If you’ve already read my latest book Bavarian White Beer, you will come across the section about how Bavarian white beer originally made it into Upper Palatinate and Lower Bavaria from Bohemia where white beer had already been popular before.
One of the most interesting sources about early Bohemian white beer is Tadeáš Hájek’s (Thaddaeus Hagecius in Latin) book De cervisia eiusque conficiendi ratione, natura, viribus, & facultatibus, opusculum, which translates to “About beer and its preparation methods, nature, powers and capabilities, a small work”. It was first published in 1585 and describes beer brewing with a focus on white beer production (even involving wheat). You can find an English translation of this book here.
Hájek’s description is interesting because he puts white beer (brewed with wheat) as consumed in Bohemia (and his description really seems to be based on Prague, as that’s where he was based, and his mother was married twice to Prague brewers) into a broader context. In particular, he mentions that this beer type was not only consumed in Bohemia, but also in Poland and certain cities in Germany. While this is interesting by itself because it recognises the similarities of various local white beer types or even a certain wider spread of one beer type, it gets even more interesting when it comes to the ingredients.
Hájek describes the malt not as purely air-dried, but rather as very lightly kilned over a low fire from beechwood and/or oak, which left behind a “somewhat spicy or smoky” taste, but also removed unpleasant smells from the steeping process.
In 19th century Bavarian brewing literature, air-dried malt was considered to be ideal, but for practical purposes, Bavarian white beer brewers had to kiln some of the white malt, and often using smoke kilns (smoke-free kilns only gained widespread adoption in Bavaria in the first half of the 19th century). We know this because some of the earliest white beer had kilns. So at least some of the white beer in Bavaria was slightly smoky, even if the air-drying step beforehand would have minimised the smoke flavour.
What piqued my interest though is the combination of these two facts: a slightly smoky wheat malt, used in a beer spread across Bavaria, Bohemia and Poland. Does that ring a bell?
It is of course pure speculation, but could there be a relationship between Bavarian white beer and Grodziskie, a Polish smoky wheat beer style?
What both beers have in common is the use of wheat: some historic sources suggest that Bavarian white beer brewers tended to use 100% wheat malt grists and were even legally obliged to do so in some instances, while Grodziskie is also typically brewed from 100% oak-smoked wheat malt.
Where both beers differ is the yeast, and also the hopping: for Bavarian white beer, the yeast character of banana esters and clove-like phenolic notes is an important part of the style itself, while the yeast character of Piwo Grodziskie is much cleaner and non-phenolic, and also significantly more bitter than its Bavarian counterpart.
By the early 17th century, there was an active guild of maltsters (which also admitted brewers) in Grodzisk, so brewers must have been active there for even longer than that before they even formed a guild. Around that time, two beer types were brewed in the city, a strong dark beer named “Kuc” as well as a weaker pale beer, both from wheat malt only (source). So a white beer similar to modern Piwo Grodziskie was most likely already brewed back then.
So are they both related? We don’t know, but Hájek making the connection between three local white beers is certainly interesting. It may simply be an expression of a local beer fashion at the time, spanning from Lower Bavaria and Bohemia all the way to Poland, similar to how sour white beers like Broyhan, Gose and Berliner Weisse could be found all over Northern Germany from the 16th to the 19th century.
If you want to learn more about Bavarian white beer like Hefeweizen, including its general history and old malting and brewing techniques, you can read more about it in my new book Bavarian White Beer.