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Food

The Holy Trinity of Cheesy Beer Snacks

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If you’ve ever had a few beers in a pub with friends, you’ve most likely come across the problem that these few beers stimulate the appetite, so usually, you’d want to have some sort of snack with them. In the UK, something like crisps, pickled eggs, pork scratchings or even a more substantial dish like a pork pie or a Scotch egg would be typical, but in Lagerland, there exist 3 regional snacks that are distinctly cheesy and also fairly popular, one of them maybe less so, but I think it deserves to be celebrated more than it currently is. In this article, I want to discuss what I consider to be the Holy Trinity of cheesy beer snacks.

Nakládaný hermelín

This Czech pub classic is an absolutely delight: slightly gooey soft cheese, marinated in a neutral oil together with thinly sliced onions and chili peppers and seasoned with garlic, paprika, optionally cayenne pepper, a few peppercorns and a bayleaf or so.

Hermelín is basically a Czech domestic version of camembert, just with a different name. The real joy of nakládaný hermelín is when it’s marinated and aged sufficiently in oil so that it’s soft and gooey but not too runny, with just a bit of aroma, and not too much of an ammonia note that ripe camembert eventually develops into, complemented by garlic and a hint of spice from the paprika powder and of course the sliced onions that were marinated with it.

When I make nakládaný hermelín at home, I don’t really follow a strict recipe, but what I do is this: I buy a few German-produced camemberts (because that’s what I have available, no actual hermelín in my local supermarket), slice up a few onions (sometimes white, sometimes red), and cut the camemberts in half horizontally. I then rub crushed garlic on the cut surface and then sprinkle some paprika powder and cayenne pepper on. I then reassemble the camembert wheel. Taking a jar, I first add a layer of onions on the bottom, then I put the camembert on top. If it doesn’t quite fit the jar, I cut it into quarters and put it in tightly. I then add more sliced onions and repeat the whole process. To finish it off, I add a few peppercorns and a few bayleafs, as well as a pickled chili pepper or two. I then top it up with a neutral oil (my personal preference is rapeseed oil) so that everything is covered, close the jar and put it in the fridge for a week or so to properly marinate the cheese.

This is a cheese best served with dark rye bread. Ideally, the cheese should be soft enough that it can be spread easily on its own. It’s cheesy, gooey and slightly spicy, and absolutely gorgeous with a few glasses of Czech lager.

I occasionally make this for myself, but I’m also in the fortunate situation that a local Prague-Spring-themed pub in Berlin serves their homemade ones, even with hermelín cheese they import themselves.

Two jars of home-made nakládaný hermelín maturing in my fridge.
Two jars of home-made nakládaný hermelín maturing in my fridge.

Obazda

This is an absolute classic in Bavaria. Originally invented to use up overripe camembert, it has developed into a standard Brotzeit dish in many beer gardens. It’s basically camembert mashed with butter and optionally other creamy cheeses, often with a shot of beer to thin it out a bit, and typically seasoned with paprika powder, finely chopped onions and caraway seeds.

The name isn’t exactly the most appetizing: it refers to how the ingredients have been turned into a mushy mass (“Batz”).

In the EU, Obzada resp. Obatzter (just a different spelling of the same term) is registered as a Protected Geographic Indication, meaning that commercially produced Obazda must be made in Bavaria. It also describes mandatory and optional ingredients, and minimum resp. maximum percentages of the individual ingredients. If you want to commercially produce and sell Obazda, this is the reference for you, but in a home-made version, no Obazda police will come and get you if you deviate a bit.

I do love my Obazda, but even though it seems like a very straightforward dish to make, there can be a massive difference in how intense it tastes. I’ve had fairly bland ones, but a beer garden known for its good beer (at least in my experience) usually also serves a very good Obazda.

If you want to make it yourself, there are some pretty good recipes available out there. According to legend, Obazda was invented in the 1920s by Katharina Eisenreich at the Weihenstephaner brewpub in Freising. Weihenstephaner brewery has a recipe for Obazda on their website which they claim is the original recipe. It’s described as being the right amount to serve 4 people, but in my experience, just making a quarter of the whole amount is perfectly sufficient for 2-3 people.

  • 250 g Brie (or Camembert)
  • 18 g butter
  • 38 g cream cheese
  • 30 g finely chopped onions
  • 4 g paprika powder (I prefer the hot variety, plus a pinch of cayenne)
  • a pinch of caraway seeds
  • a pinch of salt and pepper each
  • a bit of Weissbier

Mix cheese, butter, cream cheese, onions and beer into a coarse cream, ideally with a fork. Season with salt, pepper and caraway seeds. If necessary, add more beer to make it creamier. If you intend to put the Obazda in the fridge a few hours before serving, add even more beer because it will firm up. Serve with dark rye bread or soft pretzels.

In Franconia, essentially the same cheese concoction is known under a different name: “Gerupfter”, meaning “plucked one”, referring to how the cheese is getting ripped or “plucked” apart when mixing through the ingredients. Distinctly local variations of the recipe exist, and in my experience, the Franconian versions are always a bit more pungent. One such recipe is the one from Sternla, a historic pub/restaurant in Bamberg that restarted brewing beer only a few years ago. Besides camembert and cream cheese, it also uses Limburger, a particularly strong, smelly cheese that some describe as smelling like feet, but also cream to add creaminess. A shot of local Bamberg beer such a smoked beer mixed in adds to the local flair of the dish.

Here’s a video (in German) that shows the process of making the dish at Sternla:

I’ve made both the Weihenstephaner and the Sternla recipe, and both have their appeal. While the Weihenstephaner one may seem a bit blander compared to the Sternla Gerupfter, it can be made more intense by complementing the paprika powder with cayenne pepper. The Sternla recipe on the other hand gets its intensity mainly from the very pungent Limburger.

(not so fun fact: I like my cheese, but pure Limburger, even when served “with music”, i.e. marinated in vinegar and onions, is the only cheese that has ever given me an upset stomach)

Kochkäse

This one is especially close to my heart, because it’s the one I grew up with. In Upper Austria, Kochkäse (“Abkochter” in the local dialect, lit. “cooked-off one”) is really more associated with having it with Most, the local version of apple cider, or just generally with having bread, spreads and cold cuts as a meal.

In my family, Abkochter has a special place. It’s a cheese spread that my grandmother on my father’s side has always made whenever we visit her. It’s a slightly sticky cheese spread made from a ripened acid-set cheese, with a very distinct flavour that I wouldn’t exactly call pungent but definitely quite flavourful. If you haven’t tried it, it’s hard to describe.

My grandmother basically grew up with that cheese spread. She mentioned to me that when she was young, her mother would go to the local dairy and buy a special type of Topfen (a low fat acid-set cheese, similar to Quark in Germany) which she would then age at home in a warm environment (apparently a slightly smelly procedure). When the Topfen reached a glassy-looking consistency, she would then melt it down to a spread together with milk and butter, and season it with salt, pepper and caraway seeds (I suppose the irony of this cheese spread is that you take a low fat cheese and add back dairy fat).

Even as recently as 25-30 years ago, local supermarkets in my grandmother’s city sold that type of Topfen at the cheese counter, but according to my grandmother, she stopped aging it herself when my late grandfather started complaining about the intense smell in the kitchen. She then switched to Steirerkäs, a type of acid-set cheese that is basically like the aged version of Topfen. Other alternative cheeses you could use would be Olomoucké tvarůžky (aka Olomouc cheese, a Czech type of cheese relatively popular in Austria; my aunt on my mother’s side uses that when she makes that cheese spread) or Harzer Käse (which is what I use because it’s readily available in German supermarkets).

So here’s our family recipe, in my version:

  • 200 g Harzer Käse
  • 125 ml milk
  • 80 g butter

Melt down cheese, milk and butter until all the cheese has melted. Despite what the name suggests, do not bring this to a boil, but only heat it as long as necessary to melt everything down. Season with salt, pepper and caraway seeds to taste. Optionally, you stir in an egg at the end, but I found that to not make a difference to either colour, flavour or texture, so I just leave it out. Let the cheese cool down before spreading it on dark rye bread.

Home-made Kochkäse in a jar.
Home-made Kochkäse in a jar.

Besides it being a taste of my own childhood, what fascinates me about this cheese spread is how widespread (no pun intended) it is with nobody realising. The first time I came across it outside of Austria was in Upper Franconia of all places, at Knoblach brewery not far away from Bamberg. Even though their recipe tasted slightly differently from my family’s recipe, it was distinctly recognisable as Kochkäse. And they weren’t the only ones to sell it: Schuhmannskeller in Bischberg, just outside of Bamberg, also has it on their menu.

Then last year, I served the dish to an American friend of mine, and he was so amazed, he asked me for the recipe. He then made this recipe when his Polish mother visited him in Berlin. His mother remembered that her grandmother in Poland used to make a cheese like that, and it was the standard way of processing the milk that they had gotten from their own cows at the time.

That got us interested, and further research showed that the same or similar kind of cheese spread also exists in other places: in parts of Poland, it is known as Hauskyjza (which is not the name my friend’s mother knew it as); in Luxembourg, Kachkéis is the equivalent product, while in France, Cancoillotte is a very similar cheese spread that is popular in the regions of Franche-Comté and Lorraine. Kochkäse is also a thing in the German state of Hesse. The Hesse tourism website has a page about it, including a recipe that starts with aging Quark. I even found some evidence that a dish like that is also known in the Czech Republic. Meanwhile in Austria, there’s only one commercial producer of it, but it has struggled with insolvency in the past.

For a cheese preparation that can be found across such a wide area, from France and Luxembourg to parts of Germany and Austria all the way to Czechia and Poland, it is relatively unknown, even though it seems like a dish that only a few decades ago was probably a lot more common that it is nowadays. And most interestingly, several of these local traditions seem to think that they exist nowhere else. I’ve specifically heard this about the dish in Austria (“Kochkäse is a distinctly Upper Austrian thing and nowhere else to be found”), Luxembourg and Franconia. Is this a pan-european (processed) cheese tradition that has been mostly forgotten?

Summary

In any case, I think all three cheese dishes are absolutely delicious, fantastic snack foods in their own right, and perfectly paired with beer: nakládaný hermelín works especially well with Czech lagers, Obazda is wonderful beer garden food best enjoyed with a Helles, and Kochkäse is great with Franconian Kellerbier (or really any kind of beer, or just as part of Jause or Brotzeit). I’m a massive fan of each of them, hence why I call them Holy Trinity of cheesy beer snacks. If you like cheese as much as I do, you should definitely try them out. They’re all fairly easy to make at home. Even I can do it! (and I’m not a good cook)

Experiment

My Experience with Super F, a Vegan Alternative To Isinglass

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At BrauBeviale in Nuremberg last year, a massive fair of the brewing industry, I very naïvely asked about vegan alternatives to isinglass at the Murphy & Son stand (the main reason to go there was to drink cask ale and maybe score a free t-shirt), and was promptly given a sample of Super F, Murphy & Son’s fining product that can be used in cold tanks and casks just like isinglass, happens to be vegan (it’s silica-based), and according to one sales guy I spoke to a few weeks later in Krákow, is even compliant with the German purity law.

Cask ale served at the Murphy & Son stand. Besides Thornbridge The Union, other cask ales like Timothy Taylor's Landlord were also served.
Cask ale served at the Murphy & Son stand. Besides Thornbridge The Union, other cask ales like Timothy Taylor’s Landlord were also served.

It took a bit longer than originally planned to brew a beer where I could try this out. I eventually settled for a simple recipe for a Pale Mild of 8.5°P (1.034) original gravity:

  • 3.3 kg Mild Malt
  • 0.2 kg Simpsons CaraMalt

And simple hop additions which should end up at about 18 IBU:

  • 22g East Kent Golding (5.8% alpha acid) @ 60 min
  • 18g East Kent Golding (5.8% alpha acid) @ 5 min

Mashing was fairly straightforward: single step infusion mash, though I may have slightly overshot the target temperature, as on brew day, I didn’t feel the best and thus didn’t pay as close attention to the brewing process as usual, which later showed in the final gravity of 3.5°P (1.014). I pitched a sachet of Lallemand Windsor Yeast, which was pretty much finished fermenting rather quickly, within 4 days.

After fermentation, I put the beer in my beer fridge to chill it down to about 5°C. Super F comes with a guide how to use it, and most importantly, how to trial the right dosage for your beer. Having only brewed 22 litres, I unfortunately didn’t want to use up quite so much beer to find the right dosage, so I just eyeballed it and picked the middle of the recommended dosage of 75 to 175 ml/hl – 125 ml/hl, i.e. about 25 ml for my homebrew-sized batch. I measured it out, and added it straight to the cold beer.

Me holding the Super F packaging. On it, it says: VEGAN FRIENDLY. SUPER F BEER CLARIFICATION. 100% clearer beer, 5% reduced water & energy intensity. Super F from Murphy & Son is a silica-based liquid fining added to fermented beer in the cold tank, to greatly speed up the sedimentation of yeast and other haze-forming particles. Beer clarity is greatly improved, meaning it can be served fresher and faster. Our recently reformulated Super F fines your beer even faster, leaving your beer clear with a compact sediment. WWW.MURPHYANDSON.CO.UK
Me holding the Super F packaging.

Normally, the Super F should do its trick within just a few days, but life got in the way and we only managed to bottle the beer two weeks later (bottle-conditioned, of course), with another 13 days of refermentation (at the time of writing) in the bottle.

So just earlier, I poured the very first bottle. Just look for yourself:

A Nonik pint glass into which I poured the amber-coloured beer. Since the bottle is 500 ml, it's not quite full. The glass wasn't perfectly clean, so some nucleation points show. You can recognise a reverse "RS" in the back of the glass, which is from the branding of the glass, and gives an indication how clear the beer is.
A Nonik pint glass into which I poured the amber-coloured beer. Since the bottle is 500 ml, it’s not quite full. The glass wasn’t perfectly clean, so some nucleation points show. You can recognise a reverse “RS” in the back of the glass, which is from the branding of the glass, and gives an indication how clear the beer is.
Me holding up the glass after a few sips. It is pretty much clear.
Me holding up the glass after a few sips. It is pretty much clear.

The beer came out pretty much clear. It was a wonderful colour, which against the light makes it appear absolutely brilliant.

It also tastes really nice: with just a hint of hop aroma, it starts very light but then turns out to be quite full-bodied, with a lasting biscuity finish. Since this beer is bottle-conditioned, the carbonation is relatively light and very well integrated. Together with the clarity that is equal to isinglass-fined cask ales, this is probably the closest I’ve gotten to reproducing something like a cask ale at home where everything is right: the flavour (thanks to British malt and hops), the clarity (thanks to Super F), the carbonation. It drinks exactly like a cask ale, too.

All in all, I’m absolutely impressed. Clarity has always been something I’ve struggled a bit with my home-brewed beers (Irish moss only gets you so far), in particular with chill haze. The Super F was very easy to use and did exactly was the product description said. The provided instructions were clear and got me exactly the result that I wanted.

I sincerely hope that Murphy & Son will eventually make this available not just to commercial brewers, but also to home-brewers. The sample I got at the BrauBeviale industry fair will last me for a few more home-brewed sized batches, but I would actually be willing to pay money for the product, provided the price is right.

(Full disclosure: I was given a sample bottle of Super F for free in November 2024, as well as a Murphy & Son t-shirt and a few half-pint pours of cask ale)

History, Water

An Attempt To Reconstruct Historic Vienna Lager’s Water Profile

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In the reconstruction of everything related to historic Vienna Lager, there is one piece missing that I’ve not been able to conclusively reconstruct so far: its water profile, and in particular, the water profile at Kleinschwechater Brauerei, where Anton Dreher first brewed Vienna Lager.

People who read my book on the subject are probably already aware of this, but for those who are not, a quick recap of the water situation there: the original Kleinschwechater brewery was located next to Kleinschwechat’s cemetery. The cemetery was on Löss soil (wind-blown silt sediment), while the brewery’s wells were dug into soil consisting of alluvial resp. diluvial gravel. By 1869, the brewery had four wells that had gone bad due to contamination from brewery and animal waste, so two further wells had been dug in the garden next to the brew house. Of these two wells, one’s water was used for brewing, for which we have a chemical analysis conducted in 1868 by Johann Karl Lermer. It looks like this:

  • Specific gravity of water: 1.00074
  • Total dissolved solids: 0.380 grams per litre (=380 mg/L)
  • Ash content: 0.296 grams per litre
  • Organic matter: 0.084 grams per litre

The dissolved solids were analysed and their constituents were listed in percent:

  • Sodium chloride: 2.53%
  • Chlorine: 3.86%
  • Sodium: 3.45%
  • Potassium: 3.94%
  • Calcium carbonate: 22.75%
  • Magnesium: 11.27%
  • Iron oxide: 0.30%
  • Sulfuric acid: 18.03%
  • Phosphoric acid: 0.22%
  • Carbon dioxide: 24.42%
  • Silicic acid: 2.52%
  • Organic matter: 1.49%

(please note that I think I previously misidentified the “Kalk” in the original German text as calcium oxide. It more likely means calcium carbonate, which I corrected in this list)

This is fairly detailed, but how does this get us to a modern water profile consisting of carbonate hardness, calcium, magnesium, sulfate, chloride and sodium? So here’s my attempt of trying to reconstruct that. Please be aware is that my last time I had chemistry lessons was 23 or 24 years ago. I also never thought myself to be a particularly good chemistry student.

I started off with the individual weight of each of the chemical compounds: 380 mg/L is equal to 380 ppm. Applying the percentage to the 380 ppm of should give us the respective ppm of each compound. Please note that I only listed the ones relevant for our water profile:

  • Sodium chloride (NaCl): 9.6 ppm
  • Chlorine: 14.7 ppm
  • Sodium: 13.1 ppm
  • Calcium carbonate (CaCO3): 86.4 ppm
  • Magnesium: 42.8 ppm
  • Sulfuric acid (H2SO4): 68.5 ppm
  • Carbon dioxide (CO2): 92.8 ppm

I then looked up the molecular formulas for each of the chemical compounds, as well as the molar masses of all the elements found in each of the compounds.

So now let’s use this data to reconstruct what we need in our water profile.

Carbonate Hardness

Carbonate hardness is basically the concentration of HCO3–(hydrogencarbonate) ions. While we do not have this one available directly, we can reconstruct the amount from the amount of CO2. The molar mass of CO2 is about 44.0088 g/mol, so adding the mass of one H and one C gets us about 61.01604 g/mol. When we apply this to the ppm of CO2 (92.8), we get an HCO3– concentration of 128.7 ppm, or 5.9 °dH (German degrees of hardness).

Calcium

For the calcium content, we need to go the other way, and look at the calcium content of the calcium carbonate. CaCO3‘s molar mass is about 100.0088 g/mol, while Ca’s molar mass is just 40.08 g/mol, so the 86.4 ppm of calcium carbonate should translate to about 34.6 ppm of calcium, or 4.8 °dH.

Magnesium

That one is easy, because it’s listed directly, with 11.27%, which translates to 42.8 ppm.

Sulfate

The sulfate ion is SO42-, so we should be able to reconstruct it from the sulfuric acid (H2SO4) content, following the same approach as with the calcium. H2SO4‘s molar mass is about 98.08 g/mol, while SO42- is about 96.06 g/mol, so the reconstructed sulfate content should be 67.1 ppm.

Chloride

Chlorides are either chlorine ions or chlorine atoms bound to molecules by a single bond. In Lermer’s analysis, we have two chemical compounds that involve chlorine atoms: chlorine, and sodium chloride. From the chlorine, we can simply assume the same ppm (14.7 ppm), while for the sodium chloride, we need to calculate its portion (5.8 ppm). When we add both, the total chloride content should be 20.5 ppm.

Sodium

Similar to the chlorides, we have two chemical compounds that involve sodium atoms: straight up sodium, as sodium chloride. Following the same approach, we can take the ppm of sodium (13.1 pm) and add the sodium portion from the sodium chloride (3.8 ppm). This means we end up at 16.9 ppm sodium content.

The final water profile

With all this, we end up with this water profile:

  • Carbonate hardness: 128.7 ppm, or 5.9 °dH
  • Calcium: 34.6 ppm, or 4.8 °dH
  • Magnesium: 42.8 ppm, or 9.9 °dH
  • Sulfate: 67.1 ppm
  • Chloride: 20.5 ppm
  • Sodium: 16.9 ppm

My question to all you people out there with a better knowledge of basic chemistry than me: does this make sense? Provided the German terms for the individual chemical compounds that I translated to English mean exactly what I think they mean, does it make sense to derive the amounts of ions in the water from the amount of molecular compounds determined in that chemical analysis?

Please let me know in the comments whether this attempt of reconstructing the historic water profile of Vienna Lager at Kleinschwechater brewery (at least as analysed in 1868) makes sense or not.

(thanks to Ben for proofreading the article before I published it)

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.

History

Photos of Johann Götz from the National Archives in Kraków

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This is a bit of an unusual type of post for my blog. Instead of lots of texts, I’ll be mostly posting a few images instead, namely photos depicting Johann Götz (aka Jan Ewangelista Goetz) that I found in the National Archives in Kraków. The quality may not be the absolutely best, as I basically just took snapshots with my Pixel 6 phone camera, but it’s good enough for now.

None of the photos were dated, so when it comes to the age of them, all I can say is “1893 or earlier”.

Photo of Johann Götz by Awit Szubert, Kraków. Digitisation licensed under CC BY 4.0. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Photo of Johann Götz by Awit Szubert, Kraków.

The first one is a photo taken by Awit Szubert (1837-1919), a photographer from Kraków. In this photo, Johann Götz wears historic clothing of Polish noblemen, a kołpak hat with a feather on his head, and boots. Attached the clothes is some sort of side arm, like a knife or a small sword. Johann Götz is stood next to a table and has his left hand on a book. On the other side of him, there’s a cushioned chair.

Portrait of Johann Götz by Walery Rzewuski. Digitisation licensed under CC BY 4.0. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Photo of Johann Götz in a sitting position with his right arm resting on a table and his left hand resting on his left upper thigh, showing him halfway from the side, by Walery Rzewuski. Digitisation licensed under CC BY 4.0. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

The next two photos show Johann Götz wearing a suit jacket with two medals, one around his neck, and one as a breast medal. Both photos were taken by Polish photographer Walery Rzewuski (1837-1888), based in Kraków. The breast medal is the Golden Cross of Merit with the Crown, while the one around his neck is the Knight Commander medal of the Pontifical Equestrian Order of Saint Sylvester.

Portrait of Johann Götz by Franz Grainer. Digitisation licensed under CC BY 4.0. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Portrait of Johann Götz by Franz Grainer. Digitisation licensed under CC BY 4.0. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

The final set of photos are two portraits of Johann Götz by Franz Grainer (1840-1904) in Reichenhall, Bavaria. Again wearing a suit jacket but this time buttoned up all the way, he looks more serious with a straight head on the left one, but a bit more smiley (as much as that’s noticeable with his beard) with a slightly tilted head on the right one. Franz Grainer was also the court photographer of Princess Therese of Oldenburg, as is noted on the back of one of the photos.

Judging from the years of death of each of the credited photographers, I would say that the photos themselves are all in the public domain (in Poland, copyright expires 70 years after an author’s death). Please note that this is not legal advice.

History

Malt Surrogates in Northern German Beer in 1890/1891

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The German Brewing Tax Law of 1906, which went into effect on June 3, 1906, regulated the permissible ingredients for bottom- and top-fermented beers within the Northern German Brewing Tax Association. From that point onwards, bottom-fermented beers could only be brewed from barley malt, hops, water and yeast, while top-fermented beers could also be brewed using malt made from other grains, various sugars (beer sugar, cane sugar, invert sugar, starch sugar, caramel colouring) and sweeteners (for low-ABV beers only). But before that, beer tax laws in North Germany were much lenient (Bavarians hated that), and ingredients like rice could be used.

I recently came across statistics for the tax year 1890/1891 that give greater insight into that. Previously, I also wrote about bottom- vs top-fermenting breweries in Germany resp. Prussia in 1889/1890. But this goes even more into detail.

I won’t reproduce all the numbers here as that would be too much. But let’s look at some of the highlights:

An average beer brewed in the Northern German Brewing Tax Association in 1890/1891 would have been (by weight of ingredients):

  • 95.75% barley malt
  • 2.78% wheat malt
  • 0.01% other grains
  • 0.51% rice
  • 0.73% sugar
  • 0.03% syrup
  • 0.19% other malt surrogates

The most rice was was used in Bremen (the statistics don’t include 3 export breweries) with 3.23% rice, Mecklenburg with 2.56%, and the Rhineland, with 2.38% of all ingredients used in brewing.

When it comes to brewing sugar, Brandenburg stands out with 2.85% of the total brewing ingredients by weight. They also similarly stand out for the use of wheat malt, with 16.08%. That’s probably an artifact of the Berliner Weisse brewing industry (Berlin was part of Brandenburg) which used plenty of wheat malt. The Province of Posen was number two, with 10.46%, which absolutely makes sense: the city of Grätz/Grodzisk Wielkopolski is located in that historic Prussian province, and is best known for the Grodziskie beer style which is brewed from 100% smoked wheat malt.

It’s also interesting to see what percentage of breweries even used malt surrogates of any kind (including rice, sugar, etc.) in the first place: 83.33% in Bremen, 80.65% in Lübeck, 75% in Hamburg, and 59.46% in Anhalt. On the other end, where malt surrogates were used the least, are these places: Hohenzollern (0.85%, just 2 out of 234 breweries), Westphalia (4.49%), Province of Hesse-Nassau (8.02%) and Grand Duchy of Hesse (12.15%).

In the same statistics, we also get more insight into the distribution of top- vs bottom-fermenting brewing: the top places for bottom fermentation (in terms of production volume) in Northern Germany in 1890/1891 were:

  • Grand Duchy of Hesse, 100% bottom fermentation
  • Province of Hesse-Nassau, 99% bottom fermentation
  • Westphalia, 96% bottom fermentation
  • Brunswick, 95% bottom fermentation

Conversely, the top places where top fermentation still held on were:

  • Kingdom of Saxony, 44% top fermentation
  • Province of Posen, 40% top fermentation
  • Silesia, 39% top fermentation
  • Brandenburg, 38% top fermentation

History

Production Volumes of Johann Götz’s Breweries, 1847-1876

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On my visit to the National Archives in Kraków, I came across quite a bit of material related to Johann Götz and his breweries. So who’s Johann Götz anyway, and what makes his breweries relevant?

Johann Evangelist Götz, or Jan Ewangelista Götz (sometimes spelled Goetz) as he’s called in Polish, was born in 1815 in Langenenslingen in modern-day Baden-Württemberg. Coming from a family of brewers, he was hired as a cellar master in 1837 at the Kleinschwechater brewery by Anton Dreher, who happened to be his cousin. After 1.5 years, he was promoted to brewery foreman and Dreher’s personal assistant. He was closely involved in brewing the first “real” Kleinschwechater Lager in 1840, and has been credited with improved the quality of the beer as well as the brewery’s overall efficiency. He was an important figure in the history of Vienna Lager, but his stint at Kleinschwechat was relatively short, as he moved to Galicia in 1845 where he co-founded the Okocim brewery not far from Kraków.

At a time when bottom-fermentation was still only catching on in Vienna and bakers started to feel a lack of availability of barm (brewer’s yeast, skimmed from fermenters of top-fermented beers), he went to the easternmost realms of the Austrian Empire and started a new, industrial brewery using the techniques he helped develop and perfect together with Anton Dreher. In doing so, he was (to my knowledge) the first one to establish a lager brewery in partitioned Poland.

Besides the brewery in Okocim, he also started another brewery in Kraków, in the Piasek district. One find I was very happy about when I went through the material in the National Archives was a German-language hand-written list of production statistics for both breweries. Though they were not quite complete for all years, they still give us great insight into the overall development and growth of both breweries.

Here are the statistics for the Okocim brewery by year. All amounts are in Eimer. One Eimer equals 56.589 liters, or about 0.566 hl. I added the equivalent hl in parentheses.

Year10° Beer13° Lager BeerCombined
18474,500 (2,546)3,000 (1,698)7,500 (4,244)
18504,900 (2,773)6,240 (3,531)11,140 (6,304)
18555,148 (2,913)12,776 (7,230)17,924 (10,143)
18602,304 (1,304)26,976 (15,265)29,280 (16,569)
18651,336 (756)35,648 (20,173)36,984 (20,929)
18701,200 (679)51,000 (28,860)52,200 (29,539)
18713,750 (2,122)47,850 (27,078)51,600 (29,200)
18721,600 (905)64,000 (36,217)65,600 (37,122)
18733,000 (1,698)80,000 (45,271)83,000 (46,969)

One interesting detail here is how the brewery produced both a 10° beer and a 13° beer (the degrees refer to the original gravity in Balling). This is something we know from Anton Dreher’s brewery, where these two beer strengths were the two main beers brewed at least until the 1890s. Distinguishing beers by OG is also still common in Czechia, though the main strengths there are more commonly 10° and 12°.

It is noticeable though that while the 10° beer was a relatively large share of the overall production in early years, it never grew beyond slightly more than 5,000 Eimer per year, and within 26 years the share of 10° beers in the overall production volume shrank from 60% to just 3.75%. I guess lower-strength beers weren’t particularly popular among Poles at the time…

In the same document, we also get statistics for Götz’s brewery in Kraków. Again the amounts are in Eimer, which the equivalent hectoliter in parentheses next to it.

YearAmount
18662,726 (1,542)
18675,190 (2,937)
18687,800 (4,414)
18698,000 (4,527)
18708,280 (4,685)
187110,600 (5,998)
187214,360 (8,126)
187317,000 (9,620)

Clearly, the Kraków brewery was producing at a much smaller scale. But still, at a combined 100,000 Eimer (56589 hl) for 1873, this was a sizeable brewing operation divided between locations.

The hand-written production statistics of the Götz-owned breweries in Okocim and Kraków, in German

I then also came across printed statistics (in Polish) from a few years after that lists production statistics up to 1876, plus many more details about the equipment and capacity of the Okocim brewery:

YearAmount
18477,500 (4,244)
185724,200 (13,694)
186734,000 (19,240)
187151,600 (29,200)
187265,000 (36,783)
187382,300 (46,573)
187481,600 (46,177)
187580,100 (45,328)
187673,900 (41,819)

In addition to that, we learn more about the brewery capacity: the malting floor had a size of 19,120 square foot (the foot used was probably the Wiener Fuß of about 316mm). The brewery had two brew houses, each of which could produce 3 turns of 220 Eimer each per day, so a theoretical capacity of up to 1,320 Eimer (747 hl) per day in total. Fermentation happened in 116 vats with a capacity of 55 Eimer each, while the lagering cellar held 443 lagering casks of 60 to 150 Eimer each, for a combined total of 47,000 Eimer of beer that could be lagered at once.

Leaflet with statistics about the Okocim brewery, in Polish

And similar information the branch in Kraków:

YearAmount
18675,200 (2,943)
18708,200 (4,640)
187110,600 (5,998)
187214,360 (8,126)
187315,560 (8,805)
187416,300 (9,224)
187518,170 (10,282)
187615,000 (8,488)

Both malt house and brew house were considerably smaller there: the malting floor only had a size of 4,200 square foot, and only one brewing system was in place that could produce 100 Eimer per turn, with up to 2 turns per day. The lagering capacity was also significantly smaller, with only 8,000 Eimer.

Leaflet with statistics about the Götz brewery in Kraków, in Polish