Tag Archives: saaz

History, Hops

Historic Saaz Hop Fraud

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In a recent conversation I had with Michel Stenzel of Schlossbrauerei Hundisburg, the topic of Styrian hops (steirischer Hopfen) came up. I didn’t know too much other than that most of the hop growing nowadays of what used to be Styria is happening in Slovenia today, while in Austria, only a small hop growing agriculture in Leutschach has survived (or rather, was reestablished after World War 2, like Upper Austrian hop growing) with as little acreage as 80 ha (for comparison: in Hallertau, the total hop acreage amounts to 17,100 ha).

What is also well-known is that the “classic” hop variety from Slovenia is Styrian Golding, nowadays more commonly marketed as Styrian Savinjski Golding, referring to the Savinja region of Slovenia. Styrian Golding started off as cultivar of Fuggle hops getting planted in the region.

Prior to that, Styria had its own native hop variety, simply known as “Steirischer” (i.e. Styrian). In his 1930 Handbuch der Brauerei und Mälzerei, Prof. Franz Schönfeld listed Steirischer as a descendant of Saazer (žatecký poloraný červeňák) hops, together with Schwetzinger, Tettnanger, Neutomischler (Nowotomyski) and Auschaer Rothopfen (red bine hops from Uštěk). This old variety was eventually replaced with the more disease-resistant Styrian/Savinjski Golding hops, I wrote about this before.

Doing a bit more research (basically just checking old newspapers for mentions of Styrian hops), I came across something interesting: Styrian hops weren’t particularly well known in the 1850s and 1860s. Nevertheless, the hops found buyers: in October 1858, a Graz newspaper reported something previously unheard: bales of local Styrian hops getting sent by train to Bohemia, the #1 hop growing region of the Austrian Empire at the time. In the middle of the 19th century, Styrian hops still had a major reputation issue: the quality was fine, and price-wise Styrian hops sold at roughly the same price as Auschaer hops, but once buyers knew they were Styrian hops, they weren’t interested anymore, even when they were packed in Saaz bags.

That last bit got me interested. Styrian hops in Saaz bags? Yes, that was a thing, apparently. In 1866, Bohemian hop traders came to Styria, bought over 800 bales of hops while outbidding local buyers, repackaged them into Saaz bags they had brought themselves, and shipped the hops back to Bohemia. Quality-wise, the hops were absolutely comparable with Saaz hops, except you needed 40% more hops (7 Pfund instead of 5 for a 40 Eimer batch of beer), indicating a lower alpha acid content.

Once Styrian hops were sold under their own name, they actually fared really well. This happened first in 1875, and the German Hop Association considered it to be the best hop variety right behind Saaz city hops (meaning the Saaz hops were grown on city ground and not somewhere in the surrounding district). Besides its fine qualities, it also went to market earlier than other hop varieties, which was a great advantage and got Styrian hop farmers to achieve some of the highest prices.

The virtual equality of Saaz hops and Styrian hops also shows in 1877 pricing, where Saazer, Spalter and Styrian hops all sold for the same price, though in that year, neither of these varieties were the most expensive ones.

Still, the fact that Bohemian hop traders would repackage Styrian hops and sell it as Saazer hops seems like a dubious business practice. They probably did it because they knew that the quality was perfectly fine, that customers would not be able to smell or taste the difference, but they basically arbitraged by misrepresenting the origin of the hops. Due to the poor (but unwarranted) reputation of Styrian hops, this misrepresentation was material to the price that could be charged for them. In my book, that’s fraud.

Interestingly, this is not even the first time I came across accusations of fraudulent misrepresentation of hops. In his 1818 book Das Bamberger Bier, Johann Seifert claimed that he had witnessed how hops had been bought in Amberg (east of Nuremberg), brought over the border into Bohemia, and then reimported into Bavaria with a Bohemian hop seal on the bales. He was very critical of a supposed superiority of Bohemian hops, and tried to get brewers to use cheaper local hops of the same quality instead of potentially getting defrauded with “Bohemian” hops that were actually grown near Nuremberg.

Brewing, Recipes

My Summer Beer 2022

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Like last year, I decided for 2022 to brew a light and refreshing beer for the the summer. I was really really happy with my 2021 beer, and so for this year, I again brewed an 8° Czech-style beer, this time even more traditional than last year.

And that was my exact approach: be as simple as possible, but stick to the ingredients that would constitute a Czech beer according to PGI (if I brewed commercially in the Czech Republic and wanted to sell my beer with a Czech Beer PGI label): the sugar from the wort needs to be at least 80% from Czech barley varieties, at least 30% of the alpha acid needs to come from Czech hops varieties, decoction mashing needs to be used, and the beer needs to be bottom-fermented. So I went all in:

The brewing and fermentation process itself was rather uneventful: I hit 8.4°P OG, chilled the wort to 10°C, pitched a yeast pack, fermentation took off in less than 36 hours, and after about 3 weeks, it was finished, with a FG of 2°P. I then ramped down the temperature to 2°C, let it sit at that low temperature for just 2 weeks, and then bottled it, bottle-conditioning it with 1 liter of wort that I kept back.

I’m absolutely impatient when it comes to waiting for beer to be finished maturing and bottle-conditioning, so I had to crack one bottle open after just 1 week. I pre-chilled it for a few hours, and then poured it into a Pilsner Urquell glass I had at home. While carbonation wasn’t 100% there yet, it was definitely enough to drink it. The foam was fluffy but with rather big and open bubbles (I hopes this improves when carbonation is higher), the beer still looked slightly hazy with a very pale colour). It smelled absolutely amazing, and just after the first sip I could definitely say that this was exactly like a Czech beer (it’s not a Czech beer because I brewed it here in Berlin, hence why I call it Czech-style). It has that exact bitterness and the kind of hop flavour and aroma that I would expect from any Czech beer, it has a unique edge to its malt character that I would attribute to the intense decoction mash (hard to describe, but once you’ve had plenty of Czech beers, you just notice it, from your easy-drinking 10° beers to modern Czech-brewed IPAs e.g. from Matuška), and it’s got a very good body for such a low-strength beer.

The Urkel Lager strain, despite (allegedly) having a Pilsner Urquell provenance, does not seem to produce diacetyl at any detectable levels. What it does though is produce lots and lots of sulphur. This was particularly noticeable during fermentation and at the beginning of the very short lagering period, but at packaging, all of that was gone.

In the end, choosing the right ingredients and processes for the kind of beer you want to brew matters, and I’ve only ever gotten all the details of a Czech-style beer right when I applied all the techniques that I knew, with all the right ingredients.

What follows is a quick recipe. In terms of ingredients, it’s incredibly simple and one of those beers that can be formulated as a SMaSH beer – single malt and single hops. In this case:

  • 3.1 kg floor-malted Bohemian Pilsner malt from Weyermann
  • 24 g 2021 harvest Saaz hops (4.2% ABV) @ 60 min
  • 24 g 2021 harvest Saaz hops (4.2% ABV) @ 30 min
  • 24 g 2021 harvest Saaz hops (4.2% ABV) @ 5 min
  • 1 pack Imperial Yeast L28 Urkel Lager yeast

Use enhanced double decoction mashing scheme. Lauter, sparge, chill to 10°C, pitch yeast. Ferment fully, lager at low temperature for 1 week (I went down to 2°C), bottle or keg and carbonate. This should get you about 20 liters of a beer with 8.4°P OG, 2°P FG, 3.4% ABV, about 25 IBU in bitterness, and a very pale colour.

History

About Saazer Genossenschaftsbrauerei

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As some of you may have noticed on my Twitter account, I am currently researching for a book about historic and contemporary Vienna Lager. As with my previous book, I want to lay out the history of the style as detailed as possible, and accompany it with historic recipes and authentic brewing instructions. On top of that, I want to describe how “modern” Vienna lager came to be as part of the craft beer revolution, and what the current state of the beer style is.

Why am I doing this? Because I think that, compared to the popularity of the style, very little is known is about the beer’s history, and in addition, a lot of misinformation and myths have been spread which I try to clear up and reset the narrative.

As part of my historic research, I stumbled upon several references of “Anton Dreher’s Export-Brauerei” in Saaz/Žatec, a city best known for the local hop variety grown in and around it. I found this strange, because historic sources talk about only four brewery locations that were bought and run by Anton Dreher father and son: the main brewery in Klein-Schwechat just outside of Vienna, a brewery in Steinbruch/Kőbánya near Pest (nowadays Budapest), a brewery and hop garden in Michelob/Měcholupy just outside Saaz/Žatec, and a brewery in Trieste, but none of them mention a fifth brewry directly in Saaz. So of course I had to find out more about this brewery.

The first traces of the brewery can be found in newspaper articles mentioning its foundation on either 23 or 25 May, 1898, under the name “Saazer Genossenschaftsbrauerei”, literally “Saaz cooperative brewery”, allegedly by a syndicate that had managed to raise 3 million Crowns, the equivalent of over 42 million Euros nowadays.

The building works took several years, and only in January 1902 the brewery was able to announce that they would start operations in spring of the same year. Already later that year, ads can be found of their beer named “Urstoff” (lit. “original stuff”).

The other brewery from Saaz/Žatec, Bürgerliches Brauhaus (burgher brewhouse) Saaz, was not happy about it, went to court, and obtained judgement prohibiting Genossenschaftsbrauerei from using the name “Urstoff” altogether, and instead earning the right to the “Saazer Urstoff” brand exclusively for Bürgerliches Brauhaus. The court decided that the name “Urstoff” was consumer deception, probably because it insinuated that it was the “original” beer from Saaz, especially since Bürgerliches Brauhaus had been around since 1801, while Genossenschaftsbrauerei had been founded very recently at that time.

In 1903, Genossenschaftsbrauerei went one step further and made the “Urstoff” part of the company name: “Saazer Genossenschaftsbrauerei” was renamed to “Urstoff-Genossenschaftsbrauerei in Saaz”. Bürgerliches Brauhaus complained about this as well, and saw this as an attempt to circumvent the court’s verdict, which was again confirmed by court.

When looking not at trademark court cases but at beer production volume, Genossenschaftsbrauerei was doing quite well for such a young brewery: in 1903/1904, the brewery produced 85000 hectolitres. This was relatively miniscule compared to the amounts other Austrian breweries around that time period were brewing (Klein-Schwechat 1896/97: 770536 hl, Bürgerliches Brauhaus Pilsen 1904: 808000 hl).

In 1905, the legal troubles came to an end, when it was finally decided by the Austrian trade ministry that the “Urstoff” brand registered by Genossenschaftsbrauerei had to be deleted.

In 1914 then, the brewery was converted from a cooperative to a limited liability company (GmbH) named “Exportbrauerei GmbH in Saaz”, with a nominal capital of 1,029,000 Crown, about 5.7 million Euros in today’s money.

During World War I, the Austrian government apparently regulated beer exports, and Exportbrauerei was a complainant about this: the regulation apparently based on OG of the beers, and assumed an average of 11% which – according to Exportbrauerei – severely disadvantaged breweries only brewing 12% beers but no 10% beers, and suggested to instead determine an actual average OG per brewery. It is not known what came of this, but it does tell us one thing about the food economy in Austria-Hungary during the World War: at least in 1916, enough grains must have still been available to brew full-strength beers.

After the breakup of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, Exportbrauerei was located in newly founded Czechoslovakia, and of course operated like before. It was not exactly a big player in the export business, though: Bürgerliches Brauhaus Pilsen, by then also known as “Pilsner Urquell”, was responsible for 209000 hl beer export in 1929. The total beer exports of all of Czechoslavakia in the same year were 271000 hl, but Exportbrauerei Saaz was responsible for only 5000 hl of those.

One blog claims that Exportbrauerei was renamed to “Anton Dreher’s Exportbrauerei” in 1926, but interestingly, I haven’t really been able to find any other sources about it. In any case this is an interesting year, because at that time, the Dreher family was not really involved with the Austrian brewing business anymore: Anton Dreher Jr. had died in 1921, his son Anton Eugen Dreher died at the age of 54 in 1925, his son Theodor had died in 1914 in a car accident, and his son Eugen had moved to Budapest and sold off his stocks. The inheritance went to Anton Eugen’s daughter Katharina “Kitty” Wünschek-Dreher.

Exportbrauerei Saaz nowadays (photo by SchiDD, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0)

I have not been able to find out who had the idea to give Exportbrauerei Anton Dreher’s name, and more importantly, why, as there is no discernible direct connection between Anton Dreher, who made Klein-Schwechater brewery big and pale lager beer famous around the world, and this medium-sized Bohemian brewery. This is also the reason why I decided to tell the story of “Anton Dreher’s Exportbrauerei” in my blog instead of my upcoming book, as it does not touch the history of Vienna Lager itself.

History, Hops

Hops used in Vienna Lager

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Two  years ago, I did some research to put together a recipe that was meant to closely match what a Vienna lager in the 19th century would have looked and tasted like.

About a year ago, I also discussed the state of Austrian hops and how the hop growing industry had changed over time. In that article, I mentioned that Kleinschwechater Brauerei used to own land in Michelob in Bohemia, close to Saaz, where the brewery grew barley and hops. Due to the geographical closeness, I made the point that most likely Saaz hops or a very closely related landrace would have been grown there.  But so far, I did not have any conclusive proof that Kleinschwechater (later Schwechater) Brauerei indeed brewed with Saaz hops.

That changed a bit when I visited the Schultze-Berndt library located at VLB and curated by the Gesellschaft für Geschichte des Brauwesens (society for the history of brewing technology) a few weeks. When doing some research for my English-language book on homebrewing historic beer styles, I stumbled upon a Festschrift regarding 100 years of brewing Vienna lager, aptly named “Schwechater Lager”. While not having that much content, it still had some bits and pieces that gave away some information, including the beautiful water colour illustrations.

One image in particular contained something very interesting: pictures of huge stacks of hop bales. 

These hop bales clearly show the marking “SAAZ”. Assuming that this picture accurately shows the hop storage facilities at Schwechater brewery, we now have a direct connection showing that Schwechater has been using Saaz hops. The text around it mentions that the brewery has been covering their demand using hops from Saaz, and praises Saaz as one of the best hop growing regions in the world. Unfortunately, no time frames are mentioned, so while all this information was certainly true for their brewing in the late 1930’s and early 1940’s, we cannot yet make the direct connection that Vienna lager in the 19th century must have used Saaz hops.

So let’s go a bit further, into the less colourful but more number-laden territory of raw statistics. In 1891 (that’s the earliest that I could find), Bohemia had 10317 hectares of hop growing land, producing an annual output of 77540 Zentner (1 Zentner = 50 kg in Germany, therefore 3877 tons). At that time, the total hop growing area of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy was 14850.5 hectares (divided into the regions of Bohemia, Galicia, Styria, Upper Austria, Moravia and Carinthia), and the total annual output was 117534 Zentner (5876 tons). So for the whole of the monarchy, Bohemia produced almost 66 % of all its hops, on almost 70 % of its acreage allocated to hop growing.

This trend of Bohemia being the dominant hop grower within the monarchy continued in the years after as late as 1918, and Bohemia’s dominance even grew larger as other hop growing areas declined further: in 1913, Bohemia’s hop output was 73.8 % of the monarchy’s total output, with 75.8 % of the total hop acreage, while in 1914 it was a staggering 87.7 % (85.2 % of the total hop acreage). The stark increase in share in 1914 is due to a complete failure in Galicia for that year, most likely due to World War 1 and Austria-Hungary losing the Battle of Galicia.

So, just by looking at the pure numbers, we can deduce that there was a very high likelihood that most breweries bought their hops from Saaz. Again, this is not definite proof, but it points even more towards the direction that hops from Saaz were used by Schwechater brewery, and possibly most other breweries at that time, especially since Saaz hops were the highest priced ones in Germany and Austria at that time.

On a side note, the hop production of Bohemia at that time up as late as the late 1930’s was so strong that Germany’s annexation of the Sudetenland in 1938 pretty much doubled Nazi Germany’s acreage and overall amount of hops produced.