I now found concrete data about how much Steinbier was brewed in the last few years of this style’s existence. Fairly detailed data from 1904 to 1917 (with the exception of 1907-1908) about the production volumes of Carinthian breweries were published in trade journals at the time.
The last three remaining breweries were Ure and Kaschitz, both located in Waidmannsdorf, nowadays part of the Carinthian capital Klagenfurt, and Schorn, from Untergoritschitzen near Klagenfurt.
Production volumes of breweries Ure, Kaschitz and Schorn, 1903-1906, 1906-1917
As you can clearly see in the numbers, before Steinbier brewing ended, it was on an almost steady decline over the course of 13 years. For 1917, the records say that production at Ure and Schorn was shut down, while Kaschitz had produced a mere 52 hectoliters.
Of these breweries, all brewed Steinbier with an original gravity of 6°, with the exception of Wedenig, who brewed a 4° Steinbier.
This low original gravity of Steinbier also seems to show (although not explicitly stated, so this is slight speculation) in the 1889/1890 brewing season beer volume statistics of Austria-Hungary by original gravity: 6° beer was the lowest OG listed, with a production volume of 2,587 hl (which is roughly in the ball park what all the Steinbier breweries together used to brew in a year), and that number is significantly higher than the next stronger beers: of 7° beer, just 49 hl, and of 8° beer, just 102 hl.
In any case, the production volumes are tiny, the numbers are going down, all clear signs of a declining “industry” that was really closer to homebrewing, serving what was probably a tiny market of aging consumers. Despite the fact that brewing stopped because of a lack of ingredients during World War 1, the tiny volumes were probably a big contributor to not resuming brewing after the war.
In 1893, Austrian brewing scientist Franz Schwackhöfer visited the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, recorded everything related to brewing, and subsequently published a book about it in 1894 titled “Amerikanische Brau-Industrie auf der Weltausstellung in Chicago” (lit. “American brewing industry at the World Exhibition in Chicago”).
It contains a lot of details about American brewing, but what caught my eye are the descriptions of five different mashing methods that were used in the US and were personally witnessed and recorded by Franz Schwackhöfer himself. In this article, I want to describe and dissect one of them (pp.33-34).
Basic Numbers
The recipe is to brew 130 barrels of wort with an OG of 13.1°Balling. The grist consists of 4,300 lb malt and 2,300 lb of unmalted grains (the recipe just mentions grits, but in the parts of the book, grits specifically from white Flint corn are mentioned).
Cereal Mash
800 lb of crushed malt are mash in with 35 barrels of water at a temperature of 25°C, then heated up to 50°C. 2,300 lb of grits are then added and the mash is heated up to 66°C. After a rest of 15 minutes, the mash is heated up to 75°C over the course of 20 minutes. It is then diluted with 6 barrels of thin mash from the main mash (this is meant to help saccharify more of the starches and make the mash more liquid), and then brought to a boil. The whole mash is boiled for 60 minutes under constant stirring.
Mashing, Lautering, Sparging
3,500 lb of crushed malt are mashed in with 27 barrels of water of 37.5°C and stirred for 40 minutes. Then over the course of 15 minutes, the cereal mash is slowly mixed in. This should increase the mash temperature to about 67.5 to 68.75°C, at which temperature it is rested for 30 minutes. To get to the final temperature of about 73°C, 23 barrels of boiling water are underlet (through a Pfaff) and mixed in. Stirring then stops and the mash is rested for 90 minutes, that’s when lautering begins.
The specific gravity of the first runnings is 19.2°Balling. Sparging happens in four different steps, first with 10 barrels, then 35 barrels, then 25 and finally 24 barrels to hot water of about 77 to 81°C. The specific gravity of the final runnings should be 2.5°Balling.
Boiling the Wort
When 25 barrels of wort have been collected in the kettle, heating begins. At 70 barrels, the wort should start boiling and 15 lb of hops are added. When the kettle is full, the boil of 2 hours begins. 30 minutes before the end of the boil, 35 lb of hops are added, and at 10 minutes before the end of the boil, another 55 lb of hops are added. The total hop addition is 105 lb per 130 barrels of wort, which is equivalent to 3.15 grams per liter. For the final hop addition, more high quality hops are used. Together with the final hop addition, 4 lb of Icelandic moss is added to help with precipitation of proteins (I think this should actually be Irish moss as this is frequently used for exactly that in brewing).
125 barrels of wort end up in the hop jack, where it is left to sit for 40 minutes so that the hops can settle out. The hop remains are then sparged with 5 barrels of boiling water.
Allegedly, some breweries add fir pitch to the kettle at a rate of 3-4 lb per 100 barrels of wort to impart a pitch flavour to the beer, as the lagering vessels are not pitched but only lacquered.
At Home-Brew Scale
If you want to rebrew this at home-brew scale to produce about 20 liters of beer, do the cereal mash with 650g of crushed malt, 1850g of grits and 5.9 liters of water. For the main mash, use 2850g of crushed malt and 4.6 liters of water to mash in. For the final temperature step, use 3.9 liters of boiling water. Sparge with a total of 16 liters of water, though you may require a bit more sparge water, so prepare more.
The hop additions should be 10g hops at 120 minutes, 23g at 30 minutes, and 37g hosp together with 2.5g of Irish moss at 10 minutes. Assuming Cluster hops at 7% alpha acid, this should end up with a nice 32 IBU (calculated) of bitterness. Unfortunately, the whole book does not mention specific varieties of hops, only for another recipe, it mentions that exclusively hops from New York state were being used.
In any case, I think there is enough information available to recreate this specific 1890s mashing method from the US. Not that I’ve tried it, but it certainly sounds intriguing, and the resulting beer (13.1°P OG, about 32 IBU of bitterness, and an estimated 5.4% ABV) actually sounds quite nice.
The (then) new brewhouse of Anheuser-Busch in St. Louis, as shown in Franz Schwackhöfer’s book
While researching a different topic, I recently came across an article in the Austro-Hungarian Café and Inn Newspaper (it really rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it?) that I hadn’t seen before. It basically contains general information about the size and the operation of both the breweries belonging to Anton Dreher (in particular Kleinschwechat, Steinbruch, Michelob and Trieste) and the Burghers’ Brewery in Pilsen (since 1898 and nowadays better known as Pilsner Urquell). It’s full of numbers, but because they’re from the same time period, they allow for some interesting comparisons about the extent of the businesses.
In terms of production, the largest brewery was of course Dreher Kleinschwechat, with about 610,000 hl for the brewing season 1892/1893. Pilsen on the other hand brewed 522,270 hl in the same time period. Dreher’s Hungary-based brewery in Steinbruch brewed another 400,000 hl, while for the other two Dreher breweries, no volumes are listed. It shows to what a large operation the Pilsner brewery had grown, while Dreher’s advantage was having multiple large breweries across Austria-Hungary that were all serving different markets.
As for the malting and brewing operation itself, there were some stark differences: Kleinschwechat had about 23,000 m2 in malting floors as well as 14 kilns, Steinbruch had 10,788 m2 with 7 kilns, while Trieste only operated a single kiln. Practically, most of its malt was actually produced in Kleinschwechat and shipped down to Trieste. The malting capacity of Michelob was not listed. Pilsen did well with “just” 9,000 m2 of malting floor and 10 kilns.
When it came to brewing itself, Kleinschwechat featured 3 coppers for boiling wort, 4 mash tuns, 4 coppers (mash kettles) for boiling mash, and 4 lauter tuns. The wort was cooled on a total of 29 copper coolships of a total surface area of 2,500 m2.
Steinbruch operated 8 coppers (presumably smaller ones than in Kleinschwechat) and 11 coolships of 698 m2.
Pilsen on the other hand had 5 separate brew houses: the original one with 1 copper and 1 mash tun (since no dedicated mash kettles or lauter tuns were listed, I assume the copper was used for boiling decoctions and the mash tun also functioned as lauter tun), one built in 1852 with 1 copper and 1 mash tun, then the third brew house built in 1862 and extended twice in 1872 and 1874, with a total of 6 coppers and 6 mash tuns, and then two more brew houses, built in 1888 and 1894, with 2 coppers and 2 mash tuns each. That’s a total of 12 coppers and 12 mash tuns. Cooling operations were supported by 22 iron coolships.
In the fermentation cellar, Kleinschwechat had 2,000 fermenters with a total capacity of 40,000 hl, Steinbruch 1,200 fermenters with 30,000 hl capacity, and Trieste just 210 fermenters of an average size of 30 hl, adding up to 6,300 hl. Pilsen operated 2,000 fermenters, but no volume is listed.
One thing though where Pilsen absolutely excelled the Dreher breweries was the number of beer wagons: while Kleinschwechat owned and operated 60 of them, and Steinbruch 20, Pilsen had much more capacity for export with a whopping 132 beer wagons. With the improved train connectivity of Pilsen since the 1860s (the article specifically cites the 1862 opening of the Bohemian Western Railway that connected Pilsen to Prague by train), it could ship its beer all over Europe and beyond.
Technical drawing of the Ringhoffer beer wagon design
The construction was double boarded, and the space between the boards was filled with a poor heat conductor as insulation material. It contained 2 ice reservoirs for up to 1,100 kg of ice that could hold the inside at a constant 4°C for 5 and half days. Melted water and condensation was drained at the bottom, using a bend to ensure that no outside air could get into the sealed wagon. That way, any freight could rest on a completely dry floor. The remaining space was sufficient to transport 25 casks of 200 liters each, i.e. each wagon could hold up to 50 hl of beer at a time. This was only slightly less than the ice wagons used by Dreher, which had a capacity of 54 hl and could keep its load cool at 4°C for up to 7 days.
In terms of refrigeration at the respective breweries, all of them used Linde refrigerators. Linde had actually been contracted to develop an artificial refrigeration machine for Dreher’s Trieste brewery, and while development was done by Linde at Spaten brewery in Munich, the first Linde refrigerator was officially sold to Dreher in Trieste. In 1894, the Trieste brewery was operating two of them, while Kleinschwechat had 8 Linde refrigerators “Nr. VI” (presumably a newer model), and Steinbruch operated 6 of them. According to the article, Pilsen only operated a single Linde refrigerator, but it’s unclear which specific model.
Interestingly, the refrigeration machine the brewery in Pilsen was using had been built under license from Linde by E. Škoda, the Pilsen-based mechnical engineering company, probably best known through the Škoda car brand and the Škoda trams in Prague.
A map of Burghers’ Brewery Pilsen’s distribution centers across Europe, ca. 1894. Not pictured: Sarajevo, Belgrade
The article also lists all the distribution centers in Austria-Hungary, Germany and the rest of Europe plus one importer in New York City, which I turned into a map to get a better feeling about how widespread their beer was.
In addition to all these statistics I listed above, we also learn more details about the Burghers’ Brewery Pilsen. As you’re probably aware, the brewery was founded by the citizens of Pilsen with brewing rights in 1839. The article specifically says that it was 250 houses with brewing rights, and their duty was to elect a new administrative committee every 3 years.
We also get more insight into the beer types that were brewed at the time: as was still usual at the time, two types were produced, an 11% Schankbier (the percentage refers to the original gravity, not the ABV) that still needed 2-3 weeks of lagering before it was tapped and was brewed and sold only during the winter, and a 12% Lagerbier that was entirely free from yeast (due to the long lagering) and only sold during the summer season.
The article also discusses the modest beginnings of the brewery itself: the first brew only had a volume of 64 Eimer (3621 liter), and the total volume of the first brewing season was a mere 3657 hl. In 1843, Pilsen had a population of 8,892, that’s just a bit more than 41 liters per capita. Could it be that the amount of beer produced by the Burghers’ Brewery was initially not nearly enough to cover the demand of consumers?
In any case, the business grew so well over the years that Burghers’ Brewery Pilsen grew to a size similar to Dreher’s Kleinschwechat brewery. While the production volume was still smaller in 1894, it seems like the Pilsen brewery was prepared much better for export across Europe. By 1912, Pilsner Urquell produced almost 1 million hl of beer per year and was considered to be Austria’s largest brewery, while Dreher Kleinschwechat was “only” producing 594,865 hl in 1912 and about 621,398 hl in 1913.
If you want to learn more about Vienna Lager and the history of Dreher’s breweries in Kleinschwechat and elsewhere, you can find more about the topic in my book Vienna Lager.
