Retrospective

My Year in Beer, 2024 Edition

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2024 was an exciting year. For the first time, I was invited to speak at a conference about one of my favourite topics, Vienna Lager, and not just at one conference, but actually two. First at Heimbrau Convention (HBCon) in Romrod back in March, and most recently, at Sympozjum Piwowarów in Kraków, Poland.

Beyond just talking about Vienna Lager, both events were great: at HBCon, I learned everything there is to learn about brewing beer like Mönchsambacher Weihnachts-Bock which I then used later on in a home-brewed Franconian-style Kellerbier, drank lots of excellent home-brewed beers, and met up with lots of other homebrewers, while in Kraków, I got to meet people from the Polish craft beer scene as well as see a few super interesting talks about the history of Porter, the latest brewing trends in the US, and a rather enlightening introduction to the human sense of smell and taste.

I also managed to go to Bamberg 3 times. First, as a farewell to a good friend and beer aficionado who moved from Berlin to Bishkek earlier this year but had never been to Franconia before; then to celebrate my good friend Ben‘s 30th birthday by doing a crazy day trip where we took the first train in the morning from Berlin to Bamberg, went all over Bamberg, and then went home on the last train; and finally, as a place to stay and visit BrauBeviale, the annual brewing and beverage industry fair in Nuremberg. For a slight change, we ventured a bit further out and did a day trip to visit the breweries Hummel and Wagner in Merkendorf and Höhn in Memmelsdorf, followed by a leisurely Frühschoppen trip to Zur Sonne in Bischberg the next day, all breweries we had not been to before that were easy enough to reach by public transport (if you pre-plan your trip a bit).

For my 40th birthday, my wife got me a two week trip to the US, which we of course used as a beery holiday and as an opportunity to meet people we had previously only known or talked to online or heard of their beers. Our main stops were Chicago, Austin, and Boston, with visits to Dovetail, Goldfinger, Live Oak, Notch and a few more. It’s safe to say that the American craft lager scene is very strong and is brewing tasty, diverse beer at a high technical level, combined with an incredible enthusiasm for the products they create.

And at the beginning of October, I even managed to visit Oktoberfest and the Augustiner tent on the festival’s very last day.

On the beer writing side, I did not manage to get any new big projects started, but I was nevertheless productive: in 2024, I wrote and published 31 blog posts (including this one), adding up to more than 31,000 words. In terms of page views, these are the top 5 most often read articles of 2024 that I wrote in the same year:

  1. Why Augustiner’s new alcohol-free Helles is a big deal
  2. How To Brew Mönchsambacher Weihnachts-Bock, according to the brewmaster
  3. My Summer Beers for 2024
  4. Alcohol-Free Augustiner: The Tasting
  5. Liquid yeast: why do I even bother?

I was a bit surprised to see just how popular my blog posts about Augustiner’s new beer, an alcohol-free Helles, had gotten, but then, non-alcoholic beers with ≤ 0.5% ABV have been the big new trend in 2023 and 2024, with overall quality of beers massively improving compared to 5, 10, 20 years ago. At Oktoberfest, I then experienced the new Augustiner beer in its absolutely best state: properly cold and served fresh on draught by the liter, it is a delight that is virtually indistinguishable from the regular strength beer. I didn’t miss the alcohol in the beer, because it didn’t feel like it was actually missing, and there were none of the off-flavours typical for alcohol-free beer that would have reminded me of the fact what I was drinking.

But the actual number one most often read blog post this year was not even written in 2024, but rather A Very Biased Guide To Berlin Beer and Pubs, October 2023 Edition, which is now responsible for more than 30% of all the page views on my blog.

Cheers to that! And while I don’t have any other big beer history project lined up, I still have a few more interesting topics that I want to further research and discuss in this blog. Watch this space.

Events

Visiting Sympozjum Piwowarów 2024

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Earlier this month, I was invited to speak at the Sympozjum Piwowarów (lit. “Brewers’ Symposium”) in Kraków, Poland, which happened on 10th to 11th December, 2024.

At the Heimbrau Convention in Romrod earlier this year, I met the President of the PSBR, the Polish Association of Craft Breweries, who invited me to talk about the history of Vienna Lager, which I gladly accepted.

The journey from Berlin to Kraków is straightforward, but not exactly fast: a direct train line connects both cities, but it takes about 7 hours in each direction. On the positive side, PKPIC, the Polish train company operating InterCity trains, seem to be operating more reliably and more on time than Deutsche Bahn (DB), and even apologised for slight delays that would still be within DB’s definition of “being on time”.

On the evening before the conference, we attended the party for conference attendants. We didn’t stay too long, but it was great to meet a few people and shake a few hands. The conference venue was Klub STUDIO, a bit outside the city center, in the middle of what seemed like blocks and blocks of student accomodation. One of the great things about it though is that it comes with a brewery, Browar Górniczo-Hutniczy.

On the first day, I watched the talks of Randy Mosher, who spoke about the scientific taste of smell and taste, which was very enlightening. From what I understand, he’s been working on a book about that very topic, which should be out in 2025.

Randy Mosher on the stage. Behind him, a slide that says “We’re much better than we think. Humans can scent-track like dogs! * Cloth with chocolate flavor * People on all fours * Swinging noses side-to-side * Got better with practice”.

Right after that was Jamie Bogner’s talk about the latest trends in American craft brewing of 2024. Jamie Bogner is the co-founder and editorial director of Craft Beer & Brewing magazine. Of course, a lot of these trends are around IPAs, but these points stood out:

  • Hazy DIPAs are less and less consumed on draught, but more in packaged formats.
  • Lower ABV versions are more popular.
  • Hazy IPAs are branching out into further sub-categories, such as beers driven by Citra/Mosaic or NZ hops.
  • Noble hops are increasingly getting integrated into IPAs
  • Flowable hop products (flavour extracts) help with reducing loss and increasing intensity.
  • Most award-winning West Coast “IPAs” are fermented with W-34/70 these days.
  • Crystal malt has seriously fallen out of fashion, as customers want very pale beers (at least when it comes to West Coast IPA).
Jamie Bogner on stage, on the screen there’s a slide with the headline “American Brewing Trends December 2024”

After that talk, we talked to some of the people at the company stands. As the next scheduled talks were all in Polish, we decided to visit the stained glass museum instead, then went to visit the Kraków Christmas market, and finished with a few beers and dinner.

The next day, Martyn Cornell did his presentation on the history of Porter. Martyn said that he hopes that his book on the subject matter should get published at some point in 2025, and after seeing his talk, I’m even more looking forward to it than before.

Marty Cornell on stage, with the title slide on the screen, saying “Porter, the beer for working class Londoners that conquered the world”

My talk was right after Martyn’s, in which I briefly talked about how Vienna Lager was created, why it went extinct in Austria during World War I, and how it used to be brewed during the 19th century, based on historic sources. I all went okay, except I ran out of time a bit. No matter how well I thought I had prepared the talk and timed it, I still overran because speaking at home apparently is an entirely different thing than speaking on a stage.

Right after my talk, I had to leave quickly as I had an appointment in the National Archives in Kraków to review a few documents that I had ordered. I have yet to fully review the material I’ve taken pictures of, but I’m sure you’ll see a blog post or two in the next few days or weeks about it.

After the visit to the National Archives, we had early dinner (I had my first pierogi at a proper sit-down restaurant) to return to the venue for the Kraft Roku 2024 award ceremony. Kraft Roku (lit. “Craft of the Year”) is Poland’s craft beer competition. Even though we understood very little (Google Translate in camera mode at least helped me understand the text on the big screen), it was still great fun, the Górniczo-Hutniczy beers we had also helped.

The audience at the Kraft Roku award ceremony

We stayed at the party afterwards as long as we could, but eventually needed to leave because we had to catch our train back the next morning.

Overall, Sympozjum Piwowarów was an excellent event. Lots of very good presentations (though I couldn’t exactly understand many of them), lots of interesting people to meet, and just an expression of how active and enthusiastic the Polish craft beer scene is. As a friend of mine noted, in Germany you either have a very academic-industrial approach to beer, or you have the home-brew scene, but nothing in between. Well, this symposium exactly filled that “in between” gap.

(full disclosure: both train journey and hotel were paid for by the Sympozjum Piwowarów organisers for me and my wife)

Beer Styles

The Colour of Vienna Lager: Somebody Got It Right

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One question I’m often being asked is whether Vienna Lager from 100% Vienna malt is actually correct because when you look at beer style guidelines (most, often, the BJCP style guidelines), the minimum colour is often darker than what you’d get from just using Vienna malt.

This seems to have caused insecurities even among seasoned brewers who are otherwise well-informed about historic styles, as they sometimes get confronted by know-it-alls in their brewery taprooms.

One thing I always need to point out and remind people of is that style guidelines are primarily for competitions. They are neither prescriptive (there’s no beer police that will arrest you for brewing something out of style!) nor exhaustively descriptive. They define a subset to set the limits specifically for brewing competitions. You can brew whatever you want, even if it doesn’t match any specific style. That’s how new beer styles get created!

One criticism of mine in the context of Vienna Lager is that style guidelines (in particular BJCP) aren’t exhaustive enough to include historic Vienna Lager. That means that a historically accurate Vienna Lager probably wouldn’t fare well in a beer competition, most likely because it’s paler than what the style guidelines say.

But there’s hope on the horizon: when the Brewers Association (BA) released their 2024 style guidelines, I of course had to look at what they say about Vienna Lager. To my surprise, the minimum colour in the BA guidelines was 12 EBC, which is roughly what you get from 100% Vienna malt at 12-13°P OG. Finally somebody got it right.

I then noticed that this wasn’t even a recent change, so I looked at all the important specs (min/max OG, min/max FG, min/max ABV, min/max bitterness, min/max colour) from 2014 until 2024.

The change in minimum colour already happened in 2022 when it was set as 12 EBC, down from 20 EBC the year before. Before 2017, it was even as high as 24 EBC.

In terms of bitterness, this has always been the same (22-28 IBU), same for ABV (4.8-5.4%) and OG (11.4-13.8°P). Only in 2024, the FG range somewhat changed: before that, it was 3.1-4.6°P, but since the 2024 version, this has been somewhat narrowed to 3.1-3.9°P.

A historic Vienna Lager, like it was likely brewed in the 1870s, with its 4.6% ABV, 13.25°P OG, 4.25°P FG and 12 EBC colour would fall just slightly outside of these style guidelines, but probably be close enough so that this wouldn’t be noticed during a blind taste test.

It most definitely is a major improvement compared to what the BA style guidelines used to be 10 years ago, or even compared to the most recent BJCP style guidelines.

So if you’re a brewer and you face the problem that your Vienna Lager from 100% Vienna malt and otherwise inspired or informed by historic Vienna Lager brewing is claimed to be “out of style” outside of a competition, just point people to the latest Brewers Association style guidelines.

Beer Styles, Recipes

How to Brew Historic Kölsch from 1927

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Johannes Olberg’s book “Moderne Braumethoden” from 1927 contains a multitude of recipes for more than 50 different beer styles. One of them is Kölsch, briefly discussed as the “national drink” of Cologne, and characterised as golden, thirst-quenching, “not too heavy but digestible” beer. The recipe is particularly interesting because it’s the only well-documented Kölsch recipe I’m aware of from before the end of World War 2.

A lot has changed since then, and the Kölsch of 2024 is of course very different from Kölsch about 100 years earlier. Even the modern standards of what Kölsch is supposed to be, the “Kölsch-Konvention”, was only developed from 1981 onwards, Germany’s Federal Cartel Office signed off on in it 1985, and it was finally signed by 24 Kölsch breweries in 1986.

Olberg’s recipe doesn’t mention a specific malt to use, but judging from the colour description, we can assume that a pale malt like Pilsner malt was used.

A number of mashing methods were used, like Kesselmaische, or boiling one or two thick decoctions, but the following process was described more in detail:

The crushed malt is mashed in with brewing water to get to a temperature of 35°C, then rested for 30 minutes. After that time, the mash is slowly heated up to 50°C over the course of an hour (that’s 0.25°C per minute), and then to 70°C over the course of another hour (0.33°C per minute). It shall then rest at this temperature until the mash is fully converted. The author suggests that this would take 30 to 40 minutes and that an iodine test should be used to ensure full saccharification.

After that, the temperature shall be increased to the mash-out temperature of 76°C, either by heating up the mash, or by moving one third of the mash into the lauter tun and boiling two thirds of the mash in the kettle, then mixing it back into the mash to increase the temperature to 76°C (the two thirds doesn’t sound right, I’d reverse the ratios).

When the mash is in the lauter tun, lautering begins. About 6 to 8% of the total amount of hops are reserved for later, and of the remaining hops, a third is added to the first runnings. The wort boils for a total of 120 minutes.

Another third of the hops is added after an hour of boiling, and the last third is added 40 minutes before knock-out. The 6 to 8% of hops reserved earlier are added to the wort shortly before knock-out. The hopping rate is about 30.9g of hops per kg of malt that is mashed in.

The resulting wort should have an original gravity of 11 to 12°P.

The wort is then chilled to 10°C and the Kölsch yeast is pitched. Fermentation should last about 5 days. After fermentation is finished, it is then pumped over into maturation casks which are only loosely bunged. After 5 to 6 weeks the beer can get filtered and sent out to customers.

The maturation casks are also prepared before the young beer is pumped in: hops (at a rate of about 0.9 g/l) are put in 75°C hot water for about 30 minutes, then the steeping water and the hops are added to the casks.

Using all this information, I came up with the following recipe to brew about 20 liters of this historic Kölsch:

  • 4.9kg Pilsner malt
  • 150g hops, ideally a traditional low-alpha-acid German variety with a fine aroma, the finer the better. For my recipe, I assumed Hersbrucker with 3% alpha acid, but Spalter, Hallertauer mittelfrüh or Tettnanger would be equally suitable.
  • German Kölsch yeast, e.g. WLP029

Mash in with 14 liters of water, then proceed with mashing and lautering as described above. The hop additions are:

  • 46g hops in first runnings
  • 46g hops 60 minutes before end of boil
  • 46g hops 40-x minutes before end of boil

After the end of the boil, whirlpool, then knock-out. Take the time between end of boil and knock-out into consideration for the last hop addition (it’s basically the x in the last hop addition). Shortly before knock-out, add 12g of hops to the wort.

Chill the wort to 10°C, then pitch the Kölsch yeast. Wait until fermentation is finished, then add 18g hops to a small amount of water and keep it at a temperature of 75°C for 30 minutes. Depending on whether you move the young beer into a separate vessel for maturation or not, either add the hops-water mixture into the maturation vessel before you pump in the beer, or simply add it to the fermenters. Mature the beer for 5 to 6 weeks, then carbonate, filter (if you have the facilities, most homebrewers don’t) and package it.

The resulting beer should have about 12°P. If you’re using hops with 3% alpha acid, the final beer should have about 44 IBU (calculated).

In terms of bitterness, this is a very different beer from modern Kölsch. And not only is it quite bitter, it is also kind of dry-hopped. The difference is that the hops were briefly treated with hot water at 75°C, which should denature the natural amylase enzymes in the hops which could cause hop creep, but is still not quite hot enough to cause the alpha acid to be isomerised and introduce even more bitterness in the beer.

So, if you want to rebrew a hundred year old historic Kölsch, this recipe is a good place to start.

Beer Styles

How to brew Dortmunder Adambier

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Okay, this is slightly random. Dortmunder Adambier is a beer style I never really looked into, and when I wrote my book Historic German and Austrian Beers for the Home Brewer, I didn’t really come across anything useful that resembled a recipe.

Earlier this week, I was contacted by homebrewer Jesper Hjortshøj who asked me whether I had any more information about how to brew this beer style. I admitted that I didn’t know anything, but it got me started to look into it how much I could find out. And quite quickly, I actually came across a description that was sufficient enough to derive a recipe from it.

The August 1869 issue of the Der Bierbrauer contains a whole article about the beer style with lots of information and details.

Dortmunder Adambier, apparently often also just called “Adam”, was a very strong dark wheat beer, often aged for years, and thus very clear, with a dark-red-brown colour. The malt made to brew it was kilned to only a pale colour, and no additional dark malts were used, so any colour of the beer came from “browned proteins”, as the article says it, basically from the long, intense boil the wort undergoes.

When Adambier was poured, it poured like oil, but without any foam, and had a sweet taste and vinous taste to it. It was brewed from either wheat or barley or a mix of both, but Adambier brewed from wheat was more full-bodied and tartaric, and thus preferred.

A very basic chemical analysis indicates that it was a very strong beer with 8.54% alcohol by weight (or 10.73% alcohol by volume), 21% residual extract by weight, 16.7°P apparent extract as measured on the saccharometer, and an attenuation of just 52.1%.

We also get more hints about the strength: one example that was analysed had an original gravity of 34.9°P. But there’s another hint: it says that in order to brew 20 Ohm (a local pre-metric volume measurement, I assumed the Brunswick Ohm of 144.8 liters) of Adambier, the same amount of malt is needed as for brewing 50 Ohm Bavarian beer. Assuming an OG of 12 to 13°P for Bavarian beer at the time, that means that Adambier brewed that way would have roughly have an OG of 30 to 32.5°P. Slightly lower than the analysed beer, but still roughly a similar strength.

We also learn about the hopping: for every Ohm of beer, 1 Pfund (500g) of “fine Bavarian” hops were used (later in the text, it even talks about 2 Pfund per Ohm). That converts to 3.45 g/l of hops, or if you use double the amount of hops, 6.9 g/l.

In 1869, the brewing this beer style was apparently already partially modernised, and it is implied that Bavarian triple decoction mashing was employed. But the old way of mashing it is already described, and it is wonky: the grist was doughed in in a kettle (the amount of liquor or the temperature of it isn’t documented), then left to rest, until it was brought to a boil. It takes 5 hours to bring the whole mash to a boil, during which probably the mash fully converted.

After the boil, the mash was moved to the mash tun, left to rest for 2 hours, and then wort was drawn off. At the same time, water was heated up for a second mash to draw off even more wort. Both worts were added to the kettle, hops were added, and the wort was boiled vigorously enough to effect good evaporation up to the desired strength.

The wort was then chilled to 10°C, and yeast was added at a pitch rate of 345 ml of yeast slurry per hectoliter. Primary fermentation took about 4 to 5 weeks. It was then filled into 10 Ohm casks, and the bunghole was kept open until the beer stopped ejecting yeast. It was then loosely bunged and aged for 2.5 to 3 years.

If I was to brew such a beer at home, I would approach it like this: since this requires producing such a strong wort, I would only brew half the amount of what I’d brew normally, let’s say 10 liters. I’d dough in my ingredients, Pilsner malt and pale wheat malt (the text says that pale malt was used, after all) with the same amount of liquor that I’d normally use for a 20 liter brew.

To make life slightly easier, I would probably just do a single-step infusion mash at 68°C or similar, or at most go for a double decoction, because I think most of the character of the beer will come from the long boil anyway, lauter, and then just go for a very long boil with 69 g of Hallertauer hops added to the first wort until I got the volume down to about 10 liters or the desired OG of somewhere between 30 and 35°P.

I would then chill down the wort, pitch whatever top-fermenting yeast I have on hand, and then just let it go. For sour beers, I have a dedicated fermenter that is contaminated, so any wort going into it probably gets infected with lacto and/or brett. Jesper said that when he brews his Adambier, he intends to pitch the dregs of a Schneeeule Berliner Weisse for just a small amount of lacto and brett, which is actually similar to my approach for the Old Ale that has been maturing for almost a year, where I simply pitched the dregs of two Gueuze bottles for secondary fermentation.

I hope that should give everyone who wants to brew a historically fairly accurate Adambier a good idea how to approach it and how to formulate a recipe for it. And thanks to Jesper for making me look more closely into the beer style!

Brewing, Experiment, Recipes

My Kellerbier Experiment 2024

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I don’t homebrew that much anymore these days, at most 4 to 5 times a year, and really only the beers that I absolutely want to brew and drink, which includes fixtures like an 8° Czech-style pale lager for summer and a Czech-style dark lager (which I brew with Ben) for winter. So there is really not that much room for experimentation, simply because I don’t have the time, the drinking capacity (I’m 40, it’s all about quality over quantity now) or the resources like free fridge space for fermentation and lagering.

But there have been a few things that I kept wanting to try out, all in the context of Franconian Kellerbier that I had learned about in the last year or so.

The first thing was when my friend Joe Stange visited Brauerei Knoblach just outside of Bamberg end of last year, and came back with the information that Knoblach generally uses a 1:1 blend of Pilsner and Vienna malt as a grist, that their water is fairly hard parts of the year, and that they rely on that hardness (though he couldn’t provide any concrete numbers, nor was I able to find any analytical data about the water of Schammelsdorf, where the brewery is located). I really like Knoblach’s beers, and I know its peculiar taste, so I was wondering whether these were two factors that played into it (Joe also published an excellent article about Kellerbier in the latest issue of Craft Beer & Brewing magazine which does not seem to be online yet, but as a subscriber myself, I highly recommend getting an online subscription).

The second thing was what I learned at HBCon earlier this year about how Mönchsambacher brewed their Weihnachts-Bock. The two things I wanted to incorporate were their mash profile (which I wrote about in July) and the water profile, which has roughly equivalent hardness of calcium and magnesium, and plenty of it as sulphates. Luckily, my local Berlin tap water has about the right calcium hardness, so all I needed to do was to add the right of magnesium to get my tap water roughly where the Mönchsambacher water is in terms of hardness and mineral composition.

The third point on my agenda of things to try out were Aurum hops, a relatively new German hop variety that was launched as more disease- and climate-resistant with a “highly fine” aroma. As a daughter of Tettnanger, it is meant to replace Tettnanger and similar varieties, and German hop growers as well as hop merchants have been promoting it because they see it as a variety better suited to climate change than others, including German landrace varieties. What I wanted to know was well the hops fared in a traditional style.

I know, integrating all three elements in a single experiment is not exactly scientific, as I don’t have a baseline to compare it to, nor do I isolate any of the multiple variables. I’ll still call it an experiment simply because I want to know what a beer brewed that way would taste like.

And that’s how I formulated the recipe:

The grist was simple: 50% Pilsner malt, and 50% Vienna malt. As hops, I used Aurum hops, with additions at 60 minutes for bittering, 25 minutes for flavour, and to the whirlpool for aroma, which should end up at 41 IBU (calculated):

  • 2.3 kg Pilsner malt
  • 2.3 kg Vienna malt
  • 30 g Aurum hops (5.8% alpha acid) @ 60 min
  • 30 g Aurum hops (5.8% alpha acid) @ 25 min
  • 40 g Aurum hops (5.8% alpha acid) @ whirlpool for 20 min

My tap water needed to be enriched with magnesium, so I simply spiked the mash with food-grade epsom salts (MgSO4). According to my calculations, 18g should get me the right amount of magnesium hardness for 22 liters of beer.

As yeast, I used the Fermentis S-23 dry yeast strain. It’s not my absolute favourite, but it’s all I had at hand, also because I had forgotten to order anything else, which is all my bloody fault.

When it came to mashing, I just stuck to the Mönchsambacher mash profile, a single decoction mash. I boiled the wort for 60 minutes, then cooled it down to 6°C, pitched the yeast, and let it ferment at 10°C until it was finished fermenting. I then ramped down the temperature to 1°C for a week, and bottled it with wort I had held back for bottle conditioning.

The resulting beer has an OG of 11.6°P (slightly lower than a typical Kellerbier, but that’s mainly from me buying the ingredients and only afterwards deciding on a mash profile with a slightly lower efficiency than my regular double decoction mash), and fermented down only to 3.5°P FG, resulting in just 4.3% ABV.

A Willibecher of the Kellerbier. The colour is golden with a tiny bit of haze, with a moderately dense head of foam on top.
A Willibecher of the Kellerbier. The colour is golden with a tiny bit of haze, with a moderately dense head of foam on top.

A first taste test showed that the experiment, in my opinion, was successful: the beer has a minerality and a maltiness very much reminiscent of Knoblach and Mönchsambacher. The same goes for the bitterness: while it’s not quite as pronounced as I hoped it would be (I blame the low attenuation which probably leaves just enough residual sweetness to slightly mute it), as it is very lingering: even minutes after, that hop bitterness just stays on your tongue. Which is exactly what I appreciate so much about these beers.

As for the hop aroma of Aurum itself: there’s not that much there. Even though I kept the hops in the fridge and sealed at all times, it was not the freshest batch (2021 harvest), so that may have had an influence. Still, the bitterness the hops provide was quite on point.

Still, I’m very happy with the end result. I think it shows that the local water profile of Bamberg’s surrounding area has a large impact on the flavour of the beer, as long as breweries don’t soften or otherwise treat the water and embrace their very local water profile instead (which is one of the points that Joe makes in his article).

Even the yeast played out alright: I didn’t like S-23 in the past because it can produce rather fruity fermentation byproducts. In this case, the beer came out fairly clean, just with a high final gravity. In retrospect, that actually wasn’t too surprising, as S-23 is the closest known relative of the Wyeast 2001 strain, which is purported to be the Pilsner Urquell “H” strain, and is also known for relatively low attenuation.

My take-aways of this brew are the following:

Hard water, especially similar to the Mönchsambacher water profile, can get you a flavour profile in beer that is similar to the slightly rustic flavour profiles of beers like Mönchsambacher, Knoblach and others in the region.

The combination of Pilsner and Vienna malt probably adds to that rustic character.

A lower attenuation seems to help with the style, but another experiment to try out a more highly attenuating yeast should bring more clarity.

Aurum hops are probably okay for standard German styles, but also require more experimentation to understand their exact aroma potential and how to use them. A more recent harvest would be great to try next time. I generally support the idea of hop varieties that are better suited to climate change (which is an inevitability that will hit the brewing industry hard in the decades to come, so good on German hop breeders to be as forward-thinking as that), as long as we understand well enough how to apply the hops to get the same aromas and flavours as with more traditional varieties.

History

Which Breweries’ Beers Were Served At Oktoberfest in 1843?

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Bavarikon, Bavaria’s internal portal to present treasures, art and other things from its archives, libraries and museums, is an incredibly valuable platform, as you can find all kinds of random bits and pieces related to Bavaria in some shape or some. They of course have lots of digitalized material about Oktoberfest, like this map of Oktoberfest at Theresienwiese from 1843:

A map of Oktoberfest from 1843. Source. Public Domain.

This is great, because not only does it give us insight into the overall setup (basically, the horse racing course was on the outside of the field, while in the middle, most of the stands could be found, with more stands to be found on the hill on the Western side of Theresenwiese, just north of the Bavaria statue.

Of course, the King had his own tent, with the agricultural exhibition placed near it. On the South side, the shooting range was located, while in the center, the most was going on: lots of places serving beer, coffee, wine, punch, cold and hot food, or pastries, but there were also attractions like a carousel and crossbow shooting, and the Glückshafen, a lottery with the purpose that its profit be used to support the city’s poor. That attraction still exists today, and is the oldest operation at the Oktoberfest.

Most importantly though, we also learn which breweries’ beers were served in 1843:

  • Singelspieler
  • Mader
  • Oberkandler
  • Knor[r]
  • Hacker
  • Löwenbräu
  • Pschor[r]
  • Unterkandler
  • Tölzer (from Tölz; nowadays Bad Tölz)
  • Hesselloher (probably referring to the brewery in Großhesselohe in Pullach, just South of Munich)

Some of these breweries resp. brands are still around, like Hacker and Pschorr in the Hacker-Pschorr brand, and Löwenbräu, while others are less known: Maderbräu is probably best known these day through Maderbräustraße, the little street next to Weißes Brauhaus in Munich: when Georg Schneider had to move out of the old Weißes Brauhaus (roughly where Hofbräuhaus is located nowadays), he managed to buy the defunct Maderbräu brewery building and relocate his brewery there. Only the street name and a sign on the wall of Weißes Brauhaus are reminders of this old Munich brewery.

Sign on the wall of Weißes Brauhaus, Munich. It says “The White Brewhouse. Former historischer Munich brewery. 1490 first mentioned as brewery. 1540 called Maderbräu in a document. 1872 Georg Schneider built his white beer brewery here. 1944 destroyed by incendiary bombs. The undestroyed restaurant is an example of the old Munich pub tradition.”

The other Munich breweries in this list are attested through an old map from the 1830s of Munich breweries: Knorrbräu on Briennerstraße, Oberkandler and Unterkandler, both on Neuhauser Straße, and Singelspieler on Sendlinger Straße. Even beer from further away was brought to Theresienwiese and served there, such as from Tölz, South of Munich, and Hesselloher Bier, which was likely from the brewery in Großhesselohe in Pullach just outside Munich, but that’s not entirely clear from the source.

From an 1824 painting by Heinrich Adam, we can also get a rough idea how serving beer used to be organised like, on a much smaller scale than nowadays, from wooden shacks like this one:

Detail from an 1824 painting by Heinrich Adam, depicting beer getting served from a cask at Oktoberfest. License: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source.

(header image by Heinrich Adam, 1824, licensed under CC-BY-SA 4.0. source)

History

Top- vs. Bottom-Fermenting Breweries in Prussia 1889/1890

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In my recent article about top- vs bottom-fermenting breweries in Germany 1889/1890, I simplified one bit of the data: I lumped together all provinces of Prussia, when the data was actually much more detailed specifically for that state.

So let’s start with the per-province data:

BreweriesProduction volume [hl]
No.ProvinceTFBFTFBF
1East Prussia19952328,721582,580
2West Prussia4260172,278419,883
3Brandenburg4441251,839,7802,876,476
4Pomerania23582126,654531,615
5Posen11351218,544270,509
6Silesia6541991,128,1731,534,086
7Saxony465174646,9871,791,947
8Schleswig-Holstein65353282,954952,226
9Hanover355110155,4361,001,521
10Westphalia468248101,8832,000,935
11Hesse-Nassau9031228,4041,613,806
12Rhineland7833711,030,2832,527,309
13Hohenzollern931464,659117,557
List of provinces, with the number of breweries (TF = top-fermenting, BF = bottom-fermenting) and respective production volumes

I added numbers to give you a better idea where each of these provinces were located using this map:

Map of Imperial Germany, with Prussia marked green and the Prussian provinces number 1-13. This map was created using this map. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0. The original map was created by Maps & Lucy and others.

Now let’s again look at the ratio of bottom- to top-fermenting breweries per province:

No.RegionBF / TF
1East Prussia0.26
2West Prussia1.43
3Brandenburg0.28
4Pomerania0.35
5Posen0.45
6Silesia0.30
7Saxony0.37
8Schleswig-Holstein0.08
9Hanover0.31
10Westphalia0.53
11Hesse-Nassau3.47
12Rhineland0.47
13Hohenzollern1.57
List of the provinces and the ratio of bottom- to top-fermenting breweries in each of them

The first thing I noticed is that there are only three provinces with more bottom-fermenting than top-fermenting breweries: West Prussia, Hesse-Nassau and Hohenzollern. When you look at the raw data, West Prussia in general didn’t seem to have too many breweries in the first place. Hesse-Nassau, just like the State of Hesse (which it fully surrounds), also seems to have switched over to bottom fermentation, but not quite to the extent as Hesse. And then there’s Hohenzollern, which is actually quite separate from the rest of Prussia and located very much in the South of Germany where bottom fermentation has a more longstanding tradition.

This brings me to the next table of statistics, the average production volumes per province, divided between top- and bottom-fermenting breweries:

hl / Brewery
No.RegionTFBFBF / TF
1East Prussia1,651.8611,203.466.78
2West Prussia4,101.866,998.051.71
3Brandenburg4,143.6523,011.815.55
4Pomerania538.956,483.1112.03
5Posen1,934.025,304.102.74
6Silesia1,725.047,708.974.47
7Saxony1,391.3710,298.557.40
8Schleswig-Holstein433.3117,966.5341.46
9Hanover437.859,104.7420.79
10Westphalia217.708,068.2937.06
11Hesse-Nassau315.605,172.4616.39
12Rhineland1,315.816,812.155.18
13Hohenzollern50.10805.1816.07
The list of Prussian provinces, each with the average hl / Brewery for top- and bottom-fermenting breweries, plus the ratio of bottom- to top-fermenting average production volume.

Hohenzollern absolutely stands out here, with just tiny average production volumes. Whatever top-fermenting breweries existed there, they must have been pretty small in operation (at least on average), some of them probably glorified home-brewing operations. But even the bottom-fermenting breweries were really small compared to all the other provinces.

The brewery structure of Hohenzollern (but this is just an educated guess) was probably closer to regions like Franconia, where a lot of small, local breweries were established and just served a very local market, with relatively little industrialisation at the time.

Brandenburg (which includes Berlin) seems to have been the exact opposite, not only because it had a fairly strong top-fermenting brewing industry with a pretty large number of breweries and strong average production volumes, but also had by far the largest production volumes for bottom-fermenting breweries. These number probably mostly reflect the Berlin brewing industry: a large number of breweries making Berliner Weisse and other top-fermented beers for a market that is strong but slowly declining on the one hand, and large, industrial breweries specifically founded and built for brewing fashionable bottom-fermented beers on the other hand.

Interestingly, the Rhineland, nowadays very well known for its hyperlocal top-fermented beer cultures of Kölsch (in Cologne and surrounding areas) and Altbier (in Düsseldorf and the Lower Rhine region), does not particularly stand out as much as I would have expected. While it is the province with the third-largest total production volume of top-fermented beers in Prussia, when ranked by average production volume per brewery, it can only be found on seventh place. When looking at total bottom-fermented volume, the Rhineland is even number 2 of all provinces, but at the same time also has by far the largest number of bottom-fermenting breweries, which brings down the average production volume a lot.

It does show though that in the Rhineland, beer was an important product with presumably one of the highest per-capita consumption in all of Prussia. At least the large number of breweries would suggest a focus on the local market and a comparatively less consolidated beer market overall.

History

Top- vs. Bottom-Fermenting Breweries in Germany 1889/1890

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I recently found a table with an overview of the number of breweries of 11 of 25 German States, split by top- and bottom-fermenting breweries, and total production volumes, again divided by top- and bottom-fermenting breweries.

I found it interesting because these statistics gave some insight into how prevalent bottom fermentation had become in some states, and which states’ breweries managed to brew on a larger scale than others.

So here are the raw numbers:

BreweriesProduction Volume [hl]
StateTFBFTFBF
Prussia4,5941,9836,064,75616,220,485
Saxony5831721,987,4812,393,978
Hesse172101,097998,493
Mecklenburg35146129,254412,878
Thuringia345656323,7382,131,323
Oldenburg701733,493145,443
Braunschweig433425,498450,966
Anhalt551895,406316,109
Lübeck26638,498105,175
Bremen81023,389210,752
Hamburg2010266,661743,176
List of states, with the number of breweries (TF = top-fermenting, BF = bottom-fermenting) and respective production volumes

Now let’s look at the ratio of bottom- to top-fermenting breweries per state:

StateBF / TF
Prussia0.43
Saxony0.30
Hesse12.35
Mecklenburg0.13
Thuringia1.90
Oldenburg0.24
Braunschweig0.79
Anhalt0.33
Lübeck0.23
Bremen1.25
Hamburg0.50
List of the states and the ratio of bottom- to top-fermenting breweries in each of them

What’s very noticeable is that there are only three states with more bottom- than top-fermenting breweries: Hesse, Thuringia and Bremen. Hesse stands out especially because are over 12 times more bottom-fermenting breweries than top-fermenting breweries. Interestingly, most states still had a relatively large number of top-fermenting breweries. But once we look at the average production volumes per brewery of top- vs bottom-fermenting breweries, we’re getting a different picture:

hl / Brewery
StateTFBFBF / TF
Prussia1,320.158,179.776.20
Saxony3,409.0613,918.484.08
Hesse64.534,754.7373.68
Mecklenburg368.258,975.6124.37
Thuringia938.373,248.973.46
Oldenburg478.478,555.4717.88
Braunschweig592.9813,263.7122.37
Anhalt1,734.6517,561.6110.12
Lübeck1,480.6917,529.1711.84
Bremen2,923.6321,075.207.21
Hamburg13,333.0574,317.605.57
A list of states, each with the average hl / Brewery for top- and bottom-fermenting breweries, plus the ratio of bottom- to top-fermenting average production volume.

Very clearly, bottom-fermenting breweries were producing significantly more beer on average than top-fermenting breweries, across the board.

Again, the most noticeable is Hesse, but for a different reason: their average production volume per top-fermenting brewery is just 64 hl. Given that the number of top-fermenting breweries was tiny to begin with, this looks as if the last few remaining top-fermenting breweries were glorified home-breweries, not unlike what we had with Carinthian Steinbier in the decades before its demise.

The only state where top-fermenting brewing was still relatively strong was Hamburg, as it’s the only one with an average 5-digit hl production volume.

The main takeaway from these statistics is certainly that even though bottom-fermenting breweries were generally more industralised and at a more modern technical level with the capabilities to produce larger volumes of beer, many of the less mechanised top-fermenting breweries still seem to have hung around for a while. Unfortunately, these statistics don’t give any insight into what beer styles were brewed. A lot of them may still have been the old local beer styles.

Beer Styles, History, Uncategorized

The Demise of Carinthian Steinbier

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Back in 2020, I wrote about how Carinthian Steinbier used to be brewed. In that article, I also mentioned that Steinbier brewing in Carinthia ended in 1917, as brewing ingredients had become unavailable during the war.

I now found concrete data about how much Steinbier was brewed in the last few years of this style’s existence. Fairly detailed data from 1904 to 1917 (with the exception of 1907-1908) about the production volumes of Carinthian breweries were published in trade journals at the time.

The last three remaining breweries were Ure and Kaschitz, both located in Waidmannsdorf, nowadays part of the Carinthian capital Klagenfurt, and Schorn, from Untergoritschitzen near Klagenfurt.

YearUre [hl]Kaschitz [hl]Schorn [hl]
19031,4131,30524.69 hl (1902/1903)
19041,2671,117
19051,4161,413
19061,3591,289
1909839744
1910792733106
19111,098768168
1912874704153
1913810675144
1914823609154
1915690372121
191674433417
191752
Production volumes of breweries Ure, Kaschitz and Schorn, 1903-1906, 1906-1917

As you can clearly see in the numbers, before Steinbier brewing ended, it was on an almost steady decline over the course of 13 years. For 1917, the records say that production at Ure and Schorn was shut down, while Kaschitz had produced a mere 52 hectoliters.

Before that time period, we only have spurious records, but even in 1886, the total Steinbier production in Carinthia amounted to just 2474 hectoliters between 11 breweries, and between then and the 1910s, Ure and Kaschitz may have had a tiny boom by being able to fill the gaps left by the other breweries that presumably closed down:

  • Kaschitz (Waidmannsdorf): 810 hl
  • Ure (Waidmannsdorf): 480 hl
  • Marinitsch (Gurlitsch): 435 hl
  • Archer (Haarbach): 348 hl
  • Kometter (Köttmansdorf): 81 hl
  • Jablatnig (Amschkau): 87 hl
  • Rovin (Rauth): 64 hl
  • Goritschigg (Dobeinitz): 58 hl
  • Tritz (Straschitz): 51 hl
  • Dobinnig (Haber): 45 hl
  • Wedenig (Unterwuchl): 15 hl

Of these breweries, all brewed Steinbier with an original gravity of 6°, with the exception of Wedenig, who brewed a 4° Steinbier.

This low original gravity of Steinbier also seems to show (although not explicitly stated, so this is slight speculation) in the 1889/1890 brewing season beer volume statistics of Austria-Hungary by original gravity: 6° beer was the lowest OG listed, with a production volume of 2,587 hl (which is roughly in the ball park what all the Steinbier breweries together used to brew in a year), and that number is significantly higher than the next stronger beers: of 7° beer, just 49 hl, and of 8° beer, just 102 hl.

In any case, the production volumes are tiny, the numbers are going down, all clear signs of a declining “industry” that was really closer to homebrewing, serving what was probably a tiny market of aging consumers. Despite the fact that brewing stopped because of a lack of ingredients during World War 1, the tiny volumes were probably a big contributor to not resuming brewing after the war.