Schönramer is the Perfect Alcohol-Free Beer

August 4, 2026 ak 2 Comments

That title says it all, but let me briefly explain. Just a few weeks ago I asked whether science has gone too far with the development of alcohol-free Bavarian Helles.

A few days ago, I came back from our summer holiday. One big part of it was visiting Waging am See which is roughly half-way between Traunstein and Petting-Schönram. The former is the home of three breweries, including Hofbräuhaus Traunstein, while the latter is the home of Private Landbrauerei Schönram, a regional brewery firmly embedded in the Rupertiwinkel region of Bavaria.

Of course, the locally dominant beers there are Hofbräu Traunstein Helles and Schönramer Hell, with Schloßbrauerei Stein also having some presence. Naturally, we drank plenty of Traunsteiner and Schönramer, and of Schönramer’s beers, I enjoyed having their Alkoholfrei readily available and pre-chilled in the local supermarkets.

I now very much believe that this is the perfect alcohol-free beer. When it’s properly chilled, and poured into a glass, it’s absolutely beautiful, and is virtually indistinguishable from a regular Helles. Only in the nose, there’s a tiny trace of an aroma that is a bit off, and while tasting the beer, the body is almost right. Literally the only thing that’s missing is that tiny bit of alcohol that is noticeable. Other than that, no flaws.

As we were in the area, we also did a tour of the brewery, which is an experience in itself. Probably the best brewery tour ever, other than maybe the handful of times where I was given private tours by brewers. Everyone was very open about the brewing practices and processes, and all my questions were answered. The only thing they said they wouldn’t hand out is brewing recipes, but if you wanted to brew Schönramer beers, you can get a good idea about their approach through articles like this one and home-brew recipes like this one.

As for the alcohol-free beer itself, that’s what I’ve been able to find out: Schönramer currently contracts out the dealcoholisation process, which is done at Brauerei Hutthurm near Passau. Hutthurm dealcoholises via reverse osmosis membrane filtration, exactly the modern method I mentioned the other week. The resulting beer is then returned by tanker to Schönram, where it is then blended with Schönramer’s Surtaler beer (which in itself has 3.5% ABV) to get just below 0.5%.

An open fermenter at Schönramer brewery with fermenting beer in it, with kräusen (white-ish foam) on top.

Schönramer is apparently working on moving dealcoholisation in-house, but this is still in the planning phase. When I briefly spoke to senior brewmaster Eric Toft (I had a bit of a fanboy moment), he actually voiced his preference for the Surtaler Schankbier, and to me it sounded like he wasn’t 100% happy with moving towards a beer style that is much more resource-intensive in production compared to their other beers (even just the dealcoholisation itself, never mind sending it around with tankers), especially after all the effort Schönramer put it to make the whole brewing process as energy-efficient as possible, including energy recovery at various stages of the process.

I still think Schönramer Alkoholfrei is an excellent beer, and knowing all the details that go into making the Schönramer beers as good as they are, it is not an accident, but rather shows the technical excellence of the brewmasters and the staff at that regional Bavarian brewery.

The back of a Schönramer-branded high-vis vest worn by a brewery tour participant. It says "Biersucher" on the back, a portmanteau of "Bier" and "Besucher" (visitor). — The back of a Schönramer-branded high-vis vest worn by a brewery tour participant. It says “Biersucher” on the back, a portmanteau of “Bier” and “Besucher” (visitor).

Beer Styles

Has Science Gone Too Far? Modern Bavarian Non-Alcoholic Helles

July 14, 2026 ak 2 Comments

In the last few years, a number of new Bavarian non-alcoholic Helles were launched by reputable breweries such as Augustiner (which really started this new craze), Tegernseer, Bayreuther, Weihenstephaner and Schönramer.

Augustiner’s new non-alcoholic beer was without any doubt Munich’s hype beer of the year 2024, and several other breweries followed suit and launched their own products once they realised that the hype was real.

From what I was told, these new beers are all based on new methods of gentle dealcoholisation using reverse osmosis, to a large extent driven by research at TU Munich at Weihenstephan (one paper about the impact of different production methods on NA beer aroma can be found here).

When Augustiner released that new beer, my prediction was that it would be a big deal, and I firmly stand by that assessment. It’s changed the world of alcohol-free beer for the better, making it actually enjoyable. My first tasting a few weeks later also confirmed it for me. And zebra-striping between Augustiner Oktoberfestbier and Augustiner Alkoholfrei Hell in the Augustiner tent at Oktoberfest on the last day of the festival in 2024 further showed what an incredible beer it is: when served extra cold from keg, it’s virtually indistinguishable in terms of aroma and flavour compared to a regular Augustiner Helles.

When I first tried Tegernseer’s version last year, I actually found it to be even better, at least from the bottle, to the point where it tastes exactly the same except for a slightly noticeable lack of alcoholic mouthfeel.

Last weekend, I finally had the chance to try out the latest contender, Schönramer Alkoholfrei. Schönramer Hell is one of my favourite Helles, it’s incredibly light, fairly dry and just incredibly drinkable. So of course I was looking forward to trying it.

And… it’s good. It’s very good. It seems even more refined than either Tegernseer’s and Augustiner’s version, but it’s the first time where I feel like there’s something lacking in the non-alcoholic Helles (other than the alcohol itself, of course), rather than something still being in there that makes it identifiable as a NA beer. The Schönramer version is so clean, the beeriness almost seems diminished to the point where it reminded me a bit of American light beers.

Me holding a bottle of Schönramer Alkoholfrei on my balcony.

This was the first time when I thought: has science gone too far? Has non-alcoholic Helles been optimised so much in an attempt to make it as clean-tasting as possible, that it has actually lost some of its character as a beer? It still tastes like a beer, don’t get me wrong, but I do wonder whether the non-alcoholic version could just be a bit more characterful. I also wonder whether this is simply down to the base beer, and I don’t know whether this is just a dealcoholised version of their regular Helles, or whether more tweaking was done that caused the beer character to become less and less.

So I had to go back the day after and try the beer again. What I noticed was that from a beer glass (nothing fancy, just a Willibecher), the beer was somewhat more aromatic, without any noticeably increased non-alcoholic character, and closer to the regular Schönramer Helles.

Anyway, in a few week’s time, I’ll be drinking Schönramer straight from the source, and we also have a tour booked, so I hope I’ll be able to ask a few more questions about the specific way Schönramer produce their non-alcoholic Helles and report back on my blog.

Beer Styles, History

Breslauer Schöps, a historic beer in four versions

July 13, 2026 ak 3 Comments

As I’m working on my new book project, I found some great sources about a beer style that I had heard about but didn’t know much about: Breslauer Schöps, hailing from the Lower Silesian city of
Wrocław in modern-day Poland.

It was probably not so much a single beer style, but rather four related ones. Think about it as a 2-by-2 matrix: one dimension was beer colour that distinguished between brown Schöps and white Schöps, while the other dimension distinguished between regular strength Schöps and Doppelbier, a slightly stronger version.

The historic sources are quite specific about it: the dark version was described as black to brown, with a very roasted taste to it, but otherwise clear. The pale version on the other hand was simply brewed from 100% air-dried or otherwise very pale malt.

In terms of strength, regular Schöps had an original gravity of about 8°P, while the Doppelbier variant was not double the strength, but rather only 1.5 times as strong, with about 12°P.

Brewing in Wrocław had been regulated in a guild since 1582 that made it exceptionally difficult to enter the brewing trade in the city unless you were born into a brewer family or got married to a brewers’ widow. Malt making was communal, which actually had the interesting effect that the communal malthouses were kept modern: in 1872, they were described as being at least partially automated, with automated cleaning machinery steam-powered malt mills, and even double-floor kilns.

But what specifically caught my eye was how Schöps was fermented: very quickly, at high temperatures for Central European brewing. The yeast was pitched at 35 to 37°C, fermentation started quickly, and the beer was finished fermenting in 12 to 18 hours. Historic descriptions give a strong indication for mixed fermentation, as the beer was described as having a sour tang similar to buttermilk. Because of this, Schöps was called a “three-day-beer”: “brewed today, fermented tomorrow, and consumed with joy on the third day”. For the Doppelbier, FG dropped down to about 4°P, while for the single strength Schöps, a FG of 3°P was expected.

The pitching temperature and fast fermentation really sound more like farmhouse yeasts. Was there any relationship to any of the strains still around today? We may never know, because Schöps as a beer style unfortunately went extinct.

Book, History

My New Book Project

July 12, 2026 ak 2 Comments

“But Andreas, you only just published your latest book, why are you working on something new already?” you may ask. Well, I’ve been itching to work on this for a while, in fact even before I started on my previous book, but never quite had the motivation to actually start work on it.

So here it is: my next big project is a second edition of my first “proper” book, Historic German and Austrian Beers for the Home Brewer. I think it’s a good book, and as a good friend of mine said, because it’s a history book, it’s not going to be outdated anytime soon, but looking back the eight years since I first published it, I think I can do better.

After all, it was my first proper book, and I was relatively inexperienced about what was involved in writing, editing and publishing a book. One of my big surprises was that even though I had planned this as an e-book only release, people immediately called for a print edition. There were only a few weeks between me initially releasing it as an e-book and us going on a big holiday (3 weeks in New Zealand), and I wanted to use the momentum and get the print version out before we were flying away, so it all felt a bit rushed, but was fine in the end.

In these eight years, I also learned a lot: I think my writing style got slightly better (though it still feels very technical to me, but that’s virtually all the writing that I do outside of beer writing, and that is technical documentation for the software that I develop in my day job), I also managed to get better at researching the history of beer styles, and I found many more legit sources for historic and extinct beer styles.

So that’s what you can expect from the second edition of Historic German and Austrian Beers for the Home Brewer:

More beer styles: Kölsch, Lichtenhainer, Düsseldorfer, Dortmunder Adambier, German Porter, Breslauer Schöps, and probably even more.

More recipes, both for beer styles that were already in the first edition and for newly added styles.

More history: my intention is to give even more historic background to each of the styles in the book.

More technical background: two of the great challenges of reproducing historic beers are the raw materials and the exact brewing methods used. This is something I already worked on in my previous book (if you want to learn how to make a reasonable approximation of a historic air-dried malt, go get it!), and definitely something I want to expand on. The same goes for historic brewing methods and document more of the nitty-gritty details in the original sources and to what extent we can translate that to homebrewing.

More accurate homebrewing recipes: going back, I realised that some of the conversions and translations of historic recipes to modern techniques and homebrew-sized amounts may not have been totally accurate or quite complete. I’m not saying the first edition is fundamentally wrong, but I will re-examine all historic sources and re-convert all existing recipes to make sure no details are missing.

I have no intention of rushing this project, but I do want to get it right. So I currently aim for releasing the second edition in 2028, roughly for the book’s 10th anniversary since its initial publication.

I also want to occasionally share findings that I make along the way here, so I’ll occasionally post about beer styles or historic recipes just as a bit of a teaser.

I started this new project literal days after the previous book’s release, and have actually come across quite a few interesting sources and lots of details and even recipes that I had not been aware of before. So naturally, I am quite excited to go back to the roots of my beer book writing and document all the barely documented, often extinct historic beers.

Technique

My Record-Keeping in Homebrewing

July 11, 2026 ak Leave a comment

I think Boak & Bailey’s most recent approach to blogging of posting little and often is great. It’s what I used to do more often, and then at some point all my blog posts turned into 1000+ word articles with lots of research.

My instead, I’ll be posting about a question that recently came up on Reddit’s /r/homebrewing subreddit, namely what logs and records do people keep about their homebrewing. I left a comment there, but in addition, I also wanted to post about it here, also to explain my thoughts behind it all.

I started homebrewing in late 2012. Back then, I kept some very basic records, but I quickly noticed that these weren’t quite enough to reliably reproduce recipes. Not that I actually rebrewed many beers, but having the ability to reproduce one recipe right even when the underlying conditions change (raw materials are always variable, timing can be very different when you just wing your brew day, etc.) is something very valuable, for myself, for others to reproduce, and eventually for brewing historians. Not that I ever expect beer historians to disseminate any of my records, but you never know. Even if it’s just “leading by example” by posting this article for others to pick up similar habits. I think it was Ron Pattinson who wrote that beer history will lose a lot of knowledge simply because how bad the record-keeping in many craft breweries is, but I can’t find a source for it. But I digress…

So this is what a log of a typical brew day looks like:

I write down the date and the beer style that I intend to brew, followed by the grist. The grist is all the malts, their technical name, if known also the producer, and their weight. This would e.g. be:

3.3 kg Mild malt
0.2 kg Simpsons CaraMalt

This is then followed by a log of all the steps that briefly describe what I did, usually starting with dough-in (mash-in). All log entries are timestamped with a minute resolution. For example:

10:45 dough-in with 11 l water at 71°C -> 65°C; rest 60 min

That says that at 10:45 I doughed in the malt with a certain amount of water at a specific temperature, resulting in a mash temperature of 65°C, followed by resting the mash for 60 minutes. Rest lengths (“60 min”) describe intention, while the timestamps describe the actual times when an action happened. This may seem like a very technical distinction, but reflects that brew days are sometimes a bit chaotic, things go slightly wrong, you miss an alarm and only get to do something 5-10 minutes later than planned.

If there is step mashing involved, it’s usually indicated like this:

11:45 heat to 72°C
11:53 reached 72.6°C; rest 10 min

For decoction mashes, it’s more something like this:

10:26 draw off 8 l thick mash for decoction
10:32 bring decoction to boil
11:14 boil decoction for 5 min
11:20 mix back decoction
11:24 -> 72°C; rest 10 min

For lautering, I document the transfer to the lauter tun, when I start lautering (which is usually preceded by recirculation), and the strength of the first runnings in °Brix which I measure using a refractometer.

I also document the °Brix of the last runnings when I’ve collected enough wort. The wort boil is documented in when it starts and and when it finishes. The hop additions are all documented in their timing in minutes before the end of the boil (e.g. 60 min, 0 min, or during whirlpool at 95°C), the hop variety (e.g. Saaz, EKG, …) and the alpha acid content.

After the end of the boil, I measure the post-boil gravity using the refractometer first before I chill down the wort. Once the wort is chilled, I then measure the OG using a saccharometer in °P, e.g. 12.5°P. I document the final temperature reached when chilling, and what yeast I pitched when. Once fermentation is finished, I document the FG, also in °P, followed by the calculated %ABV. I of course also record the volume in the fermenter.

The OG actually used to be relevant in Germany until 2024, when the German government loosened the taxation requirements for homebrewers by increasing the tax-free maximum annual amount of homebrewed beer per household from 200 litres to 500 litres, and by lifting the requirement of having to report every single batch by sending an email where and when it was supposed to be brewed, and what the OG was going to be. This requirement had already been relaxed by many customs offices, but only fully became law in 2024.

So that’s how I document all my batches of beer that I brew. It may seem like overkill, but it’s been useful in the past to understand extract efficiency, to analyze issues during the brew day, and to reliably reproduce certain beers like the annual Czech Dark Lager I brew for Christmas together with my friend Ben.

Beer Styles

Session 150: Early German Porter As A Health Drink

June 28, 2026 ak 4 Comments

This blog post is my contribution to Session 150 to celebrate Martyn Cornell’s epic work about the complete history of Porter and Stout.

I have been interested in specifically German Porter for quite a while, in particular when I first learned about its existence through the 1947 notes of former Groterjan brewmaster A. Dörfel. I previously wrote about what brewing literature said about the specs of German Porter over the course of the 20th century.

Of course none of that is nearly as comprehensive as what Martyn Cornell wrote about. I have to admit, I’ve only read parts of his book, in particular those about Germany and Austria. What I noticed in there was the early association specifically of German Porter with being a Gesundheitsbier, a health beer, that was often also simply called a Malzextrakt. Remarkably, this was very often used in advertising, in which various producers frequently pointed out how good their beer was for sick people. In fact, when I started looking into it more, I noticed that virtually all mentions of Deutscher Porter from the 1860s to the 1880s that I could find made some health reference.

So how did this German Porter compare to English Porter? One German brewer, Hollack, wanted to show how superior their product. So at the Berlin Exhibition of Hygiene in 1883, they provided specific analyses that they handed out, which we have available:

Beer	SG	ABW%	Free Acid%
English Porter	1.0258	5.35	0.275
Malzextract Hoff	1.0258	2.77	0.252
Malzextract Werner	1.0385	3.35	0.31
Malzextract Grohmann	1.0535	4.46	0.315
Malzextract Hollack	1.0633	3.65	0.39

As you can see, the German Porters had more residual extract and were lower in alcohol. This looks like they were fermented in such a way to be richer in unfermented sugars (with the exception of Hoff’s Porter), while lower in alcohol content.

From a few years later, 1887, we also have a different analysis of Hollack’s Porter:

SG 1.0564
3.43% ABW
0.157% lactic acid
0.123% phosphoric acid

While the SG and the ABW is slightly lower compared to the 1883 specs, they are still quite high up there.

In 1890, yet another brewer, Th. Krepper, “German Porter and Lager Brewery” in Burg near Magdeburg, advertised their German Porter by posting the analysis results of the Versuchs- und Lehranstalt für Brauerei Berlin (also known as VLB Berlin):

SG 1.01968 (= 4.9°P)
4.56% ABW
0.0882% lactic acid
OG 15.36°P

Compared to the specs of other beers, this beer seems much more attenuated, and also quite a bit lower in acid.

Until then, all ads seem to refer to bottled German Porter only, and quite often in a health context. The first ad of cask German Porter I came across was from 1892, when a breakfast restaurant on Unter den Linden 24 in Berlin advertised cask German Porter 1/4 litre for 20 Pfennig, and cask English Porter 1/4 litre for 30 Pfennig.

And even Köstritzer seemed to have brewed a German Porter during the late 19th century, at least it’s listed as what the brewery exhibited in 1892 at an International Exhibition for the Red Cross in Leipzig.

In 1893, we can find another analysis used in advertising, when Freyberg’s Brauerei near Halle (Saale) put their analysis they got from a Mr. C. Bischoff from Berlin in an ad in a medical newspaper:

OG 21.27°P (calculated)
5.94% ABW (=7.4% ABV)
FG 7.5°P (apparent extract)
0.234% acid

To summarise, even though these German beers were called Porter, they must have been a lot sweeter and richer than their English counterparts, often did not have nearly as much alcohol, and were frequently advertised as a health beer. Some of the description do say that the German Porters are similar to English Porter, and they probably tasted similar, but the numbers suggest quite a large difference.

It would be interesting to work out in greater detail when German brewers moved away from the health claims specifically, and how it turned into the German Porter of later decades that was even codified as part of the East German beer standardisation efforts.

Modern German Porter, apart from the craft beer scene, is just a shadow of its former self. Lausitzer Porter seems to be the only surviving brands, which is a relatively weak beer, with barely any roasted flavours, and also available in fruit-flavoured versions, with cherry or strawberry. And the latest “innovation” that I only came across last week, is “Porter Radlerin”, a dark Radler from Porter and lemonade. Ironically, this is actually something I can get behind, because we could certainly do with more Dunkler Radler.

A bottle of Porter Radlerin, "beer mixed drink with lemon flavour", "first dark radler from out Porter". — A bottle of Porter Radlerin, “beer mixed drink with lemon flavour”, “first dark radler from out Porter”.

Beer Styles, Book

Bavarian White Beer, My New Book

June 19, 2026 ak 2 Comments

Today I can proudly announce that I just published my new book, Bavarian White Beer. Very much in the spirit of my previous book about Vienna Lager, my intention was to find out as much as possible about Bavarian White Beer, the beers people more commonly know as Bavarian Weissbier, Weizenbier or Hefeweizen, first from a historic perspective: how did the beer style get popular? How did it develop over time? What were the important locations and historic events during all of that? How did it survive to this day?

I then looked into the historic brewing literature to see what we can learn about the style there. This is also where the title for the book came from: I very quickly realised that even though the style’s history is also closely connected to the use of wheat malt in brewing, using wheat was far from obligatory, and plenty of examples of white beer using just barley malt were also brewed. This is why I don’t like using names involving only wheat when talking about the breadth of historic beers in that tradition.

And since my focus of previous books of mine has also been on brewing in general, I also took a look at the latest science and state-of-the-art technology and processes that are used to brew great Bavarian(-style) white beer in all its forms. This is of course complemented by a collection of homebrew recipes that cover the variety of historic and modern styles and variations: classic banana-forward Hefeweizen, oak-smoked wheat beer (a Bavarian-style wheat beer loosely inspired by early historic descriptions), historic Kelheim wheat beer from 100% wheat malt, Hefeweizen brewed on a Burton Union set (and what the Burton Union has to do with brewing wheat beer), modern hoppy wheat beer, and three homebrew versions of commercial beers: Skeleton Key & Goldfinger’s Bavarian Breeze, a beer that I was able to try at Goldfinger’s taproom in 2024, then the award-winning Live Oak Primus Weizenbock, and finally Sapwood Cellar’s Exaggerated Truth, a hazy IPA recipe that demonstrates how Bavarian wheat beer yeast can be used to add more complex fruity flavours to hoppy beers. Homebrewers can even learn how to malt their own wheat and make historically accurate air-dried wheat malt at home.

In terms of what’s covered, this is the most detailed brewing and history book solely dedicated to Bavarian white beer. You can buy it on Amazon as paperback or e-book. Visit waizenbier.de for more information. It has all the links to all the Amazon stores, and you can get an overview what to expect through the book’s table of contents.

An 1827 illustration showing wooden casks expelling foam during fermentation, so-called Spundgärung, which was common for top-fermented beers at the time.

What inspired me to look into this whole topic was actually another beer writer getting in touch with me. In early 2023, Jonny Garrett approached me with very specific history questions about the Degenberger family for a book he was working on then, The Meaning of Beer. The Degenbergers were a noble family from Bavaria who were very closely involved in the early development of white beer, in particular in Lower Bavaria. I couldn’t answer some of the questions, so I had to visit a specialised library to see what existing literature there was about the Degenbergers and the beginning of the Bavarian white beer monopoly. And just that got me down a rabbit hole about a nowadays very popular beer style that had already been popular in Bavaria from the 16th to the late 18th century.

And while some literature about it was around, it was either about super specific aspects of this whole history or just more general brewing literature. I realised that no book just focusing on this style existed that explained both history and brewing science to the level of detail that I would have liked to have. So I sat down and wrote that book myself.

While the idea had been in my head since 2023, it took me until June 2025 to actually start the work on it, and in the roughly 12 months since then, I managed to write a book pretty much how I wanted it to be. I have not been able to answer every single question about the style that there is, but I was able to dispel quite a few myths and unearth surprising historic details along the way, and overall, it covers all its important history, from its early establishment as a beer style in the 15th and 16th century all the way to the 21st century.

While writing the book, I noticed an interesting 80:20 effect, or at least something like it: in the first 2.5 months of working on the book, I wrote roughly 60% of the final text, while for the remaining 40%, it took me another 8 months, most of which was researching a lot of tiny details and very particular aspects of the history and brewing science of Bavarian white beer. The remaining time was proof-reading, incorporating corrections from reviewers, and technical things like fixing the layout, finding and adding images, and just sorting out all the tiny details to get everything ready for self-publishing both as a printed paperback book and as an e-book.

At this point, I also have to say many thanks to the people who were willing to review my manuscript and give me valuable feedback on it: Brian Alberts, Dave Carpenter and Ben Palmer. Their feedback greatly helped me improve the bits and pieces that just weren’t quite there yet.

I’m also saying thanks to David Bailey, who created the colourful, happy-looking cover image of a beer hall full of people enjoying Bavarian wheat beer, snacks, and each other’s company. I’ve known David’s work mainly through Pellicle Magazine, and always loved his style, so I was very happy when he agreed to draw the book cover.

One thing that I rediscovered while writing this book was how much I actually liked Hefeweizen. The beer style as such was quite formative for me because it was the only truly different beer on offer back when I was 17, 18 years old, compared to all the Austrian Märzen (which is really just a slightly more bitter Helles). As part of my work on the book, I also reacquainted myself with the style, and drank all the ones I could find, no matter whether on draught or from bottles. I realised how good the beer style actually is, and how much complexity there can be to it, and it somewhat made me understand why the beer must have been popular when the alternative would have been darker, slightly smokey lager beers.

As part of sampling all this Bavarian wheat beer, I also ventured into territories I hadn’t explored much before, and also realised that Kristallweizen (basically a clear, filtrated version with slightly more bitterness) can be excellent, even when it’s probably one of the least fashionable beer styles around right now.

So yeah, I hope the book can also increase the interest in this quite unique beer style, get more people to homebrew Bavarian white beer, and learn something about the beer’s history along the way! So please buy my book (all the information is on waizenbier.de), and don’t hesitate to get in touch if you have any further questions about the topic.

“Why waizenbier.de?”, you may wonder. Well, the story behind that is that I like vanity domains to promote books. What would be spelled “Weizenbier” in modern German actually wasn’t standardised until the German Orthographic Conference of 1901, and in particular the spelling “Waizenbier” was nearly as common between the 1760s and the late 19th century. The very first time G. Schneider & Sohn served their beer at Oktoberfest in 1895, they advertised their stall (it was likely more like a wooden hut) as “Waizenbierbude”, and that was very much my inspiration.

A historic stoneware mug with a tin lid (ca. 1900) and a wheat beer glass (ca. 1960) with Hofbräuhaus München Champagner Weizen branding. — A historic stoneware mug with a tin lid (ca. 1900) from which white beer would have been drunk out of, and a wheat beer glass (ca. 1960) with Hofbräuhaus München Champagner Weizen branding.

History

Early Vienna Lagers not from Vienna

April 23, 2026 ak Leave a comment

This whole Vienna Lager topic still somehow has me captivated, even 11 years after I first looked into the historic beer style, and almost 6 years after I released my book about the (mostly) complete history of Vienna Lager.

As some of you probably already know, the Oktoberfest Märzen style started out as a strong “pale Viennese” style lager beer brewed by Josef Sedlmayr’s son Gabriel at Franziskaner-Leistbräu in 1871, after he had returned from vocational training at the Dreher brewery in Kleinschwechat. Because of a beer shortage in Munich due to the hot weather, Michael Schottenhamel, who operated a beer stall at Oktoberfest, approached Josef Sedlmayr, who could promptly offer him this Vienna-style lager. It required a permit to sell this stronger-than-normal beer, but once that went through, it was branded as “Märzenbier”, reviving an old term that had been applied to any lager or “summer” beer in Munich until 1799. The rest is history.

Prior to that, Vienna Lager had already been fairly popular in Southern Germany. In my 2020 book, the examples I mentioned were Vienna Lagers by Munich breweries Hackerbräu and Löwenbräu, as well as one from Würzburger Hofbräuhaus and another one from Mainzer Aktien-Bierbrauerei.

What I hadn’t looked into in detail at the time was which one was the first “Vienna Lager” brewed outside of Austria. At least the German-speaking sources that I’ve been able to consult point towards two breweries that successfully brewed the style quite early on. One was brewed at Weihenstephaner brewery in Freising, during the 1865/1866 brewing season. A first report about that was published on 25 March 1866, mentioning that the brewery had also brewed beer according to the “Viennese method”, and that experts who had recently tried the beer could confirm that it was equal to Vienna Lager in terms of purity, taste and colour.

Very similar news were reported on 6 April the same year about the brewery of Mr. Müller in Drachselsried in the Bavarian Forest, who had also used the Viennese method and also produced a beer equal to the original. And Kemptner Zeitung on 4 April 1866 noted that Viennese beer is slowly gaining acceptance in Bavaria, mentioning Weihenstephaner brewing both Bavarian and Viennese-style beer for this first time.

On 15 December 1867, an ad for Vienna Lager at Hackerbräu was published in a Munich newspaper. In the 1867/1868 brewing season, Vienna Lager really seemed to have taken off in Munich. The Münchner Anzeiger newspaper on 1 January 1868 contained a page half of which were just ads for Vienna Lager. The beers mentioned on the page were Spatenbräu Bock (2 ads, 1/3 of the page) and Löwenbräu “Vienna Beer”, “Vienna Lager” or “Vienna Export Beer” (4 ads, 2/3 of the page).

In 1870, Vienna Lager was also served (and presumably brewed) at the Jagenlauf brewery in Stadtamhof, nowadays a district of Regensburg. And by 1872, a “Mainzer Wiener-Lagerbier” (that’s one way of fitting two place names into a name) was sold in Mainz.

So was Weihenstephan-brewed “Viennese-style lager” the first Bavarian-brewed Vienna Lager, probably even in all of Germany? We can’t know for sure, but it’s at least it’s the first one for which I’ve been able to find hard evidence. The style itself definitely caught on when at least two Munich-based breweries started brewing the style, and by the 1870s, it had spread to other parts of Bavaria and Southern Germany, when a strong version of Vienna Lager became the template for Oktoberfest-Märzenbier that is nowadays internationally mainly known as “Märzen” and was served at Oktoberfest until the 1980s when the paler Festbier took over in popularity.

History

(Some) Beers at the Oktoberfest in the 1960s

April 3, 2026 ak Leave a comment

This is going to be my last Oktoberfest post for a while, I swear! But I got some good stuff: I stumbled upon Schmankerl Time Machine, a project of Digital Humanities Virtual Laboratory at Munich University from a few years ago to digitise historic restaurant menus from Munich, from 1855 until the 1980s, and make them available online. This of course also contains menus of some of the Oktoberfest tents, which also mentioned beer types, and I quickly wanted to list.

Bräu-Rosl lists all the Pschorr beers on their 1965 menu (Edel-Hell, Export-Dunkel, Märzen, Bock, Stern-Weiße, Animator, St. Hubertus, Pschorr-Malz-Bier), but I don’t think all of those were actually sold there. The menu does have two beer names at the very top, though, Bräurosl-Wiesn-Märzen and Pschorr-Edel-Hell, so I assume that’s what was actually served. Hacker-Pschorr (in 1965, Hacker and Pschorr hadn’t merged yet) nowadays still serve an Edel-Hell from wooden cask at some of their beer halls.

The menu the same year at Fischer Vroni contains lots of advertising , including one for Augustiner Brauerei, listing some of the beers: Export-Bier dunkel, Edelstoff hell, heller Augustiner-Bock, St. Augustin-Maximator, and Oktoberfest-Märzenbier. Augustiner was served at the Augustiner Festhalle and Fischer Vroni, but it’s not clear which exact beers. So this did not give us much insight beyond the general Augustiner portfolio at the time.

Hippodrom in turn had two beers on their menu: Spatenbräu helles Wiesenbier, and Spatenbräu Champagner Weißbier. The latter would nowadays be called Kristallweizen, but this was 1965, before PGI and PDO, around the time when French winemakers only started complaining about the misuse of what they thought exclusively described sparkling wine from the Champagne region.

Hofbräuhaus only started participating at Oktoberfest in 1955. Ten years later, they served two beers: helles Festbier and Wies’n Märzen.

Löwenbräu served two beers in 1961: Wies’n Märzen and Export hell. They also have a bold warning text on their menu that if your Maß was under-poured, you’re kindly asked to have it properly filled up to the line. I’m not sure that would have been exactly popular with the waitresses.

Ochsen Braterei in 1965 unfortunately only had the logos of two brands on their menu, Paulaner and Thomasbräu, but in reality both of them were brewed by the same brewery. So maybe they had beers of both brands? I can’t say for sure.

Winzerer Fähndl, also known as the Paulaner-Thomasbräu-Festhalle, made this a bit clearer: they at least mention concrete beers next to both brands’ logos, namely Paulaner Märzen and Thomasbräu Hell-Urtyp.

And that’s it. Far from all the breweries or tents at Oktoberfest at the time, but we still see a general trend: a lot of them served more than just one beer, quite often both a Märzen and a Helles Export or Festbier. In the case of Hippodrom, wheat beer was also served. All very different from Oktoberfest nowadays.

History

The Scandal of Oktoberfest’s First Giant Tent

March 26, 2026 ak 1 Comment

As I showed in my previous blog post, Oktoberfest didn’t feature massive tents, only moderate stalls. From the 1888 Bayerische Gastwirths-Zeitung we learn that the maximum measurements that year were 4.4m height, 7.3m width and 10m length. Compared to nowadays, very small in size.

This changed in 1898, when Georg Lang managed to establish the very first Riesenhalle at Oktoberfest, to the displeasure of the other traditional Oktoberfest restaurateurs. Interestingly, the 1898 issues of the Bayerische Gastwirths-Zeitung give a lot of insight into how the whole scandal unfolded in detail, and what the fallout of it was.

Like every year, the Oktoberfest stalls were all auctioned off by the city of Munich, on 10th August 1898 at 3pm at Circus Bavaria (page 256).

On 14th August, the auction winners were published in Gastwirths-Zeitung (page 264). 3 stalls went to Löwenbräu, 1 to Zacherlbräu, 2 to Augustiner, 2 to Pschorrbräu, 2 to Spatenbräu, 1 to Dreher, 2 to Hackerbräu, 1 to Salvatorbrauerei, 1 to Eberlbräu, 1 to Thomasbräu, 1 to Kochelbräu, 2 to Bürgerliches Bräuhaus, 1 to Unionsbräu, and 5 to Münchner Kindl Brauerei.

On 28th August, Gastwirths-Zeitung reported (page 282) that 5 restaurateurs had applied for a permit to combine their stalls into a single large tent, to be able to serve the same beer together, Münchner Kindl. This request was denied.

On 4th September, it was reported (page 288) that the 5 petitioners from the week before had submitted a complaint that they’d have financial damages if they had to run the 5 stalls themselves instead of combining them into a single tent. They claimed that administrative counsellor (Verwaltungsrat) Nagler had promised them that the magistrate would grant a permit for combining their stalls, and that it was the reason why they even took part in the auction in the first place. They were nevertheless willing to compromise by combining their 5 stalls into 2 large stalls that are separated by a wide passageway. Counsellor Nagler denied any kind of promise and said that he had only mentioned that it depended on the magistrate’s decision.

At the same time, Nagler found it strange that the other restaurateurs did not want to bid on the stalls that had gone to Münchner Kindl Brauerei, but now that there were rumours that the 5 restaurateurs were just strawmen of the brewery and that the whole operation should be handed off to someone entirely else, they suddenly started complaining. Counsellor Heindl in the meanwhile pointed out that the change to 2 large stalls on the site of the 5 stalls was against the rules of the auction. Nagler also insisted that if he had known that a “stranger”, Georg Lang from Nuremberg, would get involved, he would have entirely been against it from the beginning, especially since the rules of the auction stated that only someone with a local licence to trade could successfully bid on a stall, and Lang did not have such a licence.

Counsellor Hübler interjected and asked why Dreher then had gotten a stall. Nagler replied that Dreher at least owned a beer hall in Munich, and that it was not the brewery, but rather the tenant restaurateur at Dreher’s beer hall who would operate the Dreher stall at Oktoberfest.

In the end, it was decided that the 5 restaurateurs got the permit for 2 large stalls, with only one vote against it by counsellor Heindl.

In the same issue (page 290), it was announced that Georg Lang, restaurateur of “zum Krokodil” in Nuremberg would “visit” the Oktoberfest together with his house band, and that he would take over managing the stalls that were provided by “a local brewery”.

On 25th September (pages 314, 316) it was announced both as an ad and in a dedicated article that Georg Lang would officially operate a Riesenhalle, a giant hall with enough space for 6,000 guests, served by a total of 120 personnel, and entertained by his 30 musician house band. A total of 50,000 song books were printed and handed out for free to the guests. The ad even reveals that the giant tent span over the spaces of the stalls 22, 23, 24, 25 and 26, exactly the 5 that had been won by strawmen of Münchner Kindl Brauerei.

Half-page ad for Georg Lang's "first Bavarian giant hall" at Oktoberfest 1898, advertising the tent size, free concerts, the free song books, and food and drink: Nuremberg sausages, grilled chicken, traditional cuisine, accompanied by "specially brewed Märzenbier" from Münchner Kindl brewery. The ad also contains the names of two strawmen, Andreas Hub (stall 24) and Franz Kleber (stall 25). — Half-page ad for Georg Lang’s “first Bavarian giant hall” at Oktoberfest 1898, advertising the tent size, free concerts, the free song books, and food and drink: Nuremberg sausages, grilled chicken, traditional cuisine, accompanied by “specially brewed Märzenbier” from Münchner Kindl brewery. The ad also contains the names of two strawmen, Andreas Hub (stall 24) and Franz Kleber (stall 25).

A few weeks after the Oktoberfest, on 23rd October, the Wiesn restaurateurs formed a commission consisting of 3 of their peers, namely Ludwig Blößl (no. 10, Augustiner), Josef Fendt (no. 17, Unionsbräu) and Alois Wohlmuth (no. 19, Pschorrbräu), accompanied by a lawyer, to pursue the case they thought they had against the city (page 346). The plan was to initially try to find a way to settle with the city magistrate of Munich, but if that didn’t bring an acceptable result, they planned to sue for damages of an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 Mark (for comparison: the city’s total earnings from auctioning off all stalls were 37,500 Mark in 1898).

This was not very successful: the restaurateurs indeed went to court and sued for damages of 15,690 Mark, which was rejected on 24th April 1899. The Wiesn restaurateurs appealed, but also in appellate court in December that year, their appeal was rejected and they had to bear all court costs.

In the end, the big tents were here to stay, and they changed the Oktoberfest to what it is nowadays. But at the time, the whole thing was a big scandal for the Munich restaurateurs, while the Münchner seemed to have liked it.

By 1900, Lang was fully accepted in Munich: that year, the Oktoberfest restaurateurs founded their own association of Wiesn restaurateurs, and unanimously elected Georg Lang to be their first chairman. Counsellor Nagler was made honorary president, while the illustrious Steyrer Hans became secretary.

Georg Lang died on 4th October 1904, just 38 years old, from bowel cancer.