All posts by ak

Brewing, History

Why There Is No Farmhouse Brewing Tradition in Austria

1 Comment

Beer is a common people’s drink, and in quite a few countries all over Europe, it was brewed at home, by farmers, which led to all different kinds of farmhouse brewing traditions, like the origins of the Belgian/French Saison style, or the farmhouse brewing still practiced in the Nordic countries and Lithuania. There is so much diversity in farmhouse brewing that you can literally spend years on research and writing about it.

Since beer in Austria has such an importance, I always wondered whether there was any farmhouse brewing tradition there. I asked my grandmother whether she remembered in her childhood and youth, and she said there was absolutely nothing like it. On the other hand, producing Most (pretty much like cider) from apples and/or pears seems to have been more prevalent, especially in rural areas of the region where I come from. But it was nothing I put more thought into until I stumbled upon a series of books from the 1930’s describing the history of brewing and hop growing in Upper Austria.

These books give an interesting insight into how brewing was organized since the middle ages: hop growing has been documented since the early 13th century near the monastery of Wilhering. The hops grown actually had to be delivered as natural goods, which was called “Hopfendienst” (literally “hop service”). And beer brewing was very similar: the monastery of St. Florian documents 27 surrounding farms between 1378 and 1445 that had to do “Bierdienst” (“beer service”).  At that time, it was already possible to pay money instead of delivering beer, which suggest that there may have been a time where there was no alternative to delivering beer.

But it also shows that beer brewing by farmers was on its way out: at that time, the right to brew was shifting from farms towards cities and market towns. Cities like Linz, Freistadt and Enns received the privilege of “ban miles”, which prescribed that no other pubs and no brewing were allowed in a certain distance around these cities. Brewing became a privilege of the citizens, which often formed brewing communes or took turns in brewing through a publicly organized lot system. With this also often came restrictions on the sale of imported beer, which ensured that local beer was consumed locally.

Besides the cities and towns, monasteries also brewed beer: Wilhering used to have its brew house, which even burned down and had to be rebuilt in the 17th century, and so did the monastery of Schlägl. This brewery still exists in this day and age, but historic records before the 17th century were lost due to a fire in 1626.

In one case, the old concepts of brewing communes also survived into the modern era: the city of Freistadt not only has brewing privileges at least since 1277, it also has the last brewing commune in Austria. In the 18th century, its citizens decided to build a brew house and concentrate the brewing efforts. This brewery, Freistädter Brauerei, still exists today, and so does the ownership structure: every house within the city walls comes with shares of the breweries, and the right to a certain amount of beer every year. If you buy a house in Freistadt, you also become a co-owner of the brewery.

So, for centuries, brewing in parts of Austria has been absolutely dominated by cities and market towns, which had exclusive brewing rights. Already towards the end of the middle ages there were efforts to stop farmers from brewing beer, and since no farmhouse brewing is recorded since then, it seems like it was quite successful.

Of course it is too simple to say that there was no farmhouse brewing at all in Austria. There are actually records of a farmhouse brewing tradition in certain parts of Austria, in particular in Carinthia. There, stone beer was brewed by the local farmers, from oats, barley and wheat, employing hot stones to heat the mash in simple wooden mash tuns, without boiling the wort. When the Austrian government tried to supplant this very traditional beer style with modern brown barley beer, the lawyer of a Carinthian abbey gave his expert opinion, in which he stated that stone beer was the only drink available to field workers on the farm, and taking away their beer would deny them their refreshments after a week of hard work. He also stated that only oats and low-quality wheat were used instead of high-quality ingredients.

This is probably the only record of a brewing tradition (and possibly right) outside of cities and market towns that can be truly considered to be farmhouse brewing. I am not a really sure why the specific rights of Carinthia and Upper Austria differed so much, but my guess is that Carinthia and Upper Austria were simply governed differently: even though they were both in the sphere of influence of the Habsburgers, they were still legally separate duchies resp. archduchies.

Interestingly enough, descriptions of this Carinthian farmhouse brewing tradition seem remarkably similar to elements of other European farmhouse traditions: the use of juniper (which is a huge topic on its own), the use of hot stones for mashing in primitive wooden mash tuns, and unboiled wort.

To summarize, we can certainly that due to power structures in large parts of Austria, brewing outside of cities and market towns, in particular by farmers, was actively discouraged and regulated through brewing rights. The only well-known exception to this is Carinthia, where a unique stone beer tradition was alive until the early 20th century. But even this tradition has long died out, which is way we can definitely say that there is no more farmhouse brewing in Austria, and there hasn’t been any in most parts for at least 500 years.

If you want to read more on this, the Upper Austrian state library has the multi-volume work “Brauwesen und Hopfenbau in Oberösterreich von 1100 – 1930” (brewing and hop-growing in Upper Austria from 1100 to 1930) freely available in digitized form.

History, Hops

The Demise Of Upper Austrian Hop-Growing

4 Comments

In a previous article, I discussed the history and current state of the hop-growing industry in Austria. Recent finds in the Upper Austrian state library allow me to expand on this topic, in particular on hop agriculture in Upper Austria, in particular in Mühlviertel.

Hop-growing has a great industry in Upper Austria. The earliest mention of hop-growing dates back to 1206, and there’s always been hop-growing all over the country, but especially so in the Mühlviertel, the northern-most part of Upper Austria, and the Innviertel, the western-most part which used to belong to Bavaria until 1779 and was heavily influenced through the hop-growing industry there. Even though Austria was always overshadowed by the much larger hop-growing regions in Bavaria and Bohemia, Upper Austrian growers managed to produce good quality that at least was able to satisfy local demand, and export to a certain extent. One source mentions during the time of the American Civil War, hop exports from the US to England essentially ceased, which allowed some Upper Austrian hop growers to enter the English market at least temporarily.

But the dominance of Bavaria and Bohemia got bigger and bigger, while the crop areas in the Mühlviertel kept shrinking quite massively: while in 1927, there were still 307 ha of hops being grown, it was a measly 32 ha in 1936. Attempts to counter this in the 1920’s failed due to lack of funding, and also due to difficulties to compete with Bavarian and Bohemian hop products.

In the previous article, I mentioned that in 1939, the remaining hop gardens were ordered to be uprooted by Berlin. Without context, it may seem nonsensical to just get rid of a local agricultural industry, but there’s actually a geopolitical reason behind it.

After the “Anschluss” of Austria, the Upper Austrian hop-growing industry actually hoped to be able to revive and increase the acreage of hops with the help of the German beer industry. But in October 1938, the Sudetenland, the then mostly German-speaking areas of Czechoslovakia, were annexed by Nazi Germany after the Munich Agreement. Since this included the hop-growing regions of Saaz/Žatec and Auscha/Úštěk, Germany suddenly had an absolute over-abundance of high-quality hops for its beer brewing industry.

This was the demise of hop-growing in Mühlviertel: with the vast majority of European hop-growing regions under German control, it made at that point no sense to further invest into the Mühlviertel, and so it was decided to end hop-growing altogether there.

In some ways, the Munich Agreement was the demise of Upper Austrian hops. With it, the land races of that area were lost. Only after World War 2, hops were reintroduced, but this time, English and later German varieties. Nowadays, Malling, Styrian Golding, Aurora, Perle, Tradition, Spalter Select and Saphir are being grown there.

Beer Styles, History

Bavarian Brown Beer

Leave a comment

This is my contribution to Session 120.

Bavaria is seen as a heartland of German beer culture, and people usually associate it with pale, sparkling, malty lager beers served in glasses way too large to comfortably lift and drink from. Dark beers are still around and brewed by the Munich breweries, usually referred to as “Munich Dunkel” in modern beer style guidelines, but they’re not fashionable anymore and more of a niche drink for connoisseurs. But this didn’t use to be like that: brewing pale lager was initially only done for export, to counter the fashion of Pilsner beers. Until the 1930’s, dark lager beers were still the most commonly consumed beer style in the Bavarian capital. Even Radler, many people’s favourite summer refreshment, a mix of about half-and-half beer and lemonade, was originally mixed using dark lager beer. And I can absolutely recommend to try a Radler made like that (in a good beer garden, simply ordering a “dunkler Radler” shouldn’t be a problem), the malty notes compliment the lemony tang more nicely than Helles.

So, how was such a beer brewed back then? As for most parts of Bavaria, beer in Munich was traditionally brewed using a decoction mash. As a base malt, a dark, melanoidin-rich 2-row malt, nowadays commonly known as “Munich malt”, is chosen: it produces a dark wort, but should ideally be neither roasted nor smokey.

When looking at historic sources, strength differs, of course, but let’s pick a recipe from the 1830’s: with an original gravity of 16 °P (1.065), it would nowadays be considered to be of Starkbier strength, and called a Bock, but lager yeast used to attenuate terribly (sometimes as low as 44 %, often as high as 55 to 65 %), so we can expect 5.3 % ABV using a modern, low-attenuating lager yeast.

The important bit about brewing this beer is the process, though: using a single-step infusion mash won’t get you there. You need to decoct.

Starting with 5.25 kg of Munich malt to produce about 20 liters of beer, dough in the milled grain with 18 liters of cold (~10 °C/50 °F) liquor (i.e. water), and let it rest for 4 hours. Then slowly mix in 9 liters of boiling liquor to raise the temperature to 40 °C.

Then take 9 liters of thick mash (you can just ladle out from the bottom of your mash tun), slowly bring it to a boil over the course of one hour, boil it for one hour, and then again slowly mix it back into the mash tun. This should raise the mash temperature to 55 °C.

Again, draw 9 liters of thick mash, bring to boil and boil for 30 minutes, then slowly mix it back into the mash tun. This should raise the mash temperature to 67 °C.

For the final decoction, draw 9 liters of thin mash, bring it to a boil, boil for 15 minutes, and slowly mix it back into the mash tun until it has reached a temperature of not more than 75 °C. Then rest for 1 hour.

After that, you can start lautering and sparging, until you’ve collected about 28 liters of wort.

Add 120 g Bavarian or Bohemian hops (3 % alpha acid), e.g. Hersbrucker, Spalter, Hallertauer Mittelfrüh or Saazer, to the first wort, and bring it to a boil. Boil for 2 to 2.5 hours. The calculated bitterness is 44 IBU, but much of this bitterness will age out and get smoother during lagering.

For fermentation, chill the wort to 8 °C. Pitch a healthy starter of lager yeast (in my experience, WLP820 comes close to the bad attenuation of historic yeast strains), and ferment the beer at 9 to 10 °C.

If you want to be extremely authentic about lagering, get a wooden, pitched cask of about 20 liters size, fill your beer into it, bung it up, and let it mature for 8 to 10 months. Alternatively, you can leave the pitch out and just use a metal keg or beer bottles.

The resulting beer should be sparkling, brown, malty, not too bitter, and contain about 5.3 % ABV.

If you want to check the historic sources for this beer yourself: this recipe is taken from the book “The Art of Brewing” by David Booth, published in 1834.

The resulting beer may not be cool, neither in the hip beer scene nor in the conservative Bavarian beer culture, but it’s nevertheless a great beer style. If you’re too lazy to brew it yourself (which is understandable, the recipe implies an extra-long brew day), here’s my suggestion for a fantastic example of the style: Augustiner Dunkel. At 5.6 % ABV, it is spicy, malty, with hints of chocolate and licorice, but never sweet.

 

Beer Styles, History

My Discomfort Beer

Leave a comment

This is my contribution to Session 119.

Unlike German, Austrian, British or American beers, I, for whatever reason, always found Belgian beers to be less approachable. Not that they were bad or anything, but I was actually intimidated by the various beers, supposedly big names, of all these different styles. So it took me a while to actually get into Belgian beer as such. Styles like Gueuze and Flanders Red Ale was actually  what I could cope with the best, and eventually, I also started to understand and like the spicy, peppery notes of Dubbels, Tripels and Saisons. But there was this one beer that took me a long while until I actually got to try it: Orval.

I had bought a bottle at a local craft beer store, and drank it at home. I found it odd, quite bitter, not really balanced, but at the same time I thought, hey, everybody says this beer is so great and special, so I ought to enjoy it. But it still struck me as weird. Since I knew that the beer gets bottled with Brettanomyces for secondary fermentation, I blamed it on the beer being too young why it wasn’t quite right, but I didn’t really know. In any case, I did not really enjoy the beer.

Only several months later, I got my hand on it again, this time a bit more aged: there’s a chain store not far from where I live, specializing on traditionally  manufactured, durable products, and they also happen to have some beer, amongst it Orval. The bottles at the time had been bottled for about 6 months, so my concern of that last time, the beer being too young, should not be a problem anymore.

So I tried it, and… it was different. This bitterness was still there. But it was embedded into more funkiness and a slightly sour undertone, and that actually made it enjoyable.

Around that time I had also brewed a historic porter recipe (1831 Truman Keeping) according to Ron Pattinson’s Home Brewer’s Guide to Vintage Beer, including a secondary fermentation with Brettanomyces claussenii. After about 5 months of secondary fermentation, I first tried the beer, and I was overwhelmed: what a fantastic beer! Full of roasted notes, mostly coffee, which were complemented by a great hop bitterness (the amount of East Kent Goldings hops in that recipe is insane), and a slightly sour and funky note.

And it didn’t even hit me at first: the sour and funky notes were exactly what I had gotten from the Orval earlier. It literally took me several days to realize that, and even longer to get a deeper connection: Orval may be an imitation or at least be inspired by British keeping beers, in particular stock pale ales. Since I had never had any stock pale ale, this was merely an idea, and I laid it aside until I’d have the time to brew one by myself: after all, Ron’s book is full of recipes for it.

In December 2016, I then got my hand on a bottle of Goose Island Brewery Yard Stock Pale Ale. This beer was brewed in collaboration with Ron Pattinson, and based on 19th century stock pale ales. I was excited, because if there’s one person that would make sure the beer’s grist, hopping, wort production, fermentation and maturation would be as historic and authentic as possible, it would be him. Finally! A stock pale ale! The beer was a revelation in some ways, but then, it was exactly like I had imagined it would be. Light, refreshing, slightly sour, earthy, funky. Refreshing, that’s something you won’t hear often about an 8 % ABV beer.

After finishing the bottle, I began to think back, and I remembered Orval, and how my second bottle of it was. I didn’t make a direct side-by-side comparison of both beers, but the overall character, the aroma, the flavours, the sourness, that was something that I remembered as very similar if not pretty much the same.

Having a proper stock pale ale actually made me appreciate Orval more, and what I had first considered to be weird was actually a fantastic beer. It also expanded my understanding of Orval: in the end, it’s a stock pale ale, made to a standard like pale ale used to be produced 150, 200 years ago, with characteristics that made it highly priced at that time.

I think there should be more like this around, but they’re not really fashionable at the moment. But I will certainly be brewing beer like that at home. Maybe not up to 8 % ABV, but with similar hopping rates and the same secondary fermentation.

Brewing, History

My 2016, Summarized

Leave a comment

Plenty of stuff happened in 2016. Even though I only do the blogging on the side, I got a few things done of which I’m quite proud.

First of all, I managed to self-publish my first (German-speaking) e-book about historic beer styles. It’s a bit rough around the edges, but it was a good experience to work on it, and it will form the basis for a more comprehensive, in-depth, English-language e-book about the same topic. You can download my e-book here, for free and all.

I also posted a series of articles about the German purity law and the unhistorical narrative around it that has been published by the German Brewers Association at its (supposed) 500 year anniversary.

Then I spent some time researching old beer styles: first Horner Bier, a refreshing old Austrian beer style brewed exclusively from oat malt, then Mannheimer Braunbier, a once common brown beer that was brewed with juniper berries, and then a whole lot of other styles most of which made it into my e-book. I even brewed Horner Bier at home, and it turned out to be nice. Also Berliner Weisse: I joined up with Franz Pozelt, and we first brewed an unboiled Starkbier version based on a historic recipe involving barley malt, wheat malt and oat malt, and then a more modern version at normal Schankbier strength. I also attended the Berliner Weisse Summit, which was pretty amazing.

In summer, my wife and I visited Bakewell and the Peak District, and then York for a week. This included not only visits to a lot of pubs (I can particularly recommend the Phoenix Inn and the Maltings in York, and The Manners in Bakewell), but also two brewery visits, first Cloudwater in Manchester, then Thornbridge in Bakewell. We also visited Thornbridge’s Peakender Beer Festival, which is great if you like Thornbridge beers, and the Portrush Beer Festival in Northern Ireland, which was fantastic to get an insight into the growing craft beer scene of Norn Iron.

On the lager brewing front, I played a bit with Munich Helles, my wife’s favourite beer style, and found what works best for us: 98 % Pilsner malt, 2 % CaraHell, 100 % Hersbrucker hops, and Wyeast 2308 yeast. Other tries that worked alright but not as great involved 100 % Pilsner malt, Hallertauer Mittelfrüh or Perle hops, and W-34/70 yeast. What absolutely did not work out was 2 % CaraMunich, Saazer hops, and Mangrove Jack’s M76 Bavarian lager yeast: way too fruity, and outright weird. Most likely because of the yeast. And as a final surprise of the year, the chest freezer on a thermostat that I’ve used for keeping exact fermentation temperatures broke in such a way that it’s irreparable.

So, what’s the outlook for 2017? First, I will continue my work on an English-language e-book about historic beer styles. Then, I will need to look into an affordable replacement so that I can continue brewing lager beer at home. And lastly, beer festivals: we’ll be going to the Manchester Beer and Cider Festival in January, and the Great British Beer Festival in August.

And of course, 2017 will hopefully be full of lots of great, homebrewed beer.

Beer Styles

An Outlandish Theory about Northern German White Beers

1 Comment

Since I started researching for my first e-book, I read quite a few things about white beers that were brewed in Northern Germany, and I noticed some similarities, not primarily in the ingredients, but in how the beers were described and compared.

Let’s start with the archetypal Northern German white beer, Broyhan. It is said that it was first brewed in 1526 in Hanover by a brewer named Cord Broyhan or similar. Said brewer had learned his trade in Hamburg, and then went back to Hanover to brew beer like in Hamburg. But allegedly, the brew didn’t quite work out, and the beer turned out to be different, but still tasty, so it was swiftly sold under the brewer’s own name. Most likely, Cord Broyhan wanted to brew Hamburger Weissbier. Now what was the difference between Hamburger Weissbier and Broyhan? We don’t know. The sources don’t say. But we can safely assume the beers must have reasonably similar. Maybe the malt was treated differently, maybe the local water had an influence, maybe the local brewer’s yeast yielded different results, maybe the brewer simply forgot to acquire hops (Broyhan is said to have been brewed without hops). But what we do know is that it was a slightly sour beer style.

The next one is Kottbusser Bier, a beer style from Cottbus. Several sources describe it as white beer “like Broyhan, but with hops”. Typical recipes include various malts in different ratios, all of them air-dried, then usually sugar, and sometimes honey, as well. Hopping rates suggest a very restrained or even unnoticeable bitterness, and no hop aroma whatsoever. Historic sources also confirm that it definitely was a sour beer.

Then there’s Berliner Weisse. It’s made from pale malts (which used to be air-dried), and it’s sour. The sourness was something that was only established in the 18th century through the introduction of yeast from Cottbus breweries. Interestingly, Berlin brewers had to constantly renew their yeast through new shipments from Cottbus, as the mixed fermentation culture was not stable and caused too much sourness when repitched several times. It also means that Berliner Weisse and Kottbusser Bier shared a common character through the yeast and the lactic acid bacteria, while also having a relatively similar grist. And then there’s this historic source from the 18th century that describes the production of Berliner Weisse and contains an interesting formulation: the wort was made without hops, while a separate hop extract was produced, and this extract was added to the Breihan (merely a different spelling of Broyhan), which in this context clearly refers to the unhopped wort. It’s unclear whether Broyhan was a generic term for any unhopped beer, or whether Berliner Weisse was brewed just like Broyhan at that time, the main difference being the addition of hop extract.

And finally, Gose. Nowadays, Gose is brewed with coriander and salt, and is also slightly sour, but historic sources mention nothing about coriander or salt, but do describe it as sour, in one instance even as essentially being the same as Broyhan.

And that’s how my outlandish theory is formed: since several historic sources describe close relationships between Broyhan, Kottbusser Bier, Berliner Weisse and Gose, either in taste or in ingredients, I think that this is a indicator that these four beers are the same beer style, or to be more specific, the respective local expressions of beer with a specific aroma, flavour and colour. Despite a certain difference in ingredients, the similarities were recognized, and so the beers satisfied the customers’ expectations of sour white beer. Each were individual in their own ways, but each would very likely be in such a condition that they could replace any of the other beer styles of that group and still meet the expectations of beer drinkers. And all four beers are representative of a beer fashion that dates back about 500 years ago.

That being said, there is a reason why I titled this theory to be outlandish. It is based on conjecture, riddled with assumptions, and probably too good to true. Nevertheless, whenever I read about the sour white beers of Northern Germany, I get the feeling that they’re just so similar to each other, almost like they’re related. In some ways, I want it to be true, but then, there is no way to prove such a strong relationship. And finally, there is another question that remains completely unanswered: whether there was any relationship between Northern German white beers and Belgian lambic or gueuze.

Beer Styles, History

Historic Bavarian Weißbier

Leave a comment

One of the distinctly Bavarian beer styles still around nowadays is Weißbier (sometimes spelled Weissbier), which literally translated to “white beer” in English. Modern Weißbier is a top-fermented beer with around 11 to 13 °P original gravity, a grist of at least 50% wheat malt, low hopping, and a distinctly estery and/or phenolic aroma and flavour reminiscent of banana and/or cloves. Until the last few decades, it’s only been popular in Bavaria, and even there, it used to have the image of a drink that was mostly consumed by elderly women, not unlike Milk Stout in the UK.

You will quite often read about this beer style that the “Weiß” in “Weißbier” is allegedly referring to its wheat content, often alluding that “Weiß” (white) and “Weizen” (wheat) have the same etymological origin. From what I could find out, this is not necessarily the case.

The origins of Weißbier apparently lie with Bohemian white beer that became popular in Bavaria in the late middle ages. With the various beer purity laws enacted in 1469, 1487, 1493 and 1516 in Bavaria or parts of it, brewing with wheat was prohibited for the common folk. Brewing Weißbier was an exclusive privilege that was first handed to the Degenberg dynasty, and was later taken back by the Wittelsbach dynasty, who also happened to be the rulers of Bavaria, so producing Weißbier was practically a state privilege. Only in 1798, this exclusivity was repealed, and privileges were sold to other breweries. State-run breweries were eventually sold or leased out. One of the leaseholders of one these breweries, in particular Weißes Hofbräuhaus in Munich, was Georg Schneider. In 1873, Georg Schneider started his own brewery, as the lease for Weißes Hofbräuhaus was about to run out. Since he was leaseholder, he had the brewing privilege and the right to all ingredients, and thus was able to take both the privilege and the original yeast from Weißes Hofbräuhaus over to his new brewery. That new brewery is now known as Schneider Weisse, but have moved their headquarter and production facilities away from Munich since then. So Schneider Weisse, in terms of their origins as business, and in terms of the originality of their yeast, have a well-documented provenance.

But what was Weißbier like back then? From what I could find out, it did show quite a few differences to the modern product. First of all, the name. Nowadays, Weißbier (white beer) and Weizenbier (wheat beer) are treated as synonyms. In Germany, if you want to call your beer after the type of malted grain that you used in it, it needs to contain at least 50% of it in its grist. But in the past, Weißbier had a different meaning.

Generally, beer in Germany used to be classified in two different types, Weißbier (white beer) and Braunbier (brown beer). The distinction was in the malt: kilning technology in the middle ages and early modern era was rather primitive, and well until the early 19th century, smoke kilns were in use. These smoke kilns not only gave all the malt a smokey taste, it was also rather hard to control the temperature with which the green malt was kilned. Under such circumstances, it was basically impossible to gain an exact control over the malt colour, so all kilned malt was brown and smokey. To produce a pale malt, the easiest option was to simply air-dry it. The green malt was spread out in a well-covered place with a constant draft to slowly dry it out without applying any additional heat. Of course, that process took a lot longer and was more laborious that kilning, and the resulting malt couldn’t be kept for long because it tended to spoil quickly and get mouldy. With the difference in these malts, brown beers were made from brown (i.e. kilned) malt, while white beers were brewed using pale, air-dried malt.

When we look at historic sources, we indeed find an indication that Bavarian Weißbier was not necessarily brewed with wheat. One such source is a book called “Die Bayerische Bierbrauerei oder die Brauerei der braunen Biere und des weißen Gerstenbieres, […]” written by Friedrich Meyer and published in 1830, whose title translates to “The Bavarian beer brewery or the brewing of brown beers and of white barley beer, […]”. Well, that just gives it away. In the book itself, the author writes that Weißbier is brewed from only slightly kilned malt or alternatively air-dried malt. There was a difference in fermentation as well: while brown beers were bottom-fermented, white beers were top-fermented. That shows how dominant bottom-fermentation in Bavaria was. Because of the top-fermentation, it could also be done in warm weather, and thus was a perfect beer to be produced during the summer.

The author also notes that if wheat is not too expensive, a bit of wheat malt can be added, at a ratio of half a Metze of wheat malt for every Schäffel of barley malt. A Metze is 21.6 liters, while a Bavarian Schäffel was 222.36 liters, so that means only about 5% of wheat malt in the overall grist. That’s not a whole lot, and even totally optional according the author.

Interestingly, the author also mentions that Weißbier in Bavaria is in decline, and he partially blames the brewers for it. Some of them even openly mentioned to him that “one had to deliberately make a bad Weißbier so that the brown beer can be sold more easily”. He counters that top-fermented beers that can be consumed 3 to 4 days after fermentation is completed and that it can be sold within only a few weeks means less tied-up capital and less risk for the brewer.

The same author published an updated version of his book in 1847 under title “Die bayerische Bierbrauerei in all ihren Theilen […]”. It also contains a chapter about Weißbier. In there, the author makes a specific distinction between “weißes Weitzenbier” and “weißes Gerstenbier”, i.e. white wheat beer and white barley beer, both of which were commonly called Weißbier. He again mentions that it’s a beer style in decline, praises it for its refreshing qualities in the summer time, but also describes it as a drink that was more common in the countryside, and, because of its relatively low price compared to lager beer, popular among poor people.

The recipe described in 1847 differs from the previous one from 1830: this time, it’s at least one Metze of wheat malt for every Schäffel of barley malt. But even that means only about 10% of wheat malt, although it can be more. Another difference of Weißbier compared to brown beer was the malt itself: the rootlets of malt for Weißbier was allowed to grow longer, which might be an indication that malt for Weißbier was more modified than lager malt.

Weißbier brewed from wheat on the other hand is described as made purely from wheat malt alone. It’s described as less perishable than Weißbier made from barley malt. Other than that, the processes of brewing it are the same.

Both versions of the book say that Weißbier is brewed with a method called “auf Satz brauen”, which is a rather complicated method that involves multiple mashes with cold and hot runnings being drawn off at various points. I shall discuss this at a later point in time, also because I haven’t fully understood the method myself.

Other sources confirm the descriptions found in both of Meyer’s books: in Handbuch für Bierbrauer by P. Müller (1854), the author describes Weißbier as top-fermented, with a grist of 1/2 to 3/4 Metzen of wheat malt per Scheffel of barley malt (a different spelling of Schäffel, in case you wondered), and that it’s brewed both in summer and winter. The author also provides information about the original gravity: 10 to 10.5% extract. That’s actually a bit less than modern Weißbier.

All three sources describe about the same hopping rate: about 1 to 1.5 Pfund of hops per Schäffel, and the hops are boiled for 45 minutes to one hour.

So, with all the parameters that we know about Bavarian Weißbier in the first half of the 19th century, we can convert all these old units to modern ones and scaled it to the typical recipe size for homebrewers, and end up with a recipe like that:

  • 3.6 kg Pilsner Malt (93.5 %)
  • 0.25 kg Pale Wheat Malt (6.5 %)
  • 25 g Hallertauer Mittelfrüh (3 % alpha acid)
  • 1 pack of Bavarian Weißbier yeast, e.g. Wyeast 3068

In my opinion, the particular mashing method wouldn’t have a big impact on the beer here, so I’d follow a simple mashing scheme like a Hochkurz infusion mash. Mash, lauter, sparge as usual, boil the wort for an hour, add hops at the beginning of the boil. Chill wort to 20 °C, pitch yeast. The resulting beer should look like that:

  • OG 10.5 °P (1.042)
  • 4.4 % ABV
  • 10 IBU
  • 5.5 EBC (2.8 SRM)

Most of the beer’s character would come from the expressive yeast. If you want to be even more adventurous, you can try and make a starter from the dregs of a Schneider Weisse bottle. With a lower alcohol content than modern Weißbier, it would probably be even more refreshing, certainly a great summer beer. And last but not least, the beer, compared to a modern version, would show how much of an impact the use of wheat malt makes on the beer’s overall character. My guess is: not so much. But then, I haven’t brewed this beer yet.

History

My Book about Historic Beers

2 Comments

Last Thursday evening, I released an ebook about homebrewing historic beer styles. I wrote this book in German and released it under a Creative Commons license, meaning that you’re free to download and distribute it to whoever you like.

Even though I tweeted about it in German, some of my English-speaking Twitter followers retweeted it, and the whole thing got a bit more popular than I had initially thought. With 290 downloads and counting, I wouldn’t exactly say it blew up, but for such a niche topic, in a language that is spoken in countries where homebrewing is still kind of a niche hobby too, and only minimal announcements, I think it has done quite alright so far.

Probably the most common feedback that I got was that the ebook is in German. No why did I do that? Very simple: this ebook is a trial run. First, it was a trial to see whether I’d have the energy to even follow through with such a project (I started working on the ebook in early August 2016, and only worked on it in my free time), how many beer styles I’d be able to cover (almost 30, as it turned out), and whether the outcome would even be worth publishing (yes, I suppose). Second, I published the book for free because I wanted to see whether there would be any interest in the topic itself. As it turned out, yes, the interest is definitely there.

But why homebrewing historic beers? Because I find looking into the past exciting. All the beer and the beer culture of modern days wasn’t created in a clean room, but it’s gone through a development over the years, decades, and centuries. Over the last 150 years, beer as a product has radically changed, and brewing “trends” that used to be limited to the regions of Bavaria, Bohemia and Austria have exploded and are now stylistically absolutely dominant. And even in countries and places that have preserved their local beer styles and traditions, these styles are still continuously reinvented and adapted to ever-changing trends. With it, you’ve got folklore, and myths, some of them rooted in actual history, some of them just completely made up. So instead of just perpetuating folklore and myths around beer, I think it’s a better idea to actually look into the past, to take a closer look at contemporary documentation about local beers, about the fashionable beer styles of past centuries, and try to recreate them in a fashion that is as true to the historic original as possible and feasible.

One book that has done that in a fantastic way is Ron Pattinson’s Home Brewers’s Guide to Vintage Beer. Ron’s focus was on British beers, simply because he was able to directly work with historic brewing records, but he also made attempts to cover continental styles, as well, such as Kottbusser, Salvatorbier and Grätzer.

And that’s where I picked up. I’m not saying my ebook is even nearly as complete or well-researched as Ron’s book, but due to where I come from (Austrian living in Germany for almost eight years now), I’m also interested in historic beers of Germany. Especially with the “anniversary” of 500 years of purity law that were celebrated earlier this year, I think it is more important than ever to really more closely look into German beer history, and the surrounding culture. One thing that I definitely learned when researching German historic beer styles is that German beer culture used to incredibly diverse and rich, much more so than today, and not only in the styles themselves, but also in terms of ingredients that were used and socially acceptable to be used to brew beer. It also gave me a perspective about what’s modern, recently developed beer, and what German beer styles available today actually go back much further and are remnants of this large diversity of local beer styles. Munich Dunkel, Bavarian Weißbier, Gose, or Berliner Weisse are such remnants, and just give you a little hint into the diversity and complexity of what and how beer used to be in the past, just 200 or 250 years ago.

Where am I going to go from here on? My plan is to start work on an English language book about historic beer styles. It will contain the beer styles that I’ve already included in my first book, but at the same time, I also plan to expand it with more background information, and even more beer styles and a more thorough discussion of various brewing techniques. I will do this in my free time, so I obviously can’t say how long this will take. If you’re nevertheless interested in brewing historic beers from Germany, Austria, Great Britain, or Belgium, like Broihan, Horner Bier, Scottish India Beer, or Antwerp brown beer, and aren’t afraid to read (or auto-translate) German, you’re more than welcome to download my ebook for free. As always, feedback is absolutely welcome.

Uncategorized

Bakewell from a Beer Perspective

Leave a comment

My wife and I are currently spending our holidays in Bakewell, Derbyshire, England. Even though I usually primarily blog about homebrewing, I’d like to share a few quick notes about good beer here in Bakewell.

The first impression was that the pubs are dominated by Peak Ales, a microbrewery near Chatsworth house. Unfortunately, I find all of their beers rather unremarkable, the stereotypical “boring brown bitter”. Which is unfortunate, because Bakewell is home to another brewery, Thornbridge, which has produced some fantastic and exciting beer over the last 11 years. It was surprisingly hard to find any pub that has Thornbridge from cask. Impossible, in fact. What the locals told us, most of the Thornbridge pubs are in Sheffield, and the only local Thornbridge pub we found, the Horsepack Inn in Little Longstone, had really odd opening hours. Don’t expect to be able to get a pint there on Thursday at 4pm.

Manchester is only 2 hours away from Bakewell by bus, so if you have plenty of time, it’s worth visiting Cloudwater Brewery. They’ve recently created a large hype with their rather unusual one-off brews and fantastically juicy series of Double IPAs. You need to reserve a seat beforehand to be sure to get served on Saturdays when their tap room is open. We were lucky to reserve just for the weekend after they started releasing their v4/v5 DIPAs.

If you find the trip to Manchester too boring, a good time-waster is to count pubs and what breweries run them. It looks like Robinsons totally dominates around that area, but I managed to see a seemingly defunct-looking pub with an old Boddingtons sign just before Stockport.

Talking about the better beer in Bakewell itself, we enjoyed going to a particular pub, The Manners. It’s a Robinsons pub, their food was good, and the beer was well-kept. From cask, they had five different Robinsons ales (Trooper, Unicorn, Wizard, Bonjeuros, Dizzy Blonde), from keg, the usual lagers, Robinsons Smooth (nitro keg ale) and Robinsons Dark (keg mild). My personal favourite has been Bonjeuros, a dry, hoppy, citrusy, zesty golden ale, which was quite refreshing.

Our opportunity to drink more Thornbridge beer was Peakender beer festival. It’s Thornbridge’s very own festival, so of course, many of their core range beers were available, and a good selection of other breweries’s beers. What we didn’t know beforehand: the location was extremely muddy. It’s more of a 3-day camping&beer festival. But on the Sunday when we were there, the weather was rather sunny, and a rare opportunity to get a proper sunburn in England.

Another day, we also visited Thornbridge brewery itself. It was quite interesting to see the size of the operation, which was actually smaller than I had expected, given their vast core range, and the amount of beer they sell nationally and internationally. Unfortunately, they’re currently undergoing some extensions, and thus not all parts of the brewery can be visited. We had the chance to sample one of Thornbridge’s latest releases, Serpent: a Belgian-style Golden Ale, fermented with the lees from a local cider maker and barrel-aged in ex-Bourbon casks (Four Roses), was a collaboration with Brooklyn Brewery. A pretty good beer, with the qualities of a dry, fruity white wine. I also managed to get two bottles of their sour red ale oak-aged on cherries resp. raspberries, for which Thornbridge recently won gold and silver medal at the World Beer Cup. I have yet to try these, though.

Starting tomorrow, we’ll be in York for a week. I’ll write about it next week, and I’d be grateful if anybody has any good tips regarding beer there.

Interview

Interview with Franz Pozelt about Kölsch

2 Comments

A few days ago, I interviewed Franz Pozelt about the topic of Kölsch brewing and its history. Franz learned the trade of brewer and maltster at Sünner brewery in Cologne, is an avid homebrewer, active in the local homebrewing scene in Berlin, and running the beer and brewing group of Slow Food Berlin. So naturally, he knows a lot about Kölsch, and so I asked him to share his knowledge in an interview.

You did an apprenticeship as brewer and maltster at Sünner in Cologne. Can you tell me something about the apprenticeship?

This was a while ago, I started my apprenticeship in 1969. A few weeks ago I met someone by coincidence who, maybe about 10 years ago, maybe a bit earlier or later, also was an apprentice at Sünner. The frightening thing is, it hasn’t changed so much since then, that means, an apprentice was primarily manpower. During my apprenticeship I was mostly working in the fermentation and lager cellar, my acquaintance in kegging. At the same time Sünner also have a tradition of apprentices achieving good grades at exams. During my time, the apprenticeship respectively working in the brewery was physically very exhausting. It could well happen that you had to change from the lager cellar at 4-8 °C (the whole room was cooled, not individual tanks) to the brewhouse, removing the spent grain from the lauter tun (“Austrebern”). Austrebern means that you’d climb into the lauter tun, had to remove the remaining spent grains, and clean the lauter tun using a water hose. I don’t know how warm and wet it was in the lauter tun, but I think quite a bit over 40 °C. After that you’d have to go back to the lager cellar.

But there were also rituals that don’t exist anymore. As an apprentice your first work duty of the day was to take a sample from the lager tank (“zwickeln”). Beer from the tank was filled in a 1 liter jug, the jug including content was warmed to a pleasant drinking temperature, a bit warmer than in pubs and restaurants. After the beer has reached its drinking temperature, it was drank directly from the jug together by all attendees. As far as I can remember, this was the job with the greatest responsibility for an apprentice, the beer couldn’t be too cold or too warm, and we didn’t put a thermometer into the beer. These drinking rituals or the cold meals together on Friday afternoons were pleasant experiences that caused a feeling of togetherness. During my “Lehrzeit”, the terms “Ausbildung” and “Auszubildender” were legally only introduced in 1971, I also tried to brew beer at home, and we drank the results within the family, but it wasn’t convincing enough to try it a second time. Most of my work during the apprenticeship was cleaning lager tanks and fermentation vessels, putting up and stacking kegs, and occasionally polishing the copper vessels in the brewhouse. What have I learned? The basics of the malting and brewing process, that Germans drink a lot and make the best beer. The Belgians (North Rhine-Westphalia, as is well known, is bordering on Belgium) do absolutely terrible things, use unmalted grains and sugar, you get headaches from that. In Bavaria other beer was brewed, at that time Bavaria was still deemed as very backwards and exotic, and we had our Kölsch. I accomplished my exams, both the practical and the theoretical part, with “Good” [the second-best grade in the German school system], I just looked at my school report. If I remember correctly, I was one of the best apprentices.

Which beer styles did you brew at Sünner? What was the most popular?

We mostly brewed Kölsch, occasionally also Pils, and at that time very seldomly also Export and “Malzbier”. Kölsch was the most popular beer type, measured by the drinking rituals mentioned earlier the other beers didn’t exist. What was maybe also interesting, we mostly produced keg beer, the share of bottled beer was tiny. At that time Küppers-Kölsch (belonging to Wickühler), the market-dominating bottle beer brand, wasn’t available in kegs or only in such small amounts that I never noticed it.

You once told me that Pils was a very common beer style in Cologne. How did it get to that, and why and when did Kölsch become synonymous with beer in Cologne?

Already during my apprenticeship it was whispered to me that Kölsch didn’t use to be the main beer. I did some research on this, here are my findings and assessments.

1906, Sünner brewery released a pale top-fermented beer to the market, that started to be called Kölsch from 1918 on. Until Kölsch would become a market-dominating drink in Cologne, it took a few decades, initially it was a niche product. In the 1950’s the ratio of Pils to Kölsch was 80 : 20, today Kölsch has a market share of 90%. This development started after World War 2, and I think it’s related to a clever marketing strategy of the small to medium-sized “craftmanship” breweries. In the 1970’s there were 27 breweries in the Cologne region, one of them a large industrial brewery. The Kölsch beer style changed in the 1950’s to a less-hopped, highly attenuated, foam-stable beer. According to literature, top-fermented beers in Cologne before World War 2 were even dry-hopped. Back to the marketing strategy, the Cologne brewers understood to counter the Pils trend with a top-fermented copy, and to load the beer with regionalism. Why this local identity in Cologne plays such a big role would be a topic for a socio-cultural essay. Today there are still nine Kölsch breweries in the Cologne brewery organization, one of them, the Haus Kölscher Brautradition (Radeberger-Gruppe) which brews 11 Kölsch brands.

What constitutes a Kölsch was defined in 1985 in the Kölsch-Konvention. Do you remember whether Kölsch used to be brewed differently, or were there other deviations to what Kölsch is officially since 1985?

I wouldn’t call it different, but the taste of Kölsch has become more uniform. I remember that earlier, beginning of the 1970’s for example, Päffgen tasted somewhat more bitter and wasn’t as heavily filtered. According to the information that I’ve got, Kölsch nowadays is predominantly hopped with Perle, there is one maltster (Schill) that produces a Kölsch malt, all that contributes to the unification. The Kölsch-Konvention limited Kölsch brewing to Cologne and breweries outside Cologne that had traditionally brewed Kölsch before the Konvention has taken effect, like for example Bischof Kölsch in Hürth (1000 hectoliters/year) or Erzquell Brauerei Bilstein (100,000 hectoliters/year), and thus prevented possible copies of Kölsch through large breweries outside of Cologne. However all the upcoming brewpubs couldn’t call their Kölsch a Kölsch anymore, as it was unfiltered. Braustelle Köln (an early microbrewery, from 2001) advertises their Kölsch (which is not allowed to be a Kölsch) like that: “Helios is a Wieß, the original form of Kölsch, brewed from 100% barley malt, top-fermented and hop-accentuated.”

When homebrewers discuss Kölsch, often “Wieß” as unfiltered, cloudy beer style that is close to Kölsch is mentioned. What did it use to be in the past, respectively what is it like today, was it a niche product, or relatively common?

In the 19th century, there existed up to 100 home breweries with attached pubs in Cologne, there Wieß was drunk, a cloudy unfiltered beer with a share of wheat malt in the grist. This Wieß (in the Cologne dialect “wieß” means “white”) is considered to be the predecessor of modern Kölsch. Braustelle and Gasthausbrauerei Heller, which nowadays also offer bottled beer, brew Wieß. The assumption that it would have been the most common beer in Cologne is misguided, though. At the end of the 19th century the number of home breweries went down by a lot, and several large breweries arose which brewed bottom-fermented beer types like Bräu, Pilsener, Export, Märzen, Bockbier, Lager, Brillant and Kristall.

When you brew Kölsch at home, do you have a standard recipe, or do you vary your recipes? What does a good Kölsch recipe look like for you?

I mostly vary, as a homebrewer I’m not forced to brew a consistent product, and so I always try to optimize. The guideline for the optimization of Kölsch is to brew a beer with high drinkability that still has a character on its own. So far, I’ve always used floor-malted Weyermann Pilsner and wheat malt, sometimes also CaraHell, more recently also Vienna malt and chit malt. Regarding hops, I’ve always tried something new, like Liberty, Perle, Saaz and most recently Bramling Cross, most often in combination with Hallertauer Mittelfrüh. I brew Kölsch with WLP029 yeast. There’s also a Kölsch yeast from Wyeast, and from Schnapsbrenner you can buy a Kölsch yeast from yeast bank Weihenstephan.

Are there any other tips that you can recommend to homebrewers that want to brew Kölsch?

Bestmalz offers a Heidelberger malt and Heidelberger wheat malt with a very low color, between 2.5 and 3 EBC, I would like to try that. Both White Labs and Wyeast specify a recommended minimum temperature of 18 °C for the yeast. I wouldn’t ferment at a higher temperature than that. Fermentation temperature in Kölsch breweries is usually at 14 °C, at most 16 °C. According to an article by Dipl.Ing. Heinrich Becker, “Technologischer Werdegang des Kölsch seit 1900” on the website of the brewers organization of Cologne, pitching temperature is between 11 and 13 °C, and the racking temperature between 12 and 15 °C. The yeasts by Wyeast and White Labs are purported to be yeast from Cologne breweries, so they should be able to deal with these temperatures.