Monthly Archives: February 2025

The Session

The Session: The Best Beer I Can Drink At Home Right Now

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I unfortunately missed very first relaunched Session last month as I was away on holidays. But this month, it’s hosted by Boak & Bailey, with the prompt of what’s the best beer you can drink at home right now.

Let me just say that I’m in an extremely privileged situation.

One, I live in Berlin, Germany, and I can get quality beer for a rather low price in the local supermarket, literally 2 minutes away from my flat. The selection is not super varied, i.e. mostly German industrial pale lagers, but for some choice, we have Spätis, small shops that are open late and sell beer, among other things, and often a greater variety (and at almost any time of the day) than at supermarkets.

Two, I’ve been home-brewing for over 10 years now, with a focus on lager beers in recent years, and I now am experienced enough to brew beer that I consistently like to drink even with a heightened sense of self-criticism (and self-doubt!), and I usually brew the beer styles that I cannot easily get or that interest me from a technical perspective.

Three, I have a beer fridge which I use for storing bottled beer as well as for fermentation and lagering of my home-brewed beer. So I always have a stash of a variety of beers at home.

That said, these are the best beers I can drink at home right now that I chose for each of the categories of privilege:

Supermarket/Späti beers

  • The number 1: Augustiner Lagerbier Hell. I mean… it’s Augustiner. Some people may find its slight sulphur note a bit divisive, but it’s a Berlin staple for a very good reason, in a place that previously was dominated by German Pils for decades.
  • The contender: Tegernseer Hell. People who like Helles but aren’t as much of a fan of Augustiner usually like Tegernseer a lot. Personally, I sometimes prefer Augustiner over Tegernseer, sometimes the other way around. Either way, both are great beers. Usually, it’s easier to find Tegernseer Hell in Spätis than in supermarkets.
  • The wildcard: Wicküler Pils. I consider this beer to be the better Jever. As dry and bitter as bottled Jever, but with a smoother bitterness, and significantly cheaper, too. Former neighbours of ours used to do an annual beer blind taste test among their friends. Wicküler Pils consistently came out as the best by far. That’s how I learned about the beer, and I’ve been a convert ever since.

Home-brewed beers

Just to be clear, since the question is “best beers you can drink at home right now”, I’m not listing my best home-brewed beers I ever brewed, but literally what I have in my fridge at the time of writing.

  • The number 1: the 2024 batch of my Czech Dark Lager. It is just sooo good. I wrote about this in late 2022, and even though the 2024 is slightly different, it’s just as good as previous years.
  • The contender: my 2024 Kellerbier experiment. Not the freshest anymore, and only very few bottles left, but since the bottles were always refrigerated, it kept well.
  • The wildcard: random bottles of Barley Wine that I brewed 5 to 10 years ago and kept in a crate my work room. They’re oxidised, but last time I tried one of them, it was oxidised in a good way, with lots of dried fruit and sherry notes.

Beers from the beer fridge

This is all the weird and wonderful stuff that I keep in my beer fridge. What I have in there was definitely in there at the time of writing.

  • The number 1: Krug-Bräu Lager. A insanely drinkable dark lager from Breitenlesau in Franconia. Only a few places in Berlin sell this beer (I got mine from the Ambrosetti beer shop), but when I stop there, I will usually bring one of those back home, and that’s what’s currently in the fridge.
  • The contender: Thornbridge Nouveau, brewed in collaboration with BRŁO brewery, a DDH Session IPA. Funnily enough, this was a free sample handed to me at the booth of Totally Naturally Solutions at BrauBeviale last year, as two of their products (hop extracts) were used in brewing that beer (hashtag not an ad). I’m usually not someone who often drinks pale ales or IPAs, but this one was pretty amazing when I had the first of two cans they gave to us.
  • The wildcard: Goldfinger Danube Swabian. When Tom Beckmann, who brewed a historic Vienna Lager with malt made by Sugar Creek Malt using some of the historic descriptions of the malting process from my book, handed me a four-pack of that beer last year, I drank three of them and thoroughly enjoyed them, but I just can’t bring myself to have the fourth and last one.
History

19th Century Brewing in Württemberg

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In my research yesterday about beer production statistics in Southern Germany, I came across a curious bit of information, namely that an incredibly large number of top-fermenting breweries operated in Württemberg in the late 19th century, but they on average produced only relatively small amounts of beer.

I then dug a bit further and noticed that statistics for Württemberg made a distinction between “commercial breweries” (using the German term “gewerbsmäßig”, referring to an operation done in order to generate income) and “private breweries” (“Privatbrauereien” in German).

Normally, “private breweries” at the time referred simply to privately owned breweries, as opposed to publicly owned breweries (of which people own shares) or communal breweries (owned e.g. by the citizens of one particular town or city by virtue of their citizenship). But in this case, the private breweries were strangely juxtaposed with commercial ones… so, were private breweries non-commercial?

Turns out, yes: in parliamentary records of the local parliament of Württemberg from 1853, I found a description of what constituted private brewing: it was the non-commercial brewing by Upper Swabian farmers, where it was customary for all farmers who owned larger farms to also own a brewing kettle in order to brew beer for their own use, which included the house drink for the farm workers (the records’ context is a discussion about taxation of malt and how it disadvantages brewing farmers as opposed to those who make wine or cider; the German text uses the word “Obstmost”, presumably referring to any fermented alcoholic beverage made from fruit).

An 1871 article about the brewing history of Württemberg gives more insight: Württemberg has traditionally been more of a wine and cider country. Brewing really only started in 1630 in Stuttgart, but was again banned in 1663 in favour of wine growing. Only two breweries with a brewing monopoly (and owned by the sovereign) were allowed to brew and sell beer. This monopoly was only disbanded on 17 March 1798, and in the years after, private breweries were formed, but only with the territorial gains between 1803 and 1810, new regions were added to Württemberg in which beer brewing was already common (the areas of Württemberg before that time are called Altwürttemberg, lit. Old Württemberg, the newly added parts Neuwürttemberg, lit. New Württemberg). In the following years, beer production increased without the wine or cider production or consumption going down in any way.

A map of the Kingdom of Württemberg after 1815
A map of the Kingdom of Württemberg after 1815

In fact, by 1874, Württemberg was the German state with the second-highest annual beer production per capita at 154.3 liters, only surpassed by Bavaria with 240.6 liters.

In later parliamentary records from 1890/1891 (again discussing taxation of malt resp. beer), the beer brewed by farmers as house drink is specifically referred to as top-fermented or white beer, which sounds like private brewers were mostly brewing top-fermented beers.

This is also reflected in the Württemberg brewery statistics for 1896/1897. For that year, 1805 commercial and 4,385 private breweries were recorded. Top-fermented beer was brewed by 336 commercial breweries and 4,383 private breweries, while bottom-fermented beer was brewed by 1,767 commercial and just 4 private breweries. Interestingly, these numbers don’t quite add up, which means that some breweries, both commercial and (probably two) private ones, brewed both top- and bottom-fermented beer.

But private breweries weren’t to last: while there were still 5,252 of them operating in 1890/1891, the number fell down to 2,137 in 1909/1910. The number was not consistently going down, though, but rather up and down with an overall downwards trend especially noticeable from about 1904/1905.

A graph with the number of private breweries in Württemberg between 1890/1891 and 1909/1910.
The number of private breweries in Württemberg between 1890/1891 and 1909/1910.

Unfortunately, 1909/1910 is the last fiscal year for which I’ve been able to find separate numbers of private breweries.

In roughly the same time period, white beer production also fell massively, from 110,168 hl in 1890/1891, down to just 15,524 hl in 1913/1914.

Graph of the amount of white beer brewed in Württemberg between 1889/1890 and 1913/1914
The amount of white beer brewed in Württemberg between 1889/1890 and 1913/1914

So, to summarise, private breweries were non-commercial breweries operated by farmers in the beer region of Württemberg to brew beer to be consumed in their own household and by their farm workers. The vast majority of that beer was top-fermented. Private breweries were only permitted from 1798 when the beer brewing monopoly of Württemberg was abolished, but only grew in the years after land was redistributed between German states. So while Württemberg had farmhouse brewing in the 19th century, it was not a tradition per se in Old Württemberg, where the common fermented alcoholic beverages were wine and cider, and only gained foothold during the 19th century. None of the sources that I found mentioned whether this farmhouse brewing already existed in the territories that later comprised New Württemberg before they were made part of Württemberg.

History

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

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I previously wrote about top- vs bottom-fermenting breweries in Germany (in particular the Northern German Brewing Tax Association), and then specifically about Prussia, Germany’s biggest state at the time, as the individual provinces were very different in how widespread bottom-fermenting breweries were.

What was still missing was the South of Germany. While I still don’t have full statistics, I at least have some numbers: full numbers of top- and bottom-fermenting breweries and respective production volumes for Bavaria and Württemberg, for Alsace-Lorraine we only have the number of breweries.

Please note that the statistics are for different time period: Bavaria’s numbers are for all of 1889, while Württemberg’s and Alsace-Lorraine’s numbers are for the fiscal year 1889/1890, i.e. 1 April 1889 until 31 March 1890. For Alsace-Lorraine we only know the total production volume (797,807 hl) not split up by top- vs bottom-fermenting, while for Baden we only have the total number of brewing vessels (1,918), their combined volume (17,198 hl), and the total production volume (1,630,976 hl), but nothing divided by top- vs bottom-fermenting.

Also, the data on Bavaria distinguishes between “brown beer brewery” and “white beer brewery”, but brown beer was equivalent with bottom fermentation, while white beer was equivalent with top fermentation.

BreweriesProduction Volume [hl]
StateTFBFTFBF
Bavaria 1,6215,260212,22814,062,842
Württemberg4,8702,31590,2873,328,793
Alsace-Lorraine8150n/an/a

What is very noticeable how small the top-fermenting breweries must have been: while the average bottom-fermenting Bavarian brewery would have brewed 2,673 hl, the average top-fermenting Bavarian only brewed 130 hl per year. So while there was a large number of breweries, most of them probably only brewed at slightly more than home-brew scale, probably only just serving their super local community, or the niche of white beer drinkers within it.

Even more extreme is Württemberg, where the average top-fermenting brewery only produced 18.5 hl per year, even an order of magnitude smaller than the average Bavarian brewery. That’s just 35.5 liters per week, probably only just enough for what a single pub or inn was selling in that time period. And don’t forget that these are averages, so there were likely breweries that brewed even less.

Now I wonder even more about top-fermented beer in Württemberg. Like, was it a cottage industry of small brew pubs or inns of de-facto homebrewers serving small niches of white beer drinkers? Was this something originally rooted in a farmhouse brewing culture we don’t know about yet? The statistics tell us nothing about whether any of that top-fermented beer in Württemberg was even sold or whether it was brewed for home consumption. 35.5 liters would be just enough to serve the weekly consumption of a farm, that’s about 5 Maß of beer per day.

I think there’s a lot more research that needs to be done about top-fermented beer in Württemberg in the late 19th century.

History

Anton Dreher Jr.’s 1878 Patent on Pasteurisation

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I recently came across a patent (Reichsprivileg, lit. Imperial Privilege, as they were called at the time) about a conservation method that had been granted to Anton Dreher Jr. which he had submitted in August 1878.

As the patent submission was entirely handwritten in Kurrent, the predominant cursive handwriting in Austria at the time, I had great troubles reading it (despite having learned the basics in elementary school, 31 or 32 years ago, for like a day, just for fun), but sending it through Transkribus with a special Kurrent model yielded great results that required only very little correction.

Reading the patent itself was actually quite interesting: it specifically acknowledges “the famous French chemist” Pasteur’s work on pasteurisation of beer and wine to improve their shelf life and transport stability for export into tropical countries. One limitation they still had was it required sturdy packaging, which at the time were either well-sealed stoneware or extra thick glass bottles, in which the beer had to be pasteurised. Otherwise, all the carbon dioxide would escape, or even worse, the packaging would not withstand the internal pressure.

With all the carbon dioxide removed, the beer would only be an “unpalatable alcoholic extract”, the Imperial Privilege says. The disadvantage of the required sturdy bottles was that they were very heavy, which greatly increased the freight costs.

Dreher’s approach was the following: the beer was packaged into any vessel that could be tightly sealed, such as glass bottles, stoneware bottles, or casks. The packaged beer was then put into a larger vessel that could withstand internal pressures of up to 10 atmospheres (roughly 10 bar, or 147 psi), the vessel was filled with water and sealed up. The water was then heated either through direct firing or steam to the degree it should be heated.

Through thermometers and pressure gauges, the temperature and internal pressure could be determined and based on that, the required counterpressure in the sealed vessel could be applied and adjusted.

Once the required temperature has been reached, cooling is started by applying cold water. As the internal pressure is lowered, the counterpressure equally needs to be lowered, until everything has cooled down to regular atmospheric temperatures.

The specific novelty of this approach, according to the Imperial Privilege, is that it allowed pasteurisation of beer for export in any vessel instead of just sturdy bottles.

The header of the submitted Imperial Privilege, literally saying “description”, with a crossed-out 1877 revenue stamp with a face value of 15 Kreuzer, and Emperor Franz Josef’s face on it.

You can find the original letters in the digital archive of Imperial Privileges of the Austrian Patent Office, while this is the transcription of the German text:

Der berühmte Französische Chemiker Pasteur hat zuerst darauf hingewiesen, dass gegohrene Getränke, als: Wein und Bier eine grössere Haltbarkeit und Transportfähigkeit in tropische Länder erlangen, wenn dieselben bis zur Siedhitze erwärmt und darauf wieder abgekühlt werden. Die Erfahrung hat die Zweckmäßigkeit dieses Verfahrens bestätigt und es ist der früher unmögliche oder wenigstens höchst riskante Transport solcher Getränke in tropische Länder wesentlich erleichtert worden.

Die Erwärmung des Bieres ist nun mit Schwierigkeiten verbunden, weil die Kohlensäure, bekanntlich ein Hauptbestandtheil des Bieres, bei dem Erwärmen entweicht und nur ein ungeniessbarer alkoholhaltiger Extract übrig bleibt. Um nun die Kohlensäure auch in dem erwärmten Biere zu conserviren, müsste man bisher zu dem Erwärmen Gefäße wählen, welche das Entweichen derselben verhindern. Dazu eigneten sich nur Glas- oder Steingutflaschen, welche um dem Drucke der Kohlensäure und Ausdehnung der durch Erwärmung ausgedehnten Flüchtigkeit zu widerstehen, sehr dickwandig sein müssen.

Dadurch würde aber sowohl die Waare als deren Fracht empfindlich vertheuert.

Es ist mir nun gelungen ein Verfahren zu entdecken, wodurch die Erwärmung des Bieres bei vollkommener Konservirung seiner Kohlensäure in jeder Art dicht verschließbarer Gefässe ermöglicht wird.

Bei dieser Methode wird dem in der Umhüllung befindlichen Biere und seinem durch die Temperatur bedingten Drucke ein Gegendruck entgegengesetzt welcher jenem das Gleichgewicht hält oder ihn noch um etwas überschreitet.

Dadurch wird das Entweichen der Kohlensäure verhindert und der Zweck, das Bier mit seinem ganzen Kohlensäure-Vorrath zum Versandt zu bringen, vollkommen erreicht.

In ein Gefäß, das einen Druck von 3, 4 bis 10 Atmosphären auszuhalten im Stande ist, werden eine beliebige Anzahl Flaschen, Steingutkrüge, Fässer etc gebracht, das Gefäß mit Wasser gefüllt und dann dicht abgeschlossen.

Hierauf wird dus eingefüllte Wasser bis zu dem gewünschten Temperatursgrade entweder mittels direkten Feuers oder durch Dampf erwärmet.

Mit der Erwärmung des die Bierbehältnisse umgebenden Wassers steigert sich natürlich die Wärme des Bieres selbst und damit auch dessen Druck.

Durch Thermometer und Manometer lässt sich seine Temperatur und sein Druck genau constatiren und der nothwendige Gegendruck darnach entsprechend reguliren.

Der Gegendruck wird durch eine einfache Wasserdruckpumpe erzielt.

Ist die Temperatur des Bieres bis zum gewünschten Wärmegrade gestiegen, so wird mit der Abkühlung durch kaltes Wasser begonnen und hauptsächlich daraufgesehen, dass die Abnahme des inneren Druckes mit dem äußeren Gegendrucke gleichen Schritt hält, bis das Bier zur gewöhnlichen atmosphärischen Temperatur abgekühlt ist.

Die Neuheit der eben beschriebenen Entdeckung besteht demnach darin, dass Bier in jeder Art verschliesbarer Gefäße unter Anwendung äußeren Druckes zum Transporte in tropische Länder und zum Transporte überhaupt fähig gemacht werden kann, während früher nur Bier in Flaschen zu diesem Zwecke präparirt werden konnte.

Wien, am 20 August 1878.