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History

More about the Brewing Commune in Freistadt

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Alistair Reece recently blogged about brewing communes in Bohemia during the 19th century. As we had a brief exchange about this topic, I thought it would be worth looking more closely into the history of Braucommune Freistadt, the last remaining brewing commune in Austria.

The history of the brewery in Freistadt is quite a fascinating one: officially founded in 1777 (we’ll get to that later), its company structure is a remnant of how old brewing rights used to be organized. As Alistair mentioned in his blog, another remnant is the Zoigl tradition in the Oberpfalz, but it has survived in a slightly different way.

As someone who has been socialized as a beer drinker in Upper Austria, everyone just knew about Freistädter brewery and what makes them unique: the company is owned by the real estate owners of the Old Town of Freistadt (i.e. what’s within the city walls), company shares are tied to specific houses, not their owners, and the owners of these houses still have an “Eimerrecht” (lit. “bucket right”, where the Eimer, about 56 litres, was an old measure for liquids such as beer), which nowadays means that the brewery pays out dividends.

The city of Freistadt has had the so-called “mile right” since 1363, that forced everyone up to a mile (longer than a modern mile; the 17th century definition in Austria was roughly 7.58 km but it may have been even longer as the mile right apparently extended up to Kerschbaum which is more than 9 km away from Freistadt) to have to buy their wine, mead and beer from Freistadt, no brewing on site was allowed. This was a powerful privilege, and guaranteed the citizens of Freistadt income from their beer brewing.

Speaking of the brewing itself, this was originally something that was done at home at the time. For practical reasons, the brewing was not necessarily done in the households, but in separate brew houses. In 1525, Freistadt had 12 dedicated brew houses, in 1637 still 5. One house was then set up as a dedicated white beer brew house (white beer was popular through the influence of Bohemian White Beer). From 1687 onwards, Freistadt only had two brew houses: the white brew house which was owned by the city and the brown brew house which was owned by the citizens. Every citizen had brewing rights, the amount of which was determined by the value of their house and noted in the city’s house registry.

Some houses were excluded from these brewing rights, either because they didn’t belong to citizens or because they were built much later (you couldn’t just buy yourself into it by building a new house within the city walls). Particular houses that were excluded were those owned by the church, which included one house (no. 11) which originally had brewing rights but was then bought by the church and donated to the Piarist religious order, thus losing that right, as well as the local school that was founded by the church. Houses owned by the city also didn’t have brewing rights for the brown brew house, which included the town hall, a tower of the city walls, the local city barracks, and the white brew house (well, it did have brewing rights, but they were separate from the citizens’ brewing rights); the same applied to houses owned by the state or nobility (e.g. the local salt authority building).

Before the new brew house was built, the brown brew house was also rented out, regularly for periods of 3 years. The tenants had to take on quite a bit of risk, they had to pay in a substantial deposit, and they had a number of responsibilities: the quality of the beer, they had to deliver Germ (baking yeast) to the local bakers (a strong indicator that the beer was top-fermented), they had to take care of selling the spent grains, they had to pay the brewer, the brewing workers, the coopers and the beer transporters. But they also had certain privileges: they were allowed to export beer on their own, and they were allowed to confiscate as contraband any beer or cider (Most) imported by innkeepers, of which they were allowed to keep 50%.

As for the ingredients, some of the barley was grown by the citizens themselves, while more barley was bought from local farmers around the city, and occasionally, when the local supply was used up, even from Bohemian cities such as Budweis/České Budějovice and Krumau/Český Krumlov with which Freistadt has had a close trade relationship. Hops were grown locally (Mühlviertel, the part of Upper Austria north of the river Danube, has historically been a minor hop growing region), but sometimes also brought in from as far as Saaz via Krumau traders.

The decision to build a new brewhouse was made for several reasons: the brown brew house was basically falling to bits and constantly needed repairs done, having an old brewery within the city walls always brought with it the danger of fire, the experience with renting it out hasn’t always been great and had caused some damages to the citizens in the past, and fear of competition (Bohemian beer from the North, beer from Linz from the South) and a possible loss of the exclusive “mile right” that required a consolidation and rationalization in the production of the local beer.

A precondition to build a new brewery was that the citizens had to buy the old white brew house including the brewing rights. One original idea was that that brew house would get modernized and the brown beer brewing would get moved there, but the alternative was to build an entirely new building outside the city walls. After some negotiations, the buying contract between the citizens and the city was finalized on December 31, 1770, when building works for a new brewery had already begun.

Building the brewery itself was a slow process, and it took 10 years until the brewery was completed. Where does the supposed founding date of 1777 come from then? That year was when the building works were the most active, and when most of the building was completed. The main gate of the brewery building bears the year 1777 because of it.

The old brew houses were emptied and equipment was moved over to the new brew house in 1780. Some of the old coppers were sold to the local copper smith to turn them into new coppers for the brewery. The white beer brew house was sold in 1781, and the buyer with his new house was admitted as a citizen of Freistadt, receiving the transferred brewing rights from the old brown beer brew house of 30 Eimer.

At what scale did this new brewery operate? For the early years, this is hard to tell, but we know from an 1886 ad that the brewery was selling a 48 hectolitre copper pan, an iron coolship of the same volume and a sparger “due to the conversion to machine operation”. From brewing statistics of the same time, we also know that the brewery was brewing about 10,000-11,000 hectolitres of beer a year, which pans out to 1 batch a day on 4 to 5 days a week. With that amount of brewing, they were considered a medium-sized brewery for Upper Austria. Other industrial breweries, like Dreher in Schwechat, brewed at an entirely different scale at the same time, around 450,000 hl per year. For Freistädter brewery, it was obviously good enough to satisfy the demand of the local market. A shift in production size seem to have happened in the 1890s, when the annual amount went from 11,150 hl in 1892 up to 19,861 hl in 1898. Up to 1930, this annual amount remained about the same (most likely interrupted by brewing restrictions during World War 1), at roughly 20,000 hl per year.

Ironically, the Braucommune in Freistadt was only added to the company registry at the commercial court in Linz in 1895. This registration clearly listed which house numbers were included as shareholders. It even very clearly says “Company owner is a society of the respective owners of the following houses located in Freistadt: 1, 2, 3, 4, […]”, cementing that the company ownership has been bound to the houses, not the citizens.

Nowadays, Freistädter brewery has the status of a local brewery serving the local market, brewing beer that generally has a good reputation. Distribution is limited, and within Austria, is mainly limited to Mühlviertel (i.e. Upper Austria north of the river Danube), a few major cities of Upper Austria including Linz, and then Vienna, Austria’s capital. As for the annual production volume, it has grown in recent years: for 2013, the brewery reported 65,000 hl per year, but by the end of 2018, more than 100,000 hl per year had been brewed.

Fun fact: thanks a former work colleague of mine who lives in Freistadt (though outside the city walls), I visited the brewery a few times in 2007/2008, for a monthly event called “Abpiff” (lit. blowing the final whistle) at the brewery: for a modest fee of €8, you would get a snack and about 2 hours time to pour (and drink!) as much beer as you wanted from gravity-dispensed serving casks (designated drivers were of course provided with non-alcoholic drinks). This continued until the final whistle was blown, and no more new serving casks were tapped. According to my former work colleague, this wasn’t just an event for the local beer lovers to get together, but also an opportunity for the brewery to try out new beers and one-offs. I loved the concept of it, and whenever The Event™ is over, I’d love to go back to it.

(As a source for this article, I mainly used the 1937 book 160 Jahre Braucommune Freistadt as well as various statistics from Gambrinus, the Austrian “brewing and hop newspaper”)

History

Who was Meindl?

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People who have read my book about Vienna Lager will probably remember the rather formative trip of Anton Dreher to England and Scotland. He went on that journey with Gabriel Sedlmayr as well as two other people, Georg Lederer from Nuremberg and a guy only mentioned by his surname, Meindl, and that he was a brewer’s son from Braunau. At the time of writing the book, I couldn’t find out who that Meindl guy was, and I didn’t really bother as he didn’t seem to have any further influence on Anton Dreher’s brewing experiments and ventures. But recently, my thoughts kept coming back to him, and I decided to find out more who Meindl was.

Searching for beer brewers named Meindl from Braunau first got me to a list of members of the “association for the support and promotion of industry and commerce in Inner and Upper Austria”, listing a “Meindl Georg”, a “civil beer brewer” from Braunau. So we now have a first name, Georg, that should help us quite a bit more.

(in case you’re confused, it’s an Austrian practice to sometimes list the surname before the first name; I myself didn’t realize this was strange until German colleagues of mine commented on it)

My first findings when searching for that name weren’t particularly cheerful, though: Georg Meindl, brewer from Braunau, was put under legal guardianship in July 1840 because of his “proven stupidity”. It’s not clear when this ended or what the exact root cause for this court decision was. At least in 1847 though, he was clearly active as a brewer and seemingly worked on technical improvements to his brewery, when he presented a “beer mashing apparatus” (likely a mash stirrer) constructed according to an “English method” at an industrial exhibition in Linz.

While still working as a beer brewer, Meindl’s personal interests seem to have turned more towards breeding animals, though: he was actively involved in organizing the agricultural fair in Braunau, providing space for the festivities both on his land and in his inn. He also participated in 1855 in the exhibition and prize competitions, showing his Cochin, Brazilian and English breeds of chicken, and placing fourth for a bull of his. At the agricultural exhibition in Linz in 1858, he also exhibited Essex pigs.

In an index of businesses of Upper Austria from 1865, we also see Georg Meindl listed as one of 11 active brewers in Braunau. Beyond that, there’s not much more to be found. When we continue to search further, it seems like we might going full circle: in August 1888, Hermann Meindl, a brewer’s son from Braunau, was put under legal guardianship due an “officially determined mental disorder”. The legal guardian put in place by the court was his brother, Georg Meindl, a railway station restaurateur. Both were likely sons of Georg Meindl, the brewer.

Today, Meindl brewery in Braunau doesn’t exist anymore. I have not been able to find out when exactly Georg Meindl’s brewery closed down. As a brewer and businessman, Georg Meindl certainly must have been successful enough, but unlike his travel companions to England in 1833, his work did not have the same impact on the beer industry.

Recipes

Interpreting a 1960s Bavarian Dunkel Recipe

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Whenever somebody asks me how I would brew a Bavarian Dunkel, I have to respond that I never actually brewed one on my own. Instead, I rather point to an authentic modern-ish recipe from a Bavarian brewery from the 1960s.

A few years ago, Urban Chestnut Brewery from St. Louis, MO posted a sheet from 1967 brewing records of Brauerei Erharting in Bavaria. Their brewmaster, Florian Kuplent, had originally apprenticed there, and most likely got his hands on these records that way.

The recipe is interesting because there are a lot of assumptions baked into it that you’d only know if you had an idea about Bavarian brewing. It also challenges conventional wisdom that Bavarian brewers would just brew their Dunkel from 100% Munich malt. At least in the 1960s, this was not true anymore for this recipe.

This recipe for Export Dunkel starts with the grist: it simply says 1350 kg of malt, of that 50 kg pale malt (lit. “Hellmalz”), 50 kg CaraMunich (originally CaraMünch, the German brand name), 10 kg roasted malt (Farbmalz in the original). What the recipe doesn’t say is the rest. The use of Munich malt (likely on the darker side) was simply implied from the type of beer that was being brewed. The pale malt was most likely a Pilsner malt. That way, we end up with a grist like that:

  • 1240 kg Munich malt (91.9%)
  • 50 kg Pilsner malt (3.7%)
  • 50 kg CaraMunich malt (3.7%)
  • 10 kg roasted malt, e.g. Carafa special II (0.7%)

Why the Pilsner malt? I can only speculate, but I assume that this might have been formulated under the assumption that the Munich malt had so little diastatic power that it would only self-convert and not fully convert the (enzymatically inactive) caramel and roasted malts.

The next part is the mash. It starts with doughing in the malt and letting it sit for 20 minutes at 35°C. This was typically done to ensure that all the malt was fully hydrated. Nowadays, this would be ensured through a pre-masher that would combine water and malt just before it goes into the mash tun.

Then, the mash was heated up to 52°C within 15 minutes. The mash tun must have been heatable.

The recipe then further mentions to mashes. For the first mash, 22.5 hl of mash were pumped into the kettle while the stirrer was running. In the kettle, the mash the underwent a multi-step mash on its own: 10 minutes protein rest at 52°C while a bit of wort was drawn off (Malzauszug) and kept in the Grant, 10 minutes saccharification at 60°C, 10 minutes saccharification at 65°C, 70°C until iodine test was negative and the mash was fully converted (normally 20 to 25 minutes) and then 75°C for another 5 minutes.

This step mash prior to boiling the mash is done to maximize the use of the enzymes that will eventually be destroyed, and to convert as much starch as possible, so that the intense boil will only extract some more starches to be converted in the second mash.

Then the mash was brought to a boil, boiled for 35 minutes and then mixed back into the main mash which then reached a temperature of 65°C.

Then the second mash started: 23 to 23.5 hl of mash were again pumped into the kettle, rested for 10 minutes at 65°C, then again rested at 70°C until iodine test was negative, and then 10 minutes more at 75°C. It was then boiled for 25 minutes, and mixed back into the main mash to reach a temperature of 74°C.

The wort that was drawn off must have then been mixed back in, the recipe is not fully clear on this, though. I don’t know exactly why, but I assume that this was done to retain some amylase enzymes and ensure that some end up in the mash just before lautering to help convert any last few bits of starch (even though this is unlikely given how thorough the extraction must have been through 2 long decoction boils).

Then lauter and sparging happened to collect about 100 hl of sweet wort which was then boiled for 2.5 hours. The resulting amount of wort at the end would have been 78 to 79 hl with an OG of 12.7 to 12.8 °P.

The hopping schedule looked like this:

  • beginning of the boil: 4 kg Hallertauer hops
  • 1 hour after beginning of the boil: 4 kg Hallertauer hops
  • 45 minutes before the wort is pumped off the kettle: 3 kg Spalter hops

The last one is particularly important: the timing does not depend on the end of the boil, but rather on when the wort is moved from the kettle to the chillers. None of the hop additions come with any indication of alpha acid content. There is one source though where we can get an estimation: international hop trader Barth Haas has its full range of historic hop reports online, both in German and English. The 1966-1967 report in English at least reports the “bitter value Wöllner” for some hops: 6.2 for Hallertauer hops and 6.6 for Spalter hops, both from the 1966 crop.

This “bitter value Wöllmer” was an early approach to estimate the bittering quality of hops. In particular, this value is calculate as alpha acid % + beta acid % / 9. For both Hallertauer and Spalter hops, we can assume that the alpha acid content is roughly the same as the beta acid content.

6.1 = x + x / 9 and solving for x gets us an alpha acid content of about 5.5% for Hallertauer hops.

6.6 = x + x / 9 and solving for x gets us an alpha acid content of about 5.9% for Spalter hops.

Bear in mind that these are just estimations, but should nevertheless give us a general idea about whether these were more high or low alpha acid for the variety.

And this is how you interpret a 1960s German recipe for Bavarian Dunkel.

Beer Styles

2021, The Year of Vienna Lager?

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Yesterday, I half-jokingly tweeted that two UK breweries best known for brewing German-style beers brewing a collaboration Vienna Lager is proof that 2021 is the year of Vienna Lager.

This actually made me reflect a bit on what happened since I published my book about the beer style. The book itself was very well received. I really feel like it filled a gap, and cleared up a lot of confusion about the style’s history. Of course, it takes a while to spread that knowledge, and I still come across some of the old myths around Vienna Lager that I was able to dispel.

Red Willow Brewery were the first ones to contact me about their own Vienna Lager. They had recently brewed one (named Meaningless, because of the Ultravox lyrics “This means nothing to me / Oh, Vienna” and all their beer names end with -less), and then found out about my book which they liked a lot. They were happy to send me a sample, and it was a good beer. Maltiness and bitterness were on the low end of the scale, but it’s certainly the kind of beer of which I’d have many more in one session, and thus in my opinion represented the spirit of Vienna Lager, to be an easily drinkable, flavourful beer that you can just enjoy with no fuzz.

One of the more surprising requests got to me just after Christmas when Rune Lindgreen of People Like Us reached out to me to get input on a Vienna Lager recipe. They were in the process of developing a coffee-infused Vienna Lager, certainly not the most traditional approach to the style, and wanted to get their base recipe counter-checked. I didn’t really have to do much, as the recipe looked fairly solid (I won’t go into details, but mostly Vienna malt as base malt, with small amounts of a few specialty malts). Then COVID hit me really bad, and it took me a while to recover from that, but a few months ago, I received several cans of the beer. Even though I’m not much of a coffee drinker, I was really impressed by this rather unusual interpretation: the base beer tasted exactly like I’d expect a modern Vienna Lager, some maltiness, balanced hop bitterness, well-attenuated, all with a distinct Vienna malt character, while the coffee added a particular roasted bitterness with some fruitiness that was enjoyable even for me.

By far the biggest surprise though was when Westerham Brewery from Kent got in touch with me. They had read my book, and took this line as a challenge:

As of 2020, no maltings is known to produce a Vienna malt using a historic variety such as Haná or Chevallier.

They got in touch with Crisp Malt, a traditional Norfolk-based maltings that still employs traditional floor malting techniques. In recent years, Crisp Malt has put considerable work in reestablishing old heritage barley varieties and turning them into quality malts. One of these heritage varieties is Haná, the old Moravian barley variety that was hailed the most in Austria for its brewing qualities. Crisp Malt had previously released a Haná Pilsner malt, and so they had the resources to also create a Haná Vienna malt. Long story short, Westerham brewed a Vienna Lager from it, and Crisp Malt started selling the malt as part of their small batch series. While I didn’t do much other than research and write a wee book, I’m full of joy to have inspired a brewery and a maltings to collaborate and produce a malt and a beer based on what I’ve written. I think it also speaks for the beer style that not only people are enthusiastic about it, but that even businesses are willing to take on some risk in recreating it true to the historic original.

Earlier this year, I was able to visit my family in Austria, which also gave me the chance to try out Austrian supermarket Vienna Lagers. That’s right, ever since two large Austrian breweries, Ottakringer and Schwechater (actually the original brewery where Vienna Lager was invented, nowadays owned by Heineken), released modern recreations of the style, Vienna Lager is a thing again back in its country of origin. I tested this by simply going to a local supermarket and picking two 4-packs of canned Vienna Lager. Austrian Märzen (similar to Bavarian Helles, but with a more robust bitterness) and Radler are still dominating Austrian supermarket beer aisles, but the fact that I can get two different mainstream brands in a regular supermarket shows that there is a niche for the style that goes way beyond craft beer.

Both beers are very similar: some maltiness, very well-attenuated, balanced bitterness, good body, a pale amber colour that is just a tad darker than e.g. Pilsner Urquell, and incredibly easy drinking and refreshing. The Schwechater version even features a picture of Anton Dreher, the inventor of the style, together with an extremely brief description of the style’s history. A tiny bit of beer history education.

Speaking of beer history education, Craft Beer & Brewing published a great article by Jeff Alworth summarizing the history of Vienna Lager, as well my historic reconstruction of the original Vienna Lager as it was brewed in the 1870s. On top of that, another book touching the subject of Vienna Lager was published, unfortunately in German only. Die Geschichte der Brauerei Schwechat, co-authored by Schwechater brewmaster Andreas Urban, which dissects the history of Schwechater brewery and the Dreher family in greatest detail, even better than my own book, with a large amount of previously unpublished pictures. It very much focuses on the brewery itself, though, so if you’re interested in Vienna Lager itself or don’t understand German, I can still recommend my own book. 😉

My views may be skewed, as I’ve been immersed in the whole topic of Vienna Lager for quite a while now, but at least my impression is that there is indeed an increased interest in the beer style. I’m very glad about that, as I still think it’s a fantastic beer. Donzoko’s and Braybrooke’s collaboration is just the latest interpretation of the style, but I’m sure it won’t be the last. In the “German Brewing” Facebook group, pictures of both home-brewed and commercially brewed Vienna Lager are posted at least semi-regularly, people on various social media platforms contact me to tell me about their latest home-brewed examples, and even I, together with a friend, recently brewed a 10° Abzugsbier version (well, it turned into a 11° beer as we overshot our expected efficiency) which is currently lagering. So, 2021 may indeed be the year of Vienna Lager.

Brewing, Recipes

My Summer Beer 2021

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Due to a rather bad episode of COVID, I hadn’t brewed a beer since October 2020, a Helles, which, when I bottled it in April this year, didn’t properly bottle-condition, and instead became an oxidized mess.

So this beer was a fresh start, my first home-brewed beer in a long time, and just something I wanted to have for myself. When I developed that recipe, I got inspired by two things:

First, the Czech Republic’s culture for lower-alcohol beers, with original gravities of 10°P or lower, and moderate amounts of alcohol of 4% ABV and lower.

Second, a particular Leichtbier that I had at Mahrs Bräu in Bamberg, which they call Sommerpils: it’s a very bitter beer at only 2.8% ABV and 7.2°P OG, and the first time I realized that highly hopped beers with low ABV can work really well.

After some thinking, I came up with an idea: I wanted to create a Czech-inspired 8° beer, with a good amount of bitterness coming from a late hop addition at flameout. One particular hop variety that I really liked in the past was Brewers Gold. I had used it in a Golden Ale previously, and it just gave off lovely citrusy notes with a fruitiness that some describe as blackcurrant.

But why would I call it Czech-inspired? First of all, the OG: 8°P is something that you would in the Czech Republic more often that in e.g. Germany. German Leichtbiere are typically even lower than that.

Second, the grist: I decided to stick to just Bohemian Pilsner malt and a small ~3% addition of a dark caramel malt, in my case CaraBohemian.

Third, the mashing regime: I’m a huge fan of double decoction. Even though it takes a long time, it has given me very good results in previous beers. In particular, I’m using an enhanced double decoction scheme that basically skips protein rest or keeps it to a very short amount time. Decoction mashing is also extremely common in Czech brewing.

Fourth, the bittering hops: I used Saaz hops simply because I had them available, they’re reliable and suitable for what I wanted to achieve. As aroma hops, as mentioned above, I got Hallertau-grown Brewers Gold.

Let’s quickly compare this to the PGI regulation for the term “Czech Beer”: at least 80% of the sugar in the wort needs to be from malt from Czech barley varieties (which I assume Weyermann’s Bohemian Pilsner malt should fulfill), at least 30% of alpha acids from hops must come from Czech hop varieties (I’m using Saaz for bittering), local water must be used (I do that), bottom-fermenting yeast must be used, and decoction mashing must be used. I’d say I’m pretty close, except I don’t brew in the Czech Republic, nor do I attempt to get any PGI Czech Beer certification for my home-brewed beer. Nevertheless, the regulation is still a good indicator of what’s considered to be traditional or necessary for Czech beer, and therefore also serves as a good template for Czech-style or Czech-inspired beers.

Grist, hop additions, yeast and basic numbers.

The brew day itself was relatively uneventful, except for a slightly higher than expected OG of 9.4°P. The 8° beer became a 9° beer. I can cope with that.

I chilled the wort, pitched plenty of Lallemand Diamond Lager yeast, and just let it ferment. When the beer was fully attenuated, I decided not to bother with lengthy lagering, but instead just slowly lowered the temperature down to -1°C, kept it there for a few days, and then bottled the beer.

My Czech-inspired beer is now bottle-conditioned and ready to be consumed. When I first poured it, I was surprised about how hazy it was. Even after several more days in the fridge, it still remains hazy. I blame hop haze from the flame-out addition, but to be honest, I don’t actually care. Because the beer itself tastes great.

It’s got a full body, at a FG of 2.2°P, and with 3.9%ABV, it’s a very drinkable beer with a robust bitterness that lingers on. The Brewers Gold hops provide a nice citrusy flavour, but its additional fruitiness in the aroma combined with a slightly lower than expected carbonation (my fault) gives the beer an English Bitter vibe. Brewers Gold was originally an English hop variety, and it still shows in this bottom-fermented beer.

All in all, I’m really happy with the result. It’s a nice, refreshing beer perfect for a hot summer. I still have ~17 litres in my fridge that likely won’t last till the end of summer.

And finally, a photo of what the beer actually looks like. An alternative title for this blog post that I had in mind earlier was “my crispy boi is also a hazy boi”.

History

The Struggle Between Top- And Bottom-Fermented Beer In Cologne

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This was supposed to be an article about Wiess, the legendary white beer predecessor of Kölsch. In a discussion with my friend Ben a few months ago we came to the topic of how little is actually known about Wiess and its history. So I tried my hands at researching it, and couldn’t really find anything through my usual sources. My next step was to go the Schultze-Bernd library at VLB Berlin, a vast collection of historic material about beer and brewing, curated by Gesellschaft für Geschichte des Brauwesens (GGB; lit. “Society for the History of Brewing”). I got to talk with their librarian, and she told me that she had done some research herself, but wasn’t really able to find much. I nevertheless tried to see what I could find. I didn’t find out much, either, but instead, I was able to dig up some interesting details about the history of brewing in Cologne during the 19th and early 20th century, including the struggle between top- and bottom-fermented beers in the city.

When the guilds were disbanded in Cologne in 1798 and the occupying French introduced freedom of trade, breweries in the city started exploding, from 52 in 1794 to 128 breweries in 1828. The city also grew massively, and the conflict from before the freedom of trade of outside brewers trying to sell their beer in Cologne was less noticeable as the demand in beer increased massively, as well. And while outside breweries were seen as a nuisance in the 1830s, they were of little significance: in 1839, only 2190 hl of Bavarian beer were imported into the city, from places like Bamberg, Kulmbach and Würzburg.

The first attempt of brewing bottom-fermented beer in Cologne was conducted in 1831 by a Bavarian Jewish brewer named Rothschild. The brewery failed, though, and was turned into a sugar factory only 6 years later. The second bottom-fermenting brewery was owned by a brewer called Ehemann, and formed the foundation for the later Adler brewery. In total, bottom-fermenting only grew slowly in these times, with two breweries in 1850, and four in 1869.

A major issue for them was to build reliably cool lagering cellars. Already the top-fermenting breweries had similar issues. To keep the cool air somewhat in, beer cellars were only opened during the night. Some of the beer still got sour. When it was an early stage of souring, it actually was a popular drink, and got sold under the name Steckenalt. Beer that got too sour was unrecoverable, and sometimes had to be poured out, causing substantial losses to some brewers.

Proper ice cellars only started being built in the 1850s, and in winters with very little ice, ice was brought to Cologne from as far as Norway.

From 1870 to 1900, the beer market was consolidated, and the number of breweries fell from 135 to just 68. This was due to technological improvements in beer brewing, giving an advantage to the more mechanized and automated breweries and those who could produce their own ice through the use of artificial refrigeration. Bottom-fermented beers were so successful that even some of the largest top-fermenting breweries in Cologne switched to bottom-fermentation. For some time it looked like top fermentation in Cologne was doomed.

Interestingly, the smaller brewers managed to overcome their crisis by introducing some automation and refrigeration on a smaller scale, while the growth of bottom fermentation stopped around 1900, and large breweries now faced the issue that their breweries were oversized for the production amounts, causing increased production costs.

This actually gave the small top-fermenting breweries a slight advantage: they managed to slightly cool their cellars by putting ice in containers hanging down from the ceiling, producing the perfect conditions to store top-fermented beers. Through that, they got rid of much of the dangers of beer spoilage, could brew weaker beers even during the summer (that otherwise would have spoilt), had a shorter turnaround time on their beers (virtually no lagering), and were able to achieve a more consistent quality.

Beer taxation was reformed in the early 20th century, and that had some impact on brewing in Cologne as well: the brewing tax law of 1906 introduced consistent beer taxation for all of North Germany. It contained some provisions that were helpful to the small breweries of Cologne, in particular a progressive tax based on the amount of malt used by the brewery. The law also introduced a prohibition of “malt surrogates” (such as unmalted grains, sugar or other starch sources) for bottom-fermented beers. Suddenly, the large bottom-fermenting breweries couldn’t use some of their classic ingredients like rice, maize and sugar, which at the time were cheaper than malted barley. One local beer type in particular, Knuppbier, a bottom-fermented beer sweetened with sugar, couldn’t be brewed the same way and had to be switched to top fermentation, so some of the breweries had to set up separate top-fermenting brewing departments just for that beer type.

World War I changed everything again and brewing ingredients were strictly rationed. The malt surrogate prohibition for bottom-fermented beers was still in effect, while for top-fermented beers, artificial sweeteners, food colouring and non-beer-derived CO2 for carbonation were allowed. The restrictions were tightened several times which made brewing even weak beers entirely unprofitable, so several small breweries ceased operations.

The detrimental effect on top fermentation in Cologne was noticeable after the war: while in 1913, 41% of all the beer brewed in Cologne was still top-fermented, that share had dropped to just 6.7% in 1922. Of 53 top-fermenting breweries before the war, 29 had shut down after the war, while 4 had switched to bottom fermentation. The main reason why not more of these small breweries folded was often the direct connection of the brewery with a brewery tap, a pub of sorts that only sold that brewery’s beer as well as food, of course with the idea that people would drink even more if they had something to eat with it. These pubs were often set up to look rustic, which combined as their status as small Hausbrauerei gave it a certain charm that attracted the people of Cologne.

Of course, credit where credit is due: this article is mostly based on the PhD thesis of Hans Trinius at the University of Cologne, written in 1924. Not only does it give quite detailed insight into the brewing industry and its ups and downs from the 19th century up to ~1922 (it also contains lots and lots of statistics related to production, import&export, taxation, etc.), it also very obviously influenced a number of other books and publication surrounding the topic of beer and Cologne.

History

An Incomplete History of Schönramer’s Ownership

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Some time ago, my wife and I started collecting Steinkrüge, German-style stoneware mugs for beer drinking. I don’t know what exactly started our interest, but what played into it was a historic Steinkrug of Franziskaner-Leistbräu that I got to photograph for my most recent book about Vienna Lager.

Most recently, we managed to win an online auction for a historic Steinkrug of one of our favourite breweries, Brauerei Schönram located in the Bavarian municipality of Petting, in particular a small settlement of it called Schönram. The Steinkrug that we got said “Franz Köllerer & Cie Brauerei Schönram” on it. From Schönramer’s own history on their website, I knew that the Köllerer surname has been connected with the brewery since 1780, the brewery’s official year of foundation when Jakob Köllerer bought the place, and only changed shortly before World War 2 when a daughter from the Köllerer family, Lisa, got married to Alfred Oberlindober.

So who was Franz Köllerer, and what does “Franz Köllerer & Cie” mean anyway? That whole thing got me down a bit of a rabbithole when I checked all my usual sources to see what I was able to find.

The earliest person named Franz Köllerer that I was able to identify was Franz Seraphim Köllerer, born on Sept 14, 1839 in Schönram. The Köllerer family must have been reasonably wealthy, as Franz was able to attend grammar school in nearby Salzburg. Schönram and Salzburg had been well-connected for quite some time, as Schönram was located on postal routes between Salzburg and Munich as well as Salzburg and Regensburg. According to a 1815 post manual for the kingdom of Bavaria, the local postman in Schönram was a certain Anton Köllerer.

Another sign of Franz Köllerer’s wealth is how well-travelled he was. Not only can his name be found in public records that he stayed in Salzburg, Linz and Graz several times during the 1860s and 1870s, a book titled “Deutscher Parlaments-Almanach” (German Parliament Almanac) credited him with having travelled abroad to Hungary, the principalities along the river Danube, Turkey, Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt, Greece and Italy.

“Why would he be mentioned in such a book?”, you wonder. Very simple: because he got elected as Member of Parliament to the German Reichstag in Berlin in 1874, for the district of Rosenheim, a role in which he served until he stepped down in 1877. According to Salzburger Chronik in 1874, he was “not a studied man” but a well-known man with a “healthy heart and mind from the midst of the German people”.

During his time as brewery owner, Brauerei Schönram must have been at a reasonable level of modernization. In 1870, it is cited as only one of two breweries in the region to have any sort of automation going on. In particular, the brewery had a steam engine, which not only was used for the brew kit, but also for crushing the malt. The brewery used an annual amount of about 2000 Scheffel of barley. The amount of beer that could be brewed from a certain quantity of barley was strictly regulated in Bavaria at the time, so we can roughly estimate how much beer was brewed annually, and it must have been roughly 7000 to 8000 hl. This is remarkably consistent with Schönramer’s “official” history on their website, which states that between 1900 and the 1960s, the brewery steadily produced about 7000 hl of beer every year.

Half of the barley that the brewery used was from the area, the other half was imported from Innviertel (Upper Austria), Moravia and Hungary. The hops that were bought were from the Bavarian hop regions as well as Bohemia, and more than 50 Zentner (2500 kg) were used every year. From that we can also derive the rough hopping rate of the typical beer brewed at Schönram, at 3 to 3.5 g/l.

Franz Köllerer died on January 26, 1879, in Schönram.

I was also able to find out about another Franz Köllerer. Unlike the previous one, he was indeed a studied man, an alumnus of Weihenstephan brewing school in 1894/1895. When he joined the alumni club of “Weihenstephaner” in 1903, he was credited as brewery owner in Schönram. He died from a stroke in 1915, aged only 41, which would make his year of birth 1874 or 1875. I haven’t been able to find out about how he was related to Franz Seraphim Köllerer, but it wouldn’t be unlikely if he was his son.

Franz Köllerer wasn’t the only brewery owner at the time, though. We know this because on August 1, 1900, the firm “Franz Köllerer & Cie Brauerei Schönram” was registered as a partnership, with a total of five business partners: Franz Köllerer, Anton Riedler, his wife Maria Riedler, and Wilhelmine and Seraphine Köllerer, the latter two described as adult brewery owner daughters. Judging from Franz Köllerer’s age, Wilhelmine and Seraphine were likely Franz Seraphim’s daughters.

And this is where we have the exact company name that is also on our Steinkrug. This at the very least helps us date it to the year 1900 or later.

After a bit of searching, I finally also understood was the “& Cie” stood for, it was short for “Compagnie”, and was used as a suffix for a particular type of company that was comprised of more than two business partners (five in Brauerei Schönram’s case). Nowadays, the suffix “& Co” would be more common in Germany.

Another partner, Anton Riedler, died in 1923, but only a few years later, in 1926, a new business partner makes his appearance in historic sources. Rudolf Nebinger, an Austrian retired cavalry officer of the Landwehrulanenregiment 4 stationed in Olomouc and veteran of World War I at Austria-Hungary’s Eastern front, who got engaged to Elsa Köllerer in 1917. His armed forces service is better documented than his work as brewery owner: in a registry book of regimental officers in 1911, he appears as First Lieutenant, when he got engaged in 1917, he had been promoted to Rittmeister (the cavalry’s equivalent to Captain), and he retired at some point, presumably at the end of World War I, as Lieutenant Colonel.

As a brewery owner, Rudolf Nebinger was wealthy enough to pay for a 30 meter long plane hangar at the newly opened Bad Reichenhall airfield in 1926. He died on October 18, 1934, from a heart attack.

Besides the brewing business itself, the brewery also owned a number of tied hotels and pubs, as well as land. Abtsdorfersee, a lake with an island near Schönram, was sold by the state to the brewery owner in 1869 for 3300 Gulden. The brewery ran a kind of pub or hotel there, named “Seebad”, which sounds like it was part of a lido. It burned down in February 1924, but was rebuilt and reopened in May 1927.

Another location they owned, Hotel Krone in Freilassing, also fell victim to fire: in the night of March 25-26, 1922, a defective oven caused the building to catch fire. Even the fire brigade from nearby Salzburg had to come and help extinguish.

Hotel Bavaria in Bad Reichenhall was also owned by the brewery and opened in 1890. They also owned two local train station restaurants, one in Piding (sold in 1926 to business man Matthias Schöndorfer), the other one in Hammerau.

And that was all I was able to find out in a few days research. While not representing a complete history of Schönramer brewery, I was still able to highlight a few more details about the owners over time, and in particular, was able to shed some light on the particular text on our Steinkrug.

Brewing

A Conversion Chart Between Beer Colour Scales

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In a recent Twitter discussion about beer colour and colour scales, Ron Pattinson said how handy it would be to have a conversion chart between colour scales, ideally for Lovibond, SRM, EBC, Stammer (famously used by Professor Schwackhöfer in his 1876 analyses of beers sold in Vienna) and “Einheiten nach Brand”. In particular, the discussion revolved around the latter, as it’s one of the scales used in TGL 7764, East Germany’s industry standard for beer.

TGL 7764 is a particularly interesting industry standard, as it’s a rare example of beer styles getting standardized down to original gravity, bitterness, beer colour and even beer label colour and (in the case of Porter) microorganisms (Brettanomyces). And unlike style guidelines nowadays, like BJCP or the Brewers Association’s ones, this was actually prescriptive, i.e. it was compulsory for breweries in the GDR to follow these beer styles. I’m not aware of any other country doing that, but then, I haven’t really looked into it systematically.

Unfortunately, there does not seem to be a linear relationship between the Brand scale and EBC, so a simple conversion based on a few data points that we have from the 1980 and 1986 versions of TGL 7764 (which uses NFE, Brand, K450 and EBC) is not possible. Nevertheless, I’ve looked at the conversion between Stammer and the other common scales in the past and even put a simple table in my latest book, so I took this as a chance to at least present the data that I already have.

I will try and find out more about the Brand scale and if I do, I will update this table accordingly.

Conversion Formulas

Stammer to Lovibond: °L = Stammer / 1.38

Lovibond to SRM: SRM = 1.3546 × °L – 0.76

SRM to EBC: EBC = SRM * 1.97

Conversion Table

EBCSRMLovibondStammer
1.00.50.91.3
2.01.01.31.8
3.01.51.72.3
4.02.02.12.8
5.02.52.43.4
6.03.02.83.9
7.03.63.24.4
8.04.13.64.9
9.04.63.95.4
10.05.14.35.9
12.06.15.17.0
14.07.15.88.0
16.08.16.69.0
18.09.17.310.1
20.010.28.111.1
25.012.79.913.7
30.015.211.816.3
35.017.813.718.9
40.020.315.621.5
45.022.817.424.0
50.025.419.326.6
60.030.523.031.8
70.035.526.837.0
80.040.630.542.1
90.045.734.347.3
100.050.838.052.5
Cider

Review: Kertelreiter Ciders

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I used to drink a lot more cider than I do nowadays. Not necessarily quality stuff, though. Where I’m from in Austria, the state of Upper Austria, a local variety of cider call Most, made from apples and often a share of pears, was fairly common but not necessarily a refined drink.

Before I started home-brewing, the first fermented alcoholic beverage I made at home was a cider. I do enjoy the drink, but I don’t have it particularly often, not least because it’s not the kind of drink that is super popular in most of Germany. Like Austria, Germany does have pockets where local kinds of cider, Apfelwein, are common. Berlin is not one of them.

I’ve known Barry for a few years, just from the twitter beer bubble. Within the last few years, he documented on social media how he bought up patches of orchards and rejuvenated them, and of course, turned the harvested apples, pears and quinces into his own cider. Most recently, he turned this into a little business under the name Kertelreiter. I’ve been intrigued by the idea of locally produced, small batch, craft cider, so when Christmas season came around, I decided to not only gift a large mixed box of his ciders and perries to relatives of mine, but also to order a small mixed box for myself.

Barry asked me about my opinion about his ciders, so why not turn them into a wee blog post? I took myself time with trying all of the different ciders, having only one bottle per evening, with the exception of the last two on the list. I tasted each in the order in which I have them here.

First, I tried King of the Pippins. This one intrigued me the most as it’s made from just a single variety of apples, Goldparmäne in German, apparently one of the oldest cultivated apple varieties that still exist. It’s a dry, wild-fermented cider, and it showed: my first impression was lots of funk, which I like in beer, and I equally enjoyed it here. I noticed that it left a particularly dry feeling on my tongue, only had a relatively restrained fruitiness, and a very pleasant acidity. This tasted like a very classic cider, and totally unlike any of its industrial or mass-produced relatives. A great impression for the first sample.

Next up was Lacrimae Mundi, a cider barrel-aged in a Cabernet Sauvignon barrique. The difference to the first one was noticeable: while also dry, it was only slightly funky, but it had so much pleasant sharpness that reminded me of eating a Granny Smith apple. Less funk, lots of green apple fruitiness, and a particularly refreshing acidity. Again, a stunning cider.

Out of the Sun, fermented with Nottingham Ale yeast, presented itself fairly clean, dry, fruity, but also with a certain bitterness and a hint of booziness at the beginning that I didn’t quite enjoy as much. Still, a very nice cider.

Rehwasen, the next one, is made from a blend of seven apple varieties and one pear variety, and aged in an oak barrel. It was dry, with a bright acidity and some green apple. It got whiff of vinegar on the nose, which was actually not unpleasant. None of that vinegar could be tasted, so it might as well have been my senses playing a trick one me. And of course, there was a slight hint of oak.

After trying four different ciders, I went on to the perries, the first one being Levitation, fermented from 80% perry pears and 20% Conference pears. This one was very dry, with lots and lots of tannins. It actually made me want to chew the perry, and it definitely tasted like eating a perry pear. Absolutely fantastic, my favourite out of all of these.

The second perry, Pale Rider, has a wicked colour! This hazy perry comes in shades of pale pink, and is made of a 60/40 mix of perry and Conference pears. It was dry, more acidic and cleaner than Levitation, with not nearly as many tannins and some bitterness. Not quite a stunner as the previous one.

And finally, Holunderkin. This is a ciderkin, made from a second pressing of the pomace that had been rehydrated with water, wild-fermented and infused with elderflowers. It’s light, only 4% ABV, and comes across as quite acidic, leaning almost towards vinegar but in a really pleasant way! The elderflower aroma is very bright. My late grandmother told me that when they were young, they used to drink highly diluted vinegar as a refreshing drink, and this ciderkin reminded me of that: enough acidity, a really pleasant aroma from the elderflowers, I can imagine that to be the perfect drink for an extra-hot summer.

All in all, I’m really impressed by all the ciders and perries. All of them have unique characteristics on their own. This is what makes Barry’s selection of ciders so stunning: even though they are all made from a few simple ingredients, apples, pears and quince, pressed by hand, fermented and then matured for some time, they are all so remarkably different. Each of them seems carefully thought through and crafted, and every type of cider has something that really differentiates it from the rest of it. I’m absolutely impressed by the creativity that went into these 7 types of cider and perry, and can only recommend that you get yourself a box to try them as well.

Personally, my biggest surprise was how much of a joy it was to drink (and chew!) Levitation. My previous experience with perries was a bit underwhelming, so having a perry that was entirely different from what I’ve had before was kind of mind-blowing. Great stuff.

Beer Styles, History

About Dampfbier

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So, the story of Dampfbier (lit. steam beer) goes like this… a 19th century Bavarian brewer who didn’t have a permit to brew with wheat malt instead brewed one with only lightly kilned barley malt and fermented it with a Weißbier yeast. As the beer was vigorously fermenting, it looked like steam coming off the beer, hence the name “Dampfbier”.

The problem here is… if a beer style’s origin story sounds too good to be true, it probably is not actually rooted in history. Naive me would simply ask why other beers like Weißbier brewed with wheat malt wouldn’t be called the same name because supposedly, the yeast would ferment as vigorous. When we actually look at historic sources though, an entirely different picture is unveiled:

One very early mention of Dampfbier can be found in Landwirthschaftliches ConversationsLexicon für Praktiker und Laien from 1837. The meaning is a different one, though: it is used to describe beer that was brewed using steam coming from a steam boiler as a heat source for mashing as well as boiling the wort. In that particular case, brewing itself really seemed more of a side business, as most of the article is about how the steam boiler was used in a distillery in Galicia that made Polish distilled spirit from potatoes, supposedly what would be called wodka nowadays.

Philipp Heiss, former brewmaster at Spaten brewery and author of Die Bierbrauerei mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Dickmaischbrauerei (1853), added a small section in his book about brewing with steam. He sees two main applications: to use steam engines as a power source to steadily drive all kinds of machines in a brewery, and to use the steam as a direct or indirect heat source. He talked about several attempts to brew beer using steam, in particular brewer Zacherl (Paulaner) in Munich and Wanka in Prague, but classified both as less than successful. Heiss described Dampfbier as getting sour more quickly, and in total definitely wasn’t convinced about the technique.

Differences between beer brewed with steam vs. those with fire as heat source remained a hot topic in the decades to follow. In Dingler’s Polytechnisches Journal, a 1889 article lists a few experimental results. At Berlin’s Versuchs- und Lehranstalt für Brauerei (VLB), the amount of fuel required to brew beer using steam was determined to be significantly less than using direct firing, certainly one good argument in favour of steam. In addition, Schloßbrauerei in Schöneberg conducted an experiment to directly compare lager beer brewed using fire with beer of the same type brewed using steam, and the differences were negligible, “contrary to the widespread prejudice that Dampfbier was less full-bodied”.

I could go one like this, but when looking at historic sources, one thing becomes very clear very quickly: Dampfbier in the 19th century purely referred to beer brewed using steam as a heat source, not barley beers fermented with Weißbier yeast.

Even when looking at more recent sources about Dampfbier, it becomes very clear that very few such beers ever existed. A few prominent examples that I was able to find were Maisel’s Dampfbier (Michael Jackson briefly mentioned it as an “ale-like specialty”), Dampfbier from 1. Dampfbierbrauerei Zwiesel (which also seems to be the source of the supposed origin story of the Dampfbier style), and Borbecker Helles Dampfbier, for which is not even clear whether this is actually a top-fermented beer using Weißbier yeast. Besides these three beers, there’s not much around.

So, what can be said to vindicate the beer style? Beer brewed from pale barley malt and fermented using Weißbier yeast definitely existed and is well-documented. Friedrich Meyer mentioned Weißbier brewed from pale barley malt, sometimes with the addition of small amounts of wheat malt in his books, e.g. 1830 Die bayerische Bierbrauerei. The 1847 edition of this book even makes a distinction between weißes Gerstenbier (white barley beer) and weißes Weitzenbier (white wheat beer), but also explains that the term Weißbier commonly refers to the former.

So, in that sense, the beer style that some people nowadays call Dampfbier definitely existed. It just used to be called Weißbier (white beer), and has nothing to do with the historic understanding of Dampfbier as a beer brewed using steam. Personally, I’m just unhappy with the term as it is confusing, it gives credence to the too-good-to-be-true origin story, and it hides the much more complex history of white beers in Bavaria.