfried Poschusta turned what used to be fermentation rooms in the brewery’s cellar into a spa for beer obsessives, with seven 13-foot-long pools of brew. It’s not as alcoholic as you might imagine; the beer is diluted with water at a ratio of 40:1. Really, you’re just swimming in a pool of water that happens to have 80 gallons of beer in it.

Don’t just show up with your towel, though. You’ll need a reservation, and the experience will cost you a little under $260 for a two-hour swim.

That’s a little steep for a brewery tour, but not too bad for a spa experience. And you could call it a therapeutic activity, if you really wanted to. Some people swear by conditioning their hair with beer, and there are plenty of fancy organic skincare products that promise that hops will calm and protect your skin. Studies have found that hops provide a sedative effect, too. While you can’t drink from it—even if you wanted to—you can order a brew pool-side.

Come on in. The beer is warm.