One question I’m often being asked is whether Vienna Lager from 100% Vienna malt is actually correct because when you look at beer style guidelines (most, often, the BJCP style guidelines), the minimum colour is often darker than what you’d get from just using Vienna malt.
This seems to have caused insecurities even among seasoned brewers who are otherwise well-informed about historic styles, as they sometimes get confronted by know-it-alls in their brewery taprooms.
One thing I always need to point out and remind people of is that style guidelines are primarily for competitions. They are neither prescriptive (there’s no beer police that will arrest you for brewing something out of style!) nor exhaustively descriptive. They define a subset to set the limits specifically for brewing competitions. You can brew whatever you want, even if it doesn’t match any specific style. That’s how new beer styles get created!
One criticism of mine in the context of Vienna Lager is that style guidelines (in particular BJCP) aren’t exhaustive enough to include historic Vienna Lager. That means that a historically accurate Vienna Lager probably wouldn’t fare well in a beer competition, most likely because it’s paler than what the style guidelines say.
But there’s hope on the horizon: when the Brewers Association (BA) released their 2024 style guidelines, I of course had to look at what they say about Vienna Lager. To my surprise, the minimum colour in the BA guidelines was 12 EBC, which is roughly what you get from 100% Vienna malt at 12-13°P OG. Finally somebody got it right.
I then noticed that this wasn’t even a recent change, so I looked at all the important specs (min/max OG, min/max FG, min/max ABV, min/max bitterness, min/max colour) from 2014 until 2024.
The change in minimum colour already happened in 2022 when it was set as 12 EBC, down from 20 EBC the year before. Before 2017, it was even as high as 24 EBC.
In terms of bitterness, this has always been the same (22-28 IBU), same for ABV (4.8-5.4%) and OG (11.4-13.8°P). Only in 2024, the FG range somewhat changed: before that, it was 3.1-4.6°P, but since the 2024 version, this has been somewhat narrowed to 3.1-3.9°P.
A historic Vienna Lager, like it was likely brewed in the 1870s, with its 4.6% ABV, 13.25°P OG, 4.25°P FG and 12 EBC colour would fall just slightly outside of these style guidelines, but probably be close enough so that this wouldn’t be noticed during a blind taste test.
It most definitely is a major improvement compared to what the BA style guidelines used to be 10 years ago, or even compared to the most recent BJCP style guidelines.
So if you’re a brewer and you face the problem that your Vienna Lager from 100% Vienna malt and otherwise inspired or informed by historic Vienna Lager brewing is claimed to be “out of style” outside of a competition, just point people to the latest Brewers Association style guidelines.
Johannes Olberg’s book “Moderne Braumethoden” from 1927 contains a multitude of recipes for more than 50 different beer styles. One of them is Kölsch, briefly discussed as the “national drink” of Cologne, and characterised as golden, thirst-quenching, “not too heavy but digestible” beer. The recipe is particularly interesting because it’s the only well-documented Kölsch recipe I’m aware of from before the end of World War 2.
A lot has changed since then, and the Kölsch of 2024 is of course very different from Kölsch about 100 years earlier. Even the modern standards of what Kölsch is supposed to be, the “Kölsch-Konvention”, was only developed from 1981 onwards, Germany’s Federal Cartel Office signed off on in it 1985, and it was finally signed by 24 Kölsch breweries in 1986.
Olberg’s recipe doesn’t mention a specific malt to use, but judging from the colour description, we can assume that a pale malt like Pilsner malt was used.
A number of mashing methods were used, like Kesselmaische, or boiling one or two thick decoctions, but the following process was described more in detail:
The crushed malt is mashed in with brewing water to get to a temperature of 35°C, then rested for 30 minutes. After that time, the mash is slowly heated up to 50°C over the course of an hour (that’s 0.25°C per minute), and then to 70°C over the course of another hour (0.33°C per minute). It shall then rest at this temperature until the mash is fully converted. The author suggests that this would take 30 to 40 minutes and that an iodine test should be used to ensure full saccharification.
After that, the temperature shall be increased to the mash-out temperature of 76°C, either by heating up the mash, or by moving one third of the mash into the lauter tun and boiling two thirds of the mash in the kettle, then mixing it back into the mash to increase the temperature to 76°C (the two thirds doesn’t sound right, I’d reverse the ratios).
When the mash is in the lauter tun, lautering begins. About 6 to 8% of the total amount of hops are reserved for later, and of the remaining hops, a third is added to the first runnings. The wort boils for a total of 120 minutes.
Another third of the hops is added after an hour of boiling, and the last third is added 40 minutes before knock-out. The 6 to 8% of hops reserved earlier are added to the wort shortly before knock-out. The hopping rate is about 30.9g of hops per kg of malt that is mashed in.
The resulting wort should have an original gravity of 11 to 12°P.
The wort is then chilled to 10°C and the Kölsch yeast is pitched. Fermentation should last about 5 days. After fermentation is finished, it is then pumped over into maturation casks which are only loosely bunged. After 5 to 6 weeks the beer can get filtered and sent out to customers.
The maturation casks are also prepared before the young beer is pumped in: hops (at a rate of about 0.9 g/l) are put in 75°C hot water for about 30 minutes, then the steeping water and the hops are added to the casks.
Using all this information, I came up with the following recipe to brew about 20 liters of this historic Kölsch:
4.9kg Pilsner malt
150g hops, ideally a traditional low-alpha-acid German variety with a fine aroma, the finer the better. For my recipe, I assumed Hersbrucker with 3% alpha acid, but Spalter, Hallertauer mittelfrüh or Tettnanger would be equally suitable.
German Kölsch yeast, e.g. WLP029
Mash in with 14 liters of water, then proceed with mashing and lautering as described above. The hop additions are:
46g hops in first runnings
46g hops 60 minutes before end of boil
46g hops 40-x minutes before end of boil
After the end of the boil, whirlpool, then knock-out. Take the time between end of boil and knock-out into consideration for the last hop addition (it’s basically the x in the last hop addition). Shortly before knock-out, add 12g of hops to the wort.
Chill the wort to 10°C, then pitch the Kölsch yeast. Wait until fermentation is finished, then add 18g hops to a small amount of water and keep it at a temperature of 75°C for 30 minutes. Depending on whether you move the young beer into a separate vessel for maturation or not, either add the hops-water mixture into the maturation vessel before you pump in the beer, or simply add it to the fermenters. Mature the beer for 5 to 6 weeks, then carbonate, filter (if you have the facilities, most homebrewers don’t) and package it.
The resulting beer should have about 12°P. If you’re using hops with 3% alpha acid, the final beer should have about 44 IBU (calculated).
In terms of bitterness, this is a very different beer from modern Kölsch. And not only is it quite bitter, it is also kind of dry-hopped. The difference is that the hops were briefly treated with hot water at 75°C, which should denature the natural amylase enzymes in the hops which could cause hop creep, but is still not quite hot enough to cause the alpha acid to be isomerised and introduce even more bitterness in the beer.
So, if you want to rebrew a hundred year old historic Kölsch, this recipe is a good place to start.
Okay, this is slightly random. Dortmunder Adambier is a beer style I never really looked into, and when I wrote my book Historic German and Austrian Beers for the Home Brewer, I didn’t really come across anything useful that resembled a recipe.
Earlier this week, I was contacted by homebrewer Jesper Hjortshøj who asked me whether I had any more information about how to brew this beer style. I admitted that I didn’t know anything, but it got me started to look into it how much I could find out. And quite quickly, I actually came across a description that was sufficient enough to derive a recipe from it.
Dortmunder Adambier, apparently often also just called “Adam”, was a very strong dark wheat beer, often aged for years, and thus very clear, with a dark-red-brown colour. The malt made to brew it was kilned to only a pale colour, and no additional dark malts were used, so any colour of the beer came from “browned proteins”, as the article says it, basically from the long, intense boil the wort undergoes.
When Adambier was poured, it poured like oil, but without any foam, and had a sweet taste and vinous taste to it. It was brewed from either wheat or barley or a mix of both, but Adambier brewed from wheat was more full-bodied and tartaric, and thus preferred.
A very basic chemical analysis indicates that it was a very strong beer with 8.54% alcohol by weight (or 10.73% alcohol by volume), 21% residual extract by weight, 16.7°P apparent extract as measured on the saccharometer, and an attenuation of just 52.1%.
We also get more hints about the strength: one example that was analysed had an original gravity of 34.9°P. But there’s another hint: it says that in order to brew 20 Ohm (a local pre-metric volume measurement, I assumed the Brunswick Ohm of 144.8 liters) of Adambier, the same amount of malt is needed as for brewing 50 Ohm Bavarian beer. Assuming an OG of 12 to 13°P for Bavarian beer at the time, that means that Adambier brewed that way would have roughly have an OG of 30 to 32.5°P. Slightly lower than the analysed beer, but still roughly a similar strength.
We also learn about the hopping: for every Ohm of beer, 1 Pfund (500g) of “fine Bavarian” hops were used (later in the text, it even talks about 2 Pfund per Ohm). That converts to 3.45 g/l of hops, or if you use double the amount of hops, 6.9 g/l.
In 1869, the brewing this beer style was apparently already partially modernised, and it is implied that Bavarian triple decoction mashing was employed. But the old way of mashing it is already described, and it is wonky: the grist was doughed in in a kettle (the amount of liquor or the temperature of it isn’t documented), then left to rest, until it was brought to a boil. It takes 5 hours to bring the whole mash to a boil, during which probably the mash fully converted.
After the boil, the mash was moved to the mash tun, left to rest for 2 hours, and then wort was drawn off. At the same time, water was heated up for a second mash to draw off even more wort. Both worts were added to the kettle, hops were added, and the wort was boiled vigorously enough to effect good evaporation up to the desired strength.
The wort was then chilled to 10°C, and yeast was added at a pitch rate of 345 ml of yeast slurry per hectoliter. Primary fermentation took about 4 to 5 weeks. It was then filled into 10 Ohm casks, and the bunghole was kept open until the beer stopped ejecting yeast. It was then loosely bunged and aged for 2.5 to 3 years.
If I was to brew such a beer at home, I would approach it like this: since this requires producing such a strong wort, I would only brew half the amount of what I’d brew normally, let’s say 10 liters. I’d dough in my ingredients, Pilsner malt and pale wheat malt (the text says that pale malt was used, after all) with the same amount of liquor that I’d normally use for a 20 liter brew.
To make life slightly easier, I would probably just do a single-step infusion mash at 68°C or similar, or at most go for a double decoction, because I think most of the character of the beer will come from the long boil anyway, lauter, and then just go for a very long boil with 69 g of Hallertauer hops added to the first wort until I got the volume down to about 10 liters or the desired OG of somewhere between 30 and 35°P.
I would then chill down the wort, pitch whatever top-fermenting yeast I have on hand, and then just let it go. For sour beers, I have a dedicated fermenter that is contaminated, so any wort going into it probably gets infected with lacto and/or brett. Jesper said that when he brews his Adambier, he intends to pitch the dregs of a Schneeeule Berliner Weisse for just a small amount of lacto and brett, which is actually similar to my approach for the Old Ale that has been maturing for almost a year, where I simply pitched the dregs of two Gueuze bottles for secondary fermentation.
I hope that should give everyone who wants to brew a historically fairly accurate Adambier a good idea how to approach it and how to formulate a recipe for it. And thanks to Jesper for making me look more closely into the beer style!
I don’t homebrew that much anymore these days, at most 4 to 5 times a year, and really only the beers that I absolutely want to brew and drink, which includes fixtures like an 8° Czech-style pale lager for summer and a Czech-style dark lager (which I brew with Ben) for winter. So there is really not that much room for experimentation, simply because I don’t have the time, the drinking capacity (I’m 40, it’s all about quality over quantity now) or the resources like free fridge space for fermentation and lagering.
But there have been a few things that I kept wanting to try out, all in the context of Franconian Kellerbier that I had learned about in the last year or so.
The first thing was when my friend Joe Stange visited Brauerei Knoblach just outside of Bamberg end of last year, and came back with the information that Knoblach generally uses a 1:1 blend of Pilsner and Vienna malt as a grist, that their water is fairly hard parts of the year, and that they rely on that hardness (though he couldn’t provide any concrete numbers, nor was I able to find any analytical data about the water of Schammelsdorf, where the brewery is located). I really like Knoblach’s beers, and I know its peculiar taste, so I was wondering whether these were two factors that played into it (Joe also published an excellent article about Kellerbier in the latest issue of Craft Beer & Brewing magazine which does not seem to be online yet, but as a subscriber myself, I highly recommend getting an online subscription).
The second thing was what I learned at HBCon earlier this year about how Mönchsambacher brewed their Weihnachts-Bock. The two things I wanted to incorporate were their mash profile (which I wrote about in July) and the water profile, which has roughly equivalent hardness of calcium and magnesium, and plenty of it as sulphates. Luckily, my local Berlin tap water has about the right calcium hardness, so all I needed to do was to add the right of magnesium to get my tap water roughly where the Mönchsambacher water is in terms of hardness and mineral composition.
The third point on my agenda of things to try out were Aurum hops, a relatively new German hop variety that was launched as more disease- and climate-resistant with a “highly fine” aroma. As a daughter of Tettnanger, it is meant to replace Tettnanger and similar varieties, and German hop growers as well as hop merchants have been promoting it because they see it as a variety better suited to climate change than others, including German landrace varieties. What I wanted to know was well the hops fared in a traditional style.
I know, integrating all three elements in a single experiment is not exactly scientific, as I don’t have a baseline to compare it to, nor do I isolate any of the multiple variables. I’ll still call it an experiment simply because I want to know what a beer brewed that way would taste like.
And that’s how I formulated the recipe:
The grist was simple: 50% Pilsner malt, and 50% Vienna malt. As hops, I used Aurum hops, with additions at 60 minutes for bittering, 25 minutes for flavour, and to the whirlpool for aroma, which should end up at 41 IBU (calculated):
2.3 kg Pilsner malt
2.3 kg Vienna malt
30 g Aurum hops (5.8% alpha acid) @ 60 min
30 g Aurum hops (5.8% alpha acid) @ 25 min
40 g Aurum hops (5.8% alpha acid) @ whirlpool for 20 min
My tap water needed to be enriched with magnesium, so I simply spiked the mash with food-grade epsom salts (MgSO4). According to my calculations, 18g should get me the right amount of magnesium hardness for 22 liters of beer.
As yeast, I used the Fermentis S-23 dry yeast strain. It’s not my absolute favourite, but it’s all I had at hand, also because I had forgotten to order anything else, which is all my bloody fault.
When it came to mashing, I just stuck to the Mönchsambacher mash profile, a single decoction mash. I boiled the wort for 60 minutes, then cooled it down to 6°C, pitched the yeast, and let it ferment at 10°C until it was finished fermenting. I then ramped down the temperature to 1°C for a week, and bottled it with wort I had held back for bottle conditioning.
The resulting beer has an OG of 11.6°P (slightly lower than a typical Kellerbier, but that’s mainly from me buying the ingredients and only afterwards deciding on a mash profile with a slightly lower efficiency than my regular double decoction mash), and fermented down only to 3.5°P FG, resulting in just 4.3% ABV.
A Willibecher of the Kellerbier. The colour is golden with a tiny bit of haze, with a moderately dense head of foam on top.
A first taste test showed that the experiment, in my opinion, was successful: the beer has a minerality and a maltiness very much reminiscent of Knoblach and Mönchsambacher. The same goes for the bitterness: while it’s not quite as pronounced as I hoped it would be (I blame the low attenuation which probably leaves just enough residual sweetness to slightly mute it), as it is very lingering: even minutes after, that hop bitterness just stays on your tongue. Which is exactly what I appreciate so much about these beers.
As for the hop aroma of Aurum itself: there’s not that much there. Even though I kept the hops in the fridge and sealed at all times, it was not the freshest batch (2021 harvest), so that may have had an influence. Still, the bitterness the hops provide was quite on point.
Still, I’m very happy with the end result. I think it shows that the local water profile of Bamberg’s surrounding area has a large impact on the flavour of the beer, as long as breweries don’t soften or otherwise treat the water and embrace their very local water profile instead (which is one of the points that Joe makes in his article).
Even the yeast played out alright: I didn’t like S-23 in the past because it can produce rather fruity fermentation byproducts. In this case, the beer came out fairly clean, just with a high final gravity. In retrospect, that actually wasn’t too surprising, as S-23 is the closest known relative of the Wyeast 2001 strain, which is purported to be the Pilsner Urquell “H” strain, and is also known for relatively low attenuation.
My take-aways of this brew are the following:
Hard water, especially similar to the Mönchsambacher water profile, can get you a flavour profile in beer that is similar to the slightly rustic flavour profiles of beers like Mönchsambacher, Knoblach and others in the region.
The combination of Pilsner and Vienna malt probably adds to that rustic character.
A lower attenuation seems to help with the style, but another experiment to try out a more highly attenuating yeast should bring more clarity.
Aurum hops are probably okay for standard German styles, but also require more experimentation to understand their exact aroma potential and how to use them. A more recent harvest would be great to try next time. I generally support the idea of hop varieties that are better suited to climate change (which is an inevitability that will hit the brewing industry hard in the decades to come, so good on German hop breeders to be as forward-thinking as that), as long as we understand well enough how to apply the hops to get the same aromas and flavours as with more traditional varieties.
Bavarikon, Bavaria’s internal portal to present treasures, art and other things from its archives, libraries and museums, is an incredibly valuable platform, as you can find all kinds of random bits and pieces related to Bavaria in some shape or some. They of course have lots of digitalized material about Oktoberfest, like this map of Oktoberfest at Theresienwiese from 1843:
A map of Oktoberfest from 1843. Source. Public Domain.
This is great, because not only does it give us insight into the overall setup (basically, the horse racing course was on the outside of the field, while in the middle, most of the stands could be found, with more stands to be found on the hill on the Western side of Theresenwiese, just north of the Bavaria statue.
Of course, the King had his own tent, with the agricultural exhibition placed near it. On the South side, the shooting range was located, while in the center, the most was going on: lots of places serving beer, coffee, wine, punch, cold and hot food, or pastries, but there were also attractions like a carousel and crossbow shooting, and the Glückshafen, a lottery with the purpose that its profit be used to support the city’s poor. That attraction still exists today, and is the oldest operation at the Oktoberfest.
Most importantly though, we also learn which breweries’ beers were served in 1843:
Singelspieler
Mader
Oberkandler
Knor[r]
Hacker
Löwenbräu
Pschor[r]
Unterkandler
Tölzer (from Tölz; nowadays Bad Tölz)
Hesselloher (probably referring to the brewery in Großhesselohe in Pullach, just South of Munich)
Some of these breweries resp. brands are still around, like Hacker and Pschorr in the Hacker-Pschorr brand, and Löwenbräu, while others are less known: Maderbräu is probably best known these day through Maderbräustraße, the little street next to Weißes Brauhaus in Munich: when Georg Schneider had to move out of the old Weißes Brauhaus (roughly where Hofbräuhaus is located nowadays), he managed to buy the defunct Maderbräu brewery building and relocate his brewery there. Only the street name and a sign on the wall of Weißes Brauhaus are reminders of this old Munich brewery.
Sign on the wall of Weißes Brauhaus, Munich. It says “The White Brewhouse. Former historischer Munich brewery. 1490 first mentioned as brewery. 1540 called Maderbräu in a document. 1872 Georg Schneider built his white beer brewery here. 1944 destroyed by incendiary bombs. The undestroyed restaurant is an example of the old Munich pub tradition.”
The other Munich breweries in this list are attested through an old map from the 1830s of Munich breweries: Knorrbräu on Briennerstraße, Oberkandler and Unterkandler, both on Neuhauser Straße, and Singelspieler on Sendlinger Straße. Even beer from further away was brought to Theresienwiese and served there, such as from Tölz, South of Munich, and Hesselloher Bier, which was likely from the brewery in Großhesselohe in Pullach just outside Munich, but that’s not entirely clear from the source.
From an 1824 painting by Heinrich Adam, we can also get a rough idea how serving beer used to be organised like, on a much smaller scale than nowadays, from wooden shacks like this one:
Detail from an 1824 painting by Heinrich Adam, depicting beer getting served from a cask at Oktoberfest. License: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source.
(header image by Heinrich Adam, 1824, licensed under CC-BY-SA 4.0. source)
In my recent article about top- vs bottom-fermenting breweries in Germany 1889/1890, I simplified one bit of the data: I lumped together all provinces of Prussia, when the data was actually much more detailed specifically for that state.
So let’s start with the per-province data:
Breweries
Production volume [hl]
No.
Province
TF
BF
TF
BF
1
East Prussia
199
52
328,721
582,580
2
West Prussia
42
60
172,278
419,883
3
Brandenburg
444
125
1,839,780
2,876,476
4
Pomerania
235
82
126,654
531,615
5
Posen
113
51
218,544
270,509
6
Silesia
654
199
1,128,173
1,534,086
7
Saxony
465
174
646,987
1,791,947
8
Schleswig-Holstein
653
53
282,954
952,226
9
Hanover
355
110
155,436
1,001,521
10
Westphalia
468
248
101,883
2,000,935
11
Hesse-Nassau
90
312
28,404
1,613,806
12
Rhineland
783
371
1,030,283
2,527,309
13
Hohenzollern
93
146
4,659
117,557
List of provinces, with the number of breweries (TF = top-fermenting, BF = bottom-fermenting) and respective production volumes
I added numbers to give you a better idea where each of these provinces were located using this map:
Map of Imperial Germany, with Prussia marked green and the Prussian provinces number 1-13. This map was created using this map. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0. The original map was created by Maps & Lucy and others.
Now let’s again look at the ratio of bottom- to top-fermenting breweries per province:
No.
Region
BF / TF
1
East Prussia
0.26
2
West Prussia
1.43
3
Brandenburg
0.28
4
Pomerania
0.35
5
Posen
0.45
6
Silesia
0.30
7
Saxony
0.37
8
Schleswig-Holstein
0.08
9
Hanover
0.31
10
Westphalia
0.53
11
Hesse-Nassau
3.47
12
Rhineland
0.47
13
Hohenzollern
1.57
List of the provinces and the ratio of bottom- to top-fermenting breweries in each of them
The first thing I noticed is that there are only three provinces with more bottom-fermenting than top-fermenting breweries: West Prussia, Hesse-Nassau and Hohenzollern. When you look at the raw data, West Prussia in general didn’t seem to have too many breweries in the first place. Hesse-Nassau, just like the State of Hesse (which it fully surrounds), also seems to have switched over to bottom fermentation, but not quite to the extent as Hesse. And then there’s Hohenzollern, which is actually quite separate from the rest of Prussia and located very much in the South of Germany where bottom fermentation has a more longstanding tradition.
This brings me to the next table of statistics, the average production volumes per province, divided between top- and bottom-fermenting breweries:
hl / Brewery
No.
Region
TF
BF
BF / TF
1
East Prussia
1,651.86
11,203.46
6.78
2
West Prussia
4,101.86
6,998.05
1.71
3
Brandenburg
4,143.65
23,011.81
5.55
4
Pomerania
538.95
6,483.11
12.03
5
Posen
1,934.02
5,304.10
2.74
6
Silesia
1,725.04
7,708.97
4.47
7
Saxony
1,391.37
10,298.55
7.40
8
Schleswig-Holstein
433.31
17,966.53
41.46
9
Hanover
437.85
9,104.74
20.79
10
Westphalia
217.70
8,068.29
37.06
11
Hesse-Nassau
315.60
5,172.46
16.39
12
Rhineland
1,315.81
6,812.15
5.18
13
Hohenzollern
50.10
805.18
16.07
The list of Prussian provinces, each with the average hl / Brewery for top- and bottom-fermenting breweries, plus the ratio of bottom- to top-fermenting average production volume.
Hohenzollern absolutely stands out here, with just tiny average production volumes. Whatever top-fermenting breweries existed there, they must have been pretty small in operation (at least on average), some of them probably glorified home-brewing operations. But even the bottom-fermenting breweries were really small compared to all the other provinces.
The brewery structure of Hohenzollern (but this is just an educated guess) was probably closer to regions like Franconia, where a lot of small, local breweries were established and just served a very local market, with relatively little industrialisation at the time.
Brandenburg (which includes Berlin) seems to have been the exact opposite, not only because it had a fairly strong top-fermenting brewing industry with a pretty large number of breweries and strong average production volumes, but also had by far the largest production volumes for bottom-fermenting breweries. These number probably mostly reflect the Berlin brewing industry: a large number of breweries making Berliner Weisse and other top-fermented beers for a market that is strong but slowly declining on the one hand, and large, industrial breweries specifically founded and built for brewing fashionable bottom-fermented beers on the other hand.
Interestingly, the Rhineland, nowadays very well known for its hyperlocal top-fermented beer cultures of Kölsch (in Cologne and surrounding areas) and Altbier (in Düsseldorf and the Lower Rhine region), does not particularly stand out as much as I would have expected. While it is the province with the third-largest total production volume of top-fermented beers in Prussia, when ranked by average production volume per brewery, it can only be found on seventh place. When looking at total bottom-fermented volume, the Rhineland is even number 2 of all provinces, but at the same time also has by far the largest number of bottom-fermenting breweries, which brings down the average production volume a lot.
It does show though that in the Rhineland, beer was an important product with presumably one of the highest per-capita consumption in all of Prussia. At least the large number of breweries would suggest a focus on the local market and a comparatively less consolidated beer market overall.
I found it interesting because these statistics gave some insight into how prevalent bottom fermentation had become in some states, and which states’ breweries managed to brew on a larger scale than others.
So here are the raw numbers:
Breweries
Production Volume [hl]
State
TF
BF
TF
BF
Prussia
4,594
1,983
6,064,756
16,220,485
Saxony
583
172
1,987,481
2,393,978
Hesse
17
210
1,097
998,493
Mecklenburg
351
46
129,254
412,878
Thuringia
345
656
323,738
2,131,323
Oldenburg
70
17
33,493
145,443
Braunschweig
43
34
25,498
450,966
Anhalt
55
18
95,406
316,109
Lübeck
26
6
38,498
105,175
Bremen
8
10
23,389
210,752
Hamburg
20
10
266,661
743,176
List of states, with the number of breweries (TF = top-fermenting, BF = bottom-fermenting) and respective production volumes
Now let’s look at the ratio of bottom- to top-fermenting breweries per state:
State
BF / TF
Prussia
0.43
Saxony
0.30
Hesse
12.35
Mecklenburg
0.13
Thuringia
1.90
Oldenburg
0.24
Braunschweig
0.79
Anhalt
0.33
Lübeck
0.23
Bremen
1.25
Hamburg
0.50
List of the states and the ratio of bottom- to top-fermenting breweries in each of them
What’s very noticeable is that there are only three states with more bottom- than top-fermenting breweries: Hesse, Thuringia and Bremen. Hesse stands out especially because are over 12 times more bottom-fermenting breweries than top-fermenting breweries. Interestingly, most states still had a relatively large number of top-fermenting breweries. But once we look at the average production volumes per brewery of top- vs bottom-fermenting breweries, we’re getting a different picture:
hl / Brewery
State
TF
BF
BF / TF
Prussia
1,320.15
8,179.77
6.20
Saxony
3,409.06
13,918.48
4.08
Hesse
64.53
4,754.73
73.68
Mecklenburg
368.25
8,975.61
24.37
Thuringia
938.37
3,248.97
3.46
Oldenburg
478.47
8,555.47
17.88
Braunschweig
592.98
13,263.71
22.37
Anhalt
1,734.65
17,561.61
10.12
Lübeck
1,480.69
17,529.17
11.84
Bremen
2,923.63
21,075.20
7.21
Hamburg
13,333.05
74,317.60
5.57
A list of states, each with the average hl / Brewery for top- and bottom-fermenting breweries, plus the ratio of bottom- to top-fermenting average production volume.
Very clearly, bottom-fermenting breweries were producing significantly more beer on average than top-fermenting breweries, across the board.
Again, the most noticeable is Hesse, but for a different reason: their average production volume per top-fermenting brewery is just 64 hl. Given that the number of top-fermenting breweries was tiny to begin with, this looks as if the last few remaining top-fermenting breweries were glorified home-breweries, not unlike what we had with Carinthian Steinbier in the decades before its demise.
The only state where top-fermenting brewing was still relatively strong was Hamburg, as it’s the only one with an average 5-digit hl production volume.
The main takeaway from these statistics is certainly that even though bottom-fermenting breweries were generally more industralised and at a more modern technical level with the capabilities to produce larger volumes of beer, many of the less mechanised top-fermenting breweries still seem to have hung around for a while. Unfortunately, these statistics don’t give any insight into what beer styles were brewed. A lot of them may still have been the old local beer styles.
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.
