Earlier this week, I did a bit of research in the VLB/GGB library, and by chance came across analyses of Oktoberfest-Märzen in the 1950s, in particular the beers served at Oktoberfest in 1953, 1954 and 1956.
I. Bartek of Wissenschaftliche Station in Munich conducted these analyses and published them in Brauwelt. They analysed 8 different Märzen beers from the Oktoberfest for colour, specific gravity, alcohol content and unfermented sugars, and derived residual extract, attenuation and potential terminal gravity from it. None of the actual breweries are revealed, they are only numbers 1 to 8. When you look at the raw data, the numbers 1-8 of 1953 and 1954 match up (i.e. it’s the same brewery), but it’s not clear whether the same order was kept up for 1956. Interestingly, the 1954 article says that the beers were from 8 Munich breweries. I was wondering which breweries these were, and could only come up with 7 (Augustiner, Paulaner-Thomasbräu, Hacker, Hofbräuhaus, Pschorr, Löwenbräu, Spaten-Franziskaner-Leistbräu). A report about 1954 Oktoberfest only talks about 7 large tents of the big breweries without naming any specific ones. Did one of them serve more than one beers? Augustiner maybe? Their Wiesn-Edelstoff, the archetypal pale Festbier as we know it nowadays, was only released in 1953, but it’s not clear whether Augustiner continued selling the old-school Märzen beside it. I don’t know.
When looking at the data, a few things stand out: in 1953, two of the beers had an OG of only 13.3 resp 13.5%. While technically a Märzen, it would nowadays not be allowed as Oktoberfestbier, as those need to have an OG between 13.6 and 14.0%. The attenuation was lower than what we’re used to, and this also shows in the alcohol content, which is between 4.6% ABV (converted from ABW) and 5.6%.
In particular beer #1 combines a fairly high OG (13.8%) with a relatively poor apparent attenuation of 63.9% and lots of unfermented but fermentable sugars. That beer was probably very sweet.
Similarly, 1954’s beer #5 has an even higher amount of unfermented sugars with an OG of 13.5% and 5% ABV. Probably also rather sweet. There is also another outlier in the same year, beer #6, with over 75% apparent attenuation. With 5.5% ABV, it was probably still quite malty, but otherwise quite highly attenuated and thus not nearly as sweet-tasting as any of the others.
The same beer was also by far the darkest, with a colour (according to the Brand scale) of 3.0 to 3.5. As a very rough approximation, this would be similar to about 50 to 58 EBC, while most other beers are recorded as 1.2-1.4 °Brand (=20-23 EBC), 1.4-1.6 °Brand (23-27 EBC), 1.6-2.0 °Brand (23-33 EBC) or 2.0-2.5 °Brand (33-42 EBC). Compare this with the BJCP guideline for Märzen, which sets the colour at 8-17 SRM (15.8-33.5 EBC), or the Brewers Association’s style guidelines at 8 to 30 EBC.
Please note that these colours are only rough approximations, as the Brand scale and similar systems were problematic and unreliable. This article explains it all in detail (shoutout to Thomas Ascher for the pointer!).
By 1956, the beers seem to have changed a bit: the OG is now generally at 13.6% or over (all but one are actually in the 13.8-14.0% range), while attenuation is higher: just one beer with 69% apparent attenuation, the rest all 70+%, one even at 78.8%. This also shows in the alcohol content: one beer (the poorly attenuated one) has 5.0% ABV, while the others are all between 5.4 and 5.8% ABV.
For 1956, we also got measurements of pH and carbonation. All but two beers actually had a pH over 4.5, which means microbiologically less stability than the recommended pH of less than 4.5. This is not ideal, but for a beer festival with a large throughput, it was probably not that big of an issue.
The carbonation of the Oktoberfest-Märzen beers is also interesting, between 3.5 g/l and 4 g/l. Compared to modern lager beers, this is pretty low, and closer to the expected carbonation of cask ale or rustic “ungespundet” (unbunged) lager beers in Franconia.
Finally, one observation: as late as 1954, you could drink Oktoberfest-Märzen in Munich which, at least when looking at original gravity and final gravity, and thus alcohol content, was very similar to the Märzen that was served in Vienna in 1876. Only the colour was darker. In that sense, these old-school Oktoberfest beers seem like the remnants of 19th century lager brewing, a proper look into the past. And by 1956, they seem to have been slightly cleaned up to reduce some of the sweetness and further increase the alcohol content.
If you’re interested in all the details, here’s the raw data for 1953 (Brauwelt No. 84, 19 Oct 1954, p.1266):
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | |
| Colour (Brand) | 1.6-2.0 | 1.6-2.0 | 1.6-2.0 | 1.2-1.4 | 1.4-1.6 | 1.6-2.0 | 2.0-2.5 | 1.6-2.0 |
| SG | 1.01968 | 1.01660 | 1.01453 | 1.01517 | 1.01362 | 1.01347 | 1.01747 | 1.01541 |
| Apparnet extract [%] | 5.0 | 4.2 | 3.7 | 3.8 | 3.5 | 3.4 | 4.5 | 3.9 |
| Real extract [%] | 6.7 | 6.1 | 5.6 | 5.8 | 5.5 | 5.3 | 6.2 | 5.8 |
| Alcohol by weight [%] | 3.7 | 4.1 | 4.1 | 4.1 | 4.5 | 4.1 | 3.8 | 4.1 |
| OG [%] | 13.8 | 13.9 | 13.6 | 13.5 | 14.0 | 13.3 | 13.6 | 13.6 |
| Apparent attenuation [%] | 63.9 | 69.6 | 72.4 | 71.4 | 75.2 | 74.1 | 67.3 | 71.1 |
| Real attenuation [%] | 51.3 | 56.0 | 58.3 | 57.5 | 60.7 | 59.6 | 54.2 | 57.3 |
| Final apparent attenuation [%] | 70.7 | 73.5 | 75.0 | 75.0 | 82.6 | 75.9 | 80.8 | 74.2 |
| Still fermentable extract [%] | 6.8 | 3.9 | 2.6 | 3.6 | 7.4 | 1.8 | 13.5 | 3.1 |
Raw data for 1954 (Brauwelt, 19 Oct 1954, p.1266):
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | |
| Colour (Brand) | 1.6-2.0 | 1.4-1.6 | 1.6-2.0 | 1.6-2.0 | 1.4-1.6 | 3.0-3.5 | 2.0-2.5 | 1.4-1.6 |
| SG | 1.01622 | 1.01719 | 1.01603 | 1.01603 | 1.01617 | 1.011324 | 1.01581 | 1.01646 |
| Apparnet extract [%] | 4.1 | 4.4 | 4.1 | 4.1 | 4.2 | 3.4 | 4.0 | 4.2 |
| Real extract [%] | 6.0 | 6.2 | 6.0 | 6.0 | 6.0 | 5.4 | 5.9 | 6.0 |
| Alcohol by weight [%] | 4.0 | 4.1 | 4.2 | 4.1 | 4.0 | 4.4 | 4.1 | 4.1 |
| OG [%] | 13.6 | 14.0 | 13.9 | 13.8 | 13.5 | 13.8 | 13.8 | 13.8 |
| Apparent attenuation [%] | 69.6 | 68.6 | 70.7 | 70.2 | 69.1 | 75.5 | 70.7 | 69.7 |
| Real attenuation [%] | 56.1 | 55.7 | 57.3 | 56.6 | 56.1 | 61.1 | 57.3 | 56.5 |
| Final apparent attenuation [%] | 73.4 | 75.7 | 72.5 | 73.0 | 81.0 | 78.4 | 78.2 | 78.1 |
| Still fermentable extract [%] | 3.8 | 7.1 | 1.8 | 2.8 | 11.9 | 2.9 | 7.5 | 8.4 |
Raw data for 1956 (Brauwelt, 5 Oct 1956, p.1428):
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | |
| Colour (Brand) | 0.9-1.0 | 2.0-2.5 | 2.0-2.5 | 2.0-2.5 | 2.0-2.5 | 2.5-3.0ß | 2.5-3.0 | 2.0-2.5 |
| SG | 1.01278 | 1.01490 | 1.01476 | 1.01390 | 1.01150 | 1.01287 | 1.01430 | 1.01661 |
| Apparent extract [%] | 3.3 | 3.8 | 3.8 | 3.6 | 3.9 | 3.3 | 3.7 | 4.2 |
| Real extract [%] | 5.3 | 5.7 | 5.8 | 5.5 | 5.0 | 5.3 | 5.6 | 6.1 |
| Alcohol by weight [%] | 4.5 | 4.3 | 4.3 | 4.2 | 4.6 | 4.5 | 4.3 | 4.0 |
| OG [%] | 13.8 | 13.9 | 14.0 | 13.6 | 13.9 | 14.0 | 13.8 | 13.8 |
| Apparent ttenuation [%] | 76.5 | 72.6 | 73.1 | 73.8 | 78.8 | 76.5 | 73.5 | 69.4 |
| Real attenuation [%] | 61.7 | 58.7 | 58.8 | 59.8 | 63.7 | 61.9 | 59.3 | 56.1 |
| Final apparent attenuation [%] | 80.6 | 75.6 | 78.0 | 76.9 | 79.5 | 78.3 | 76.9 | 77.0 |
| Still fermentable extract [%] | 4.1 | 3.0 | 4.9 | 3.1 | 0.7 | 1.8 | 3.4 | 7.6 |
| pH | 4.52 | 4.56 | 4.66 | 4.52 | 4.63 | 4.15 | 4.44 | 4.57 |
| CO2 [mg/kg] | 3880 | 4100 | 4090 | 3650 | 3610 | – | 3540 | 4030 |