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.

Steyrer Hans, ca. 1895 (source; licensed under CC-BY-ND 4.0)

Postcard showing Georg Lang's tent, ca. 1900 — A postcard depicting Georg Lang’s Oktoberfest tent, ca. 1900 (source; licensed under CC0)

Cover of the song book handed out for free in his tent in 1898 (source; licensed under CC0)

History

Beers at Oktoberfest 1895 and 1896

March 22, 2026 ak 1 Comment

I’ve previously written about beer at Oktoberfest, like which breweries’ beers were served in 1843, or about various breweries and beers between 1882 and 1936 that we know of from Oktoberfest programmes and newspapers.

The whole question interests me for a particular reason: it shows that the current restrictions on beer at Oktoberfest, namely that it can only be from one of the “traditional” breweries from Munich whose beer conforms to the Oktoberfestbier PGI regulations, which requires them to have a well going several hundred metres deep down, are not rooted in the festival’s own history. It is essentially a form of regulatory capture to make it exclusive to Munich’s big 6 beer brands that has been successfully defended in court before. German online magazine Legal Tribune Online has criticised the restrictions of market access as a “cartel” in the past, and how the city of Munich may possibly be violating antitrust laws with the current practice.

The reality is that beer used to be much more diverse in the 19th and early 20th century than it is nowadays. But if you want to experience a traditional Volksfest with 20+ different beers available, you need to go to e.g. Forchheim for Annafest, because Oktoberfest is not that place anymore.

The two years 1895 and 1896 are in my opinion particularly interesting because there were quite a few really unusual und (at least from our modern perspective) unexpected breweries present in Munich:

There was of course the Dreher brewery from Kleinschwechat, the original inventors of Vienna Lager, who were first able to serve their beer at the Wiesn’n in 1895. The same year was also the very first time a dedicated Weißbier stall was allowed, the rights for which were won in an auction by restaurateur Fritz Reiss, who then served wheat beer by G. Schneider & Sohn. And then there were specialities like Thomasbräu serving their Pilsner in addition to the regular Märzenbier.

An ad for the "Waizenbierbude" (wheat beer stall) in 1895. — An ad for the “Waizenbierbude” (wheat beer stall) in 1895. (Source)

As I’m still working on my upcoming book, I got a bit sidetracked today while researching a few details to tie up some loose ends, and came across a lot more detailed list about all the beer stalls at the Oktoberfest 1895 and 1896, and it shows how great the variety in beer and breweries was back then. So here’s the list of all breweries that were served at the beer stalls 1 to 26:

Franziskaner Leistbräu
Zacherlbräu
Gambrinusbrauerei
Löwenbräu
Pschorrbräu
Löwenbräu
Münchner Kindl
Spaten
Dreher, Kleinschwechat near Vienna
Bergbräu (Henninger), Munich-Giesing
Münchner Kindl
Salvator-Brauerei
Kochelbräu
Thomasbräu
Hacker
Bürgerbräu
Augustiner
Thomasbräu
Pschorrbräu
Pschorrbräu
Pschorrbräu
Pschorrbräu
Pschorrbräu
Pschorrbräu
Pschorrbräu
Pschorrbräu

In addition to that, there was also the wheat beer stall that was unnumbered and actually a bit away from the other beer stalls, that served G. Schneider & Sohn.

And yes, that’s a lot of Pschorrbräu stalls! The source with all beers as well as a list of all the restaurateurs and how much they paid at the auction can be found in the Bayerische Gastwirths-Zeitung issue dated 25 August 1895. At the time, the beer of some stalls was not known yet (such as stall no. 3 and 9), and for no. 25 the beer changed later. We know this from ads for these particular stalls that were published in the official Oktoberfest programme.

We even have a plan that shows the layout how all the stalls were laid out on Theresienwiese:

Map with the locations of all the stalls at Oktoberfest 1895, including all beer stalls, cheese stands, sausage stands, toilets and urinals. (Source)

These stalls at the time were nothing like the modern massive beer tents. You can get a good idea what these beer stalls were like from this 1897 postcard of the Dreher beer stall:

1897 postcard showing the Dreher beer stall at Oktoberfest. It shows a waitress in black and yellow uniform carrying beers, a dray with beer casks, the beer stall itself with a beer geraden behind it, Oktoberfest visitors, and other tents in the background. The beers advertised were Märzenbier and Wiener Kaiserbock (Source)

In 1896, the choice in beers slightly changed compared to the previous year:

3. Kochelbräu
4. Bürgerliches Bräuhaus Budweis (yes, Bohemian beer at Oktoberfest!)
10. Augustiner
11. Hackerbräu
16. Pschorrbräu
17. Spatenbräu
19. Kulmbacher Export
20. Augustiner
21. Hackerbräu
22. Unionsbräu
24. Klosterbräu
25. Hackerbräu
26. Bürgerbräu
27. Pschorrbräu

(Source)

Interestingly, the wheat beer stall is not listed or mentioned anywhere, but still appears on the map of stalls in 1896 opposite the Schützenwirth, next to the shooting range.

At least in the years 1895 and 1896, it was not unusual to have “foreign” beer from outside Munich served at Oktoberfest, like Vienna Lager/Märzen from Dreher, pale lager beer from Budweis, or Franconian lager from Kulmbacher Export brewery.

Technique

Lautering a 100% Wheat Malt Mash

February 21, 2026 ak 10 Comments

I’m currently in the process of writing my next book (which is the main reason why I haven’t posted anything in the last few months), and as part of that, I was brewing a few trial batches. Most recently, I was brewing a historic recipe that involved 100% pale wheat malt.

The problem with such a mash is that wheat has no husks, unlike barley. These husks help loosen up the mash during lautering and sparging, when the liquid portion, the wort, is separated from the solid portion of the mash. In some way, barley malt is “self-filtering”, but alas, wheat malt isn’t.

And yet historic brewing literature mentions some beers that were brewed from 100% wheat malt. The most prominent one that is still around is Piwo Grodziskie, brewed from 100% oak-smoked wheat malt. So how did brewers do it back in the day?

One way was to use a special lauter tun that allowed brewers from lauter “from the top”. The lauter tun basically had a vertical row of taps installed on the side, so depending how much of the liquid had been drained, the topmost tap could be opened, then the one underneath, etc., so that all wort could be drained without the mash compacting to prevent the drainage of the remaining wort.

Another way was to use a lautering aid that loosens up the mash enough to prevent a “stuck sparge”. Nowadays, some brewers use rice hulls (I’ve seen this in a commercial brewery where rice hulls were added to the lauter tun for a wheat beer recipe with 80% wheat malt), and that works quite well. But historically, another popular aid was straw and you find the occasional references to it in historic literature. So that’s what I tried.

I followed the mash protocol as described in the historic recipe. On the side, I took wheat straw (you can buy fairly clean straw in pet stores, just don’t buy hay) and soaked it in hot water. I then drained the water, and soaked it again. I repeated these steps a few times and then rinsed off the straw until the water ran off completely clear.

In my lauter tun (really just a bucket with a false bottom) I added some straw on top of the false bottom. When it came to moving the mash from the mash tun to the lauter tun, I layered mash and more straw repeatedly, and then started lautering. And… it worked without any problems whatsoever. I was able to lauter at my regular run-off speed, it didn’t get stuck once, and I had no efficiency issues. On the contrary, I even ended up 0.2°P higher than expected on my wort’s OG at the very end of the process.

Straw in the lauter tun (a plastic bucket with a tap) on top of the false bottom, before any mash was added. — Straw in the lauter tun, before any mash was added.

While I wouldn’t do this with every mash, it’s certainly worth a try for a historic 100% wheat malt mash. Just make sure to soak and rinse the straw really well, as you don’t want any straw flavour in your beer (unless that’s what you’re specifically going for).

Also, if you want to guess what my next book will be about, leave a comment with what you think the topic will be, and I will give the correct guesses an honourable mention once I reveal/pre-announce the book in the next few weeks or months.

History

An Analysis of Bamberg Schenkbier from January 1843

October 19, 2025 ak Leave a comment

Sometimes, the best historic finds are the ones that happen by pure coincidence. While researching a different topic (related to my next book that I’m currently working on), I came across a very basic analysis of various Bamberg Schenkbiere from January 1843. The same article also lists beers from other places (Würzburg, Kitzing, Schweinfurt on the next page), but I’m focusing on Bamberg in this post.

Schenkbier was a type of beer in Bavaria that was brewed during the brewing season which went from Michaelmas (29 September) until St. George’s Day (23 April). During this time, two main beer types were brewed, one was Sommerbier or Lagerbier, which was fermented and then stored underground in a cool environment to be served from next May, and Schenkbier or Winterbier, which was usually weaker (less malt, less hops) and only matured briefly as it was meant to be consumed during the brewing season after last season’s Lagerbier had run out and before the next season’s Lagerbier became available.

The analysis only contains 3 data points for each brewery: alcohol content by weight, real residual extract by weight, and carbon dioxide content by weight. But this is sufficient to infer more:

Brewery	ABW [%]	Real residual extract [%]	CO2 [%]
Großkopf	3.9	4.445	0.300
Eichhorn	3.8	5.250	0.300
Blümlein	3.7	3.778	0.320
Weißes Roß	3.6	5.412	0.300
Weißes Bräuhaus	3.0	5.556	0.360
Fäßchen	2.8	4.572	0.300
Heller	2.3	7.065	0.300
Mohrenpeter	2.1	4.779	0.230
Polobär	1.1	4.532	0.262
Average	2.92	5.043	0.298

Let’s first talk about carbonation: 0.3% CO2 are equivalent to 3 g/l or 1.5 volumes. This is absolutely within the expected carbonation level of beer at the time, and very much in line with “unbunged” beer (i.e. the beer is only carbonated through CO2 that naturally goes into solution at normal pressure and cool cellar temperature, with no extra pressure, e.g. through a bung in the maturation cask, applied). See also my blog post about German sparklers where I talk a bit more about historic analyses of the carbonation levels of bunged and unbunged beers.

One question that is not directly answered by the data is, what were the original gravities of these beers? How strong were they, besides the alcohol content? Fortunately, we can use an equation known as the “great Balling formula” that puts the original gravity (in °P), the final gravity (expressed in real residual extract as % of the beer’s total weight) and the alcohol content (in % alcohol by weight) into relationship:

OG [°P] = 100 * (2.0665 * ABW [%] + FG [%]) / (1.0665 * ABW [%] + 100)

Using this equation, and assuming the analytical results were precise enough to be usable, we can calculate the respective original gravities for each of the beers. I also converted the alcohol content to alcohol by volume, the more common unit of alcohol content these days:

Brewery	ABV [%]	OG [%]
Großkopf	4.90	12.00
Eichhorn	4.78	12.59
Blümlein	4.65	10.99
Weißes Roß	4.52	12.37
Weißes Bräuhaus	3.77	11.39
Fäßchen	3.52	10.05
Heller	2.89	11.53
Mohrenpeter	2.64	8.91
Polobär	1.38	6.72

What’s surprising is how different the beers were in terms of original gravity and attenuation. OGs between 11 and 12.6 °P are absolutely solid, and while some of these beers didn’t have nearly as much alcohol as modern lager beers, they’d still be alright to drink, although probably on sweeter side for modern tastes. Especially the beer from Heller stands out, with a respectable 11.5 °P but only 2.9% ABV and a very high residual extract. Doing the calculation, the real attenuation was less than 40%, so this beer must have been a sweet mess. Compare this with modern lager beer, with real attenuation around 65%.

The two breweries that stand out (and not in a good way) are Mohrenpeter and Polobär, both lower in alcohol and OG. Especially Polobär is really bad, with just 1.38% ABV and real attenuation of less than 33%. Not enough alcohol to even get tipsy, while the beer was probably quite sweet, too.

If you want to know where any of these breweries were located, take a look at my map of historic Bamberg breweries. I previously blogged about my effort of reconstructing the locations of Bamberg breweries based on historic sources and maps.

Of all the breweries listed in the analysis, only two are still around: Fäßchen, better known as Fässla these days, and Heller, best known for its Schlenkerla brand and brewery restaurant in the centre of the Bamberg old town.

Sign hewn into stone outside Fässla brewery, saying "inn and brewery zum Fäßchen, owner Seb[astian] Kalb" — Sign hewn into stone outside Fässla brewery, saying “inn and brewery zum Fäßchen, owner Seb[astian] Kalb”

The historic brewery sign of Großkopf still exists, and is very easy to spot if you’re outside Fässla or Spezial, as it was only a few doors down the road.

The former Großkopf brewery building, with the brewery sign (a big head, which is what "Großkopf" literally means), in Bamberg on Obere Königstraße — The former Großkopf brewery building, with the brewery sign (a big head, which is what “Großkopf” literally means), in Bamberg on Obere Königstraße

Polobär, or Polarbär as it was more commonly spelled, was what I like to call the fourth Bamberg smoked beer brewery. When the brewery ended production around WW2, only 3 others were left: Greifenklau (which gave up making their own smoked malt in the 1970s), Spezial and Schlenkerla. The Polarbär entrance is still around, while the building itself is now used by a Spanish restaurant.

Weißes Bräuhaus (also called “zum Weißbierbrauer”) and Blümlein were neighbours of Polarbär. Weißes Roß probably refers to Zum Rößlein, just a few doors down from Großkopf. I’m also not sure about Eichhorn, as none of my records list a brewery of that name in Bamberg. It may be a spelling mistake and refer to either Einhorn im Sand (on Sandgasse, recently revived as Ahörnla, the pronunciation of Einhorn [unicorn] in the local dialect) or Einhorn im Steinweg, located opposite of Großkopf.

Edit: I’m apparently too stupid to properly read. Zum Eichhorn was located on Lange Straße.

Mohrenpeter was historically the eastern-most brewery on Steinweg (modern-day Obere Königstraße), quite a bit away from Spezial, Fässla and Großkopf.

The historic brewery sign of Einhorn im Sand, a white unicorn.

Beer Styles

Oktoberfest Beer at Oktoberfest: Does the Difference Even Matter?

October 3, 2025 ak 1 Comment

Working for a Munich-based startup (though in my case, remotely from Berlin) comes with a few perks. One, travelling to Munich a few times a year for work, two, going to Oktoberfest with my work colleagues because that’s apparently what any respectable Munich company is meant to do.

2025 has been my third Oktoberfest in a row now, each year in a different tent serving a different beer brand, in particular Marstall Zelt (Spaten), Augustiner Festhalle (Augustiner) and Schützen-Festzelt (Löwenbräu). While I don’t have a comprehensive overview over all the beer brands, 3 different beers are still half of them.

A Maß of Spaten Oktoberfestbier at Marstall Festzelt, 2023

Last year, in the weeks before Oktoberfest, I actually attended a guided Oktoberfest beer tasting, where I was able to try out all six beers (Augustiner, Spaten, Löwenbräu, Paulaner, Hacker-Pschorr, Hofbräuhaus) side by side. In previous years, I did similar taste tests together with my wife Louise and my friend Ben. In these tastings, there were always stark differences, and they weren’t always identical. Two years ago for example, I thought Löwenbräu was fairly good, and ranked it third on my list, while last year, it tasted really bad and I ranked it last. So let’s just say, I have opinions.

Every time I went to Oktoberfest, I had certain expectations about the beer quality, not just connected to my personal prejudice (let’s face it, everyone is somewhat prejudiced about major beer brands) and brand perception, but also informed by previous tastings. But every time, these expectations were shattered.

Spaten at Marstall? Excellent. Cool, fresh, not underpoured, and tasting great.

Augustiner at Augustiner Festhalle? Exactly as I expected and knew it.

Most recently, Löwenbräu at Schützen-Festzelt? Whoa. Fresh, dry, crisp, entirely unlike what I had experienced in previous years.

A partially drunk Maß of beer at the Augustiner-Festzelt, 2024

When I came home after Oktoberfest, I actually went back into our beer fridge and tried a can of Löwenbräu Oktoberfestbier. And… it was not the same. It was solid, but nowhere near as good as just a few days before. And it tasted quite different from the Paulaner Oktoberfestbier (also from can) that I had afterwards, and also quite different from the bottled Oktoberfestbier I had had just a few days before.

But thinking back about all the Oktoberfestbier at Oktoberfest over the years, I don’t think I have would been able to distinguish them at all, unlike the ones at the beer tastings. The difference being of course that in all the taste tests, the beers under test were always from bottle or can, while at Oktoberfest, it’s always poured from tap, either as tank beer (for most brands) or from large 200 litre wooden casks (Augustiner only), the taps barely ever close, and the beer is properly cold (which probably doesn’t exactly help with tasting finer details in the beer).

So does the difference in beer at Oktoberfest even matter? To me, it doesn’t seem to, because I honestly don’t think I could taste the difference between Spaten, Löwenbräu and Augustiner. Is the preference of draught Oktoberfest beer at the festival itself just brand loyalty, and has nothing to do with the actual taste? To me, it seems like that at the moment, and it’s not just because people (including me) just get hammered and then nothing else matters. In fact, I never actually got drunk at any of my Oktoberfest visits because I like to pace myself by also drinking Radler and/or alcohol-free beer.

A Maß of Löwenbräu Oktoberfestbier at Schützen-Festzelt, 2025

And the latter is what actually matters in brand differentiation: at Marstall in 2023, they only had Radler as low-alcohol beery option, at Augustiner last year, they had their then new alcohol-free Helles on draught (which is otherwise only available in bottles, even in Augustiner restaurants and beer halls in Munich, so they must have been really sure about shifting a lot without developing microbiological issues in the draught system) which was excellent, and this year, the Schützen-Festzelt only had Löwenbräu’s alcohol-free beer which was a sugary, worty mess that I couldn’t even finish.

So at least for me, while the Oktoberfestbier brand doesn’t seem to matter, it does matter if you want to drink something other than the regular Festbier and explore some of the other options, like the non-alcoholic beers for pacing purposes.

History, Yeast

J.C. Jacobsen’s letter about pure yeast to Gabriel Sedlmayr

September 10, 2025 ak 1 Comment

There is another letter from 1884 I came across in the J.C. Jacobsen archive of the Carlsberg Foundation, in which J.C. Jacobsen proudly tells Gabriel Sedlmayr of Spaten about his new pure yeast. I found it fantastic from a historic point of view because it gives insight into the circumstances, the background and what they thought was important about this new method of generating pure yeast. If you can read German, please directly read the original source, otherwise this is what J.C. Jacobsen had to say about this yeast:

J.C. Jacobsen called Gabriel Sedlmayr his “old master teacher” and thus should be the first one to learn about his new experiences in the deterioration of yeast.

Jacobsen brought his first bottom-fermenting yeast from Sedlmayr’s brewery (i.e. Spaten) to Denmark in 1845 and had used it since then without ever having to change it, all while producing excellent lager beer for the domestic market as well as export beer for export to India.

Only in last two years (i.e. since 1882) the brewery started having quality problems and their pitching yeast started getting contaminated by “wild cells”. So of course Jacobsen asked the question why he could keep the same yeast from 1845 until 1882, only for it to deteriorate since then? Nothing has changed in the brewhouse and the cellars, they are cleaner than ever, wort is always chilled rapidly and even the air is cleaned with a spray of ice cold salt water that filters it the point where it’s analytically clean. Even the malt is of fine quality.

The only change was that due to an unexpectedly high demand and insufficient capacity, he had to resort to brewing during more months of the week: until 1874, Carlsberg only brewed in 7 to 8 months “the old Bavarian fashion”, and until 1882, brewing was still limited to at most 9 months, from early October until late June. But from 1882 onwards, this had to be expanded to 12 months as the lagering cellars that were to be built weren’t finished yet.

And exactly these 3 more brewing months were the problem: in the gardens and fields in the wide vicinity of Carlsberg, lots of fruits were ripening during that time, in particular cherries, plums, pears and grapes, which came with a higher amount of fermenting microorganisms, some of them bacteria, others wild yeasts like Saccharomyces Pastorianius (sic!). These led to increased infections on the coolships, in particular since wild yeasts like S. pastorianus kept growing together with the other yeast.

The last few sentences are particularly interesting, as Jacobsen seems to use the “Saccharomyces Pastorianus” name to describe wild yeasts, not bottom-fermenting yeasts which would be the modern use of the name. Later in the letter, he uses “Saccharomyces cerevisiae” to describe the regular yeast at his brewery. This is something I’ve not came across, but seems to indicate how little the specific nature of bottom-fermenting yeast was understood at the time before single yeast cells were isolated and analysed.

Jacobsen then continues by explaining Hansen’s method of isolating single cells in Pasteur flasks (swan-necked flasks), and how Hansen had isolated one pure Saccharomyces cerevisiae as well as two wild yeasts, which, when propagated and used for fermentation, all produced very different-tasting beers.

The pure S. cerevisiae was then used as pitching yeast in the brewery and effected a “nice fermentation” that quickly clarified, with a suitable attenuation from 13.5% to 6-7% Balling and quickly clarification and the maturation casks. Jacobsen then proudly proclaimed that “from now on all the fermentation in my whole brewery will be done with this pure yeast, created from a single cell! Truly a triumph of scientific research!”

He also pointed out that because of these observations, he thought that the yeast in all breweries is somewhat infected with “more or less wild” yeasts, as at the time most breweries were brewing during the summer months, and even regular yeast changing brings no improvement to that.

Jacobsen also notes that “in the old days”, when no brewery in Bavaria would brew during the summer, changing yeast was also a rare occurrence. If breweries wanted to continue brewing during the summer, then at least a few breweries or research stations like Weihenstephan or Dr. Aubry in Munich should occasionally isolate Saccharomyces cerevisiae to create pure yeast.

He also announced to to Sedlmayr that he’d send him a sample of enough yeast for one fermenter as express freight so that he could get acquainted with it. Jacobsen hoped it would arrive in Munich in a good state, though he admitted he had no experience sending yeast on such a long journey, and would be happy to send him more of his surplus yeast in the future.

The yeast also came with information how it was used at Carlsberg: the yeast was pitched at 5°R (6.25°C). The temperature increased to 6.5 to 6.75°R (8.12-8.43°C), and then slowly subsided back to 4 to 5R° (5-6.25°C). A 13.5% Balling wort fermented down to an attenuation of 6-7% Balling within 10 to 11 days. Jacobsen also pointed out that Sedlmayr’s wort contained less maltose than his own, so Sedlmayr had to expect lower attenuation.

And finally, Jacobsen announced his travel plans (which he expected to be his last big journey): first he wanted to visit Johann Götz in “Oswiecim near Krakow” (he probably meant Okocim) and then travel from there to Vienna and Munich, and further on to West Germany and hopefully to Lyon and Marseille. He hoped to meet Sedlmayr in Munich, but if he didn’t meet him there, he’d try to catch him in his summer apartment to meet his “friend and master” once more.

I find this letter particularly fascinating for a few reason. First of all, it shows the great admiration Jacobsen had for Sedlmayr who considered to be his teacher from whom he learned about lager brewing and in particular about bottom-fermenting yeast, and how much he thought he owed Sedlmayr for his own success.

Second, it shows how durable repitching the same lager yeast was: as Jacobsen himself said, he never needed to change his brewery’s yeast, which he had gotten from Sedlmayr himself, in 37 years of brewery operation. He also knew that changing yeast, even though it was done, indeed used to be a relatively rare thing. That way, this new pure yeast was exactly the innovation the brewing industry needed, as more and more breweries were brewing beer all year long, and sooner or later other breweries also would have run into the problem of wild yeast contamination in their own pitching yeast. In retrospect, we now know how incredibly successful Hansen’s method of isolating single cells and growing pure pitching yeast really was, as the method was widely adopted by the brewing industry within just a few years.

Nowadays, only very few breweries repitch their house yeast without having purified it. Among lager breweries, all pitching yeast is grown from pure yeast strains, and having a choice in pure strains has become a commodity not just in the industry, but even for home-brewers.

And finally, we learn about the fermentation properties of the yeast itself, which is pretty close to what you’d expect from a bottom-fermenting yeast during the 19th century: relatively quick fermentation (just 10 days) at temperatures of at most 8°C, with a relatively poor apparent attenuation of 50-55%. At least in other beers of that time period, the attenuation only slowly improved during the lager period where the specific gravity dropped to 4 to 5°P and helped carbonate the beer. In my book about Vienna Lager, I put up the hypothesis that becuase of these properties, the lager yeasts at the time were most likely type 1 (“Saaz-type”) bottom-fermenting yeast strains, as they were better suited to the lower fermentation temperatures in fermentation and lagering cellars that could not be finely controlled yet.

J.C. Jacobsen’s letter to Gabriel Sedlmayr dated 7th May 1884 is a great example of what was new, innovative and exciting to brewers at the time that we now consider to be a given. It also shows how closely connected the European lager brewers were back then: Jacobsen and Sedlmayr communicating by mail, Jacobsen visiting Johann Götz and various people in Vienna, Munich and France, the recognition of Weihenstephan as an important beer research lab in Bavaria, etc. They were more than practitioners, but also innovators who were not afraid to share their findings with each other, all with the purpose of bringing the whole industry forward and lifting the overall quality of beer, but also improving efficiency within the industry.