[Werbung:] Hello everyone! Last weekend, exciting things happened! Do you remember last summer when I made lemonade illustrations and free printables for a cooperation with Bionade?

This year, we are working together again and I was invited to visit the Bionade headquarter in central Germany, wohoo!

Last Sunday, I hopped onto a train and rode southwards to the middle of Germany. In Hesse, close to the border of Bavaria, there’s an area called Rhön. It’s a biosphere reservation and nature there is so pure and wonderful. The marketing team of Bionade and their blogger relations agency organized the journey for me and three other bloggers and booked our stay at a really speacial place: at night, we were sleeping in shepherd’s wagons in the middle of nowhere.

So so exciting! I was the first one to arrive and had plenty of time to explore everything.

The wagons are made of wood and smelled soooo good. The beds are super comfortable and everything is so cozy! My keyholder was shaped like a sheep and all the details were so pretty.

The light green / yellowish wagon was mine and a cat kept me company during my explorations. I got to try Bionade’s Streuobst lemonade (= Garden Fruits) and it totally tastes like summer and nature. The meadow with our wagons was also full of fruit trees and everything fit together perfectly.

In the evening, I had dinner at the hotel’s restaurant, so good!

Drink fresh lemonade in summer!

After an adventurous night with a huge thunderstorm and masses of rain, we got up early and I took on my lemon shirt to get into the mood for lots of lemonade drinking. ;)

Mia of Kochkarussell and Jutta of Kreativfieber, we were neighbors during the night. :)

After a delicious organic breakfast, we drove through the mountains to the Bionade headquarter.

The day was super exciting and we all learned so much! One of the super charming and friendly Bionade employees gave us an all-day tour through the headquarter. We learned about the history of the company, about the philosophy and about the manufacturing process. Bionade is completely organic, the team who developed the lemonade has been working on the recipe for nearly one decade and now it is already being sold for twenty years.

Bionade is not just mixed by combining several ingredients. Instead, it is brewed and fermented and only little sugar is used. If you are interested in the manufacturing process in detail, you can inform yourself on the website. There is a basic mixture made of barley malt and natural acid (we even drank a little of it) and then the different natural lavors are added.

What is so special is that only natural ingredients are used and some of them are grown in Germany. See yourself on the map of ingredients.

The history of Bionade: here you can see some of the elder branding styles of Bionade. So much fun to see how much it has changed over the year. Do you still remember the old branding? :)

The four of us – Mia, Jutta, Marie of Glitter Everywhere and I – explored the whole factory, saw where and how the boiling process takes place and where the next steps happen.

Once enough maltose has formed, everything is boiled up once more. That is then the Bionade zest which gets ready for the fermenter. As a next step, gluconic acid bacteria come into play. They are added to the water in the fermenter
with the Bionade zest that was formed during boiling so that the
maltose can turn into acid with the addition of oxygen. Gluconic acid is what gives Bionade its unique and unmistakeable flavour. In the end of the process, the flavor is added: you take the gluconic acid, organic juice, water from the Rhön valleys, a
pinch of sugar and carbon dioxide and mix it in healthy proportions.
And this is the only way to make Bionade. Mhhhh!

After the factory tour, we went to the lab and were invited to mix Bionade ourselves. We got the basic ingredients and the recipe for Zitrone-Bergamotte (= Lemon-Bergamot), mixed the proportions ourselves and were able to add fresh organic and local mint or elderflower. Mhh!

The team also prepared bottle labels for us, so I chose to make ‘Luloveslemonade’. :)

After having lunch at an old castle (you can see it in the right photo on the hill in the background), we drove a few kilometers to have a look at the elderberry plantations: for Bionade Holunder (= Elderberry) – which is the consumer’s fave flavor – the whole amount of elder is grown in the region around the company’s headquarter. There are about 100 plantations and everything is produced locally. Stunning!

We went there in the pouring rain, explored the farm and enjoyed the amazing view and beauty of nature.

Elderberries as far as the eye could see!

Dear Roger, thank you so much for the amazing day, showing us around everywhere and doing this with so much passion and enthusiasm! This was really contaguous! :)

What a day! And in the background bottle crates as far as the eye could see.

Every day, there are 20.000 bottles being produced in shifts of 16
hours per day. We even went to the factory building where the old
bottles are recycled, cleaned, then filled, closed, labelled and then
put into drink crates. So so exciting to watch! I learned so much on
this single day. Lifelong learning, so important!

Whoop whoop, I made a few bottles of my own lemonade: Luloveslemonade. So much fun! :)

In summer, Bionade will also be touring Germany and bring the biosphere and their delicious lemonade to your city:

You can learn about the brand, the biosphere and get inspired by natural beats. There’s going to be a bar, live-music and a chillout-area.

Tour dates:

– Hamburg: Altonale, Grüne Meile (July 16-17)

– Berlin: Veganes Sommerfest (August 19-21)
– Frankfurt am Main: Museumsuferfest (August 26-28)

So have a happy day, thanks for reading and enjoying the Bionade spirit with me!

Lu

P.S.: This blogpost was written for a cooperation with Bionade! Most of the photos were taken by myself, some of me and the tour are made by webguerillas. Thank you!