Category Archives: Beer Styles

Beer Styles

The Colour of Vienna Lager: Somebody Got It Right

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One question I’m often being asked is whether Vienna Lager from 100% Vienna malt is actually correct because when you look at beer style guidelines (most, often, the BJCP style guidelines), the minimum colour is often darker than what you’d get from just using Vienna malt.

This seems to have caused insecurities even among seasoned brewers who are otherwise well-informed about historic styles, as they sometimes get confronted by know-it-alls in their brewery taprooms.

One thing I always need to point out and remind people of is that style guidelines are primarily for competitions. They are neither prescriptive (there’s no beer police that will arrest you for brewing something out of style!) nor exhaustively descriptive. They define a subset to set the limits specifically for brewing competitions. You can brew whatever you want, even if it doesn’t match any specific style. That’s how new beer styles get created!

One criticism of mine in the context of Vienna Lager is that style guidelines (in particular BJCP) aren’t exhaustive enough to include historic Vienna Lager. That means that a historically accurate Vienna Lager probably wouldn’t fare well in a beer competition, most likely because it’s paler than what the style guidelines say.

But there’s hope on the horizon: when the Brewers Association (BA) released their 2024 style guidelines, I of course had to look at what they say about Vienna Lager. To my surprise, the minimum colour in the BA guidelines was 12 EBC, which is roughly what you get from 100% Vienna malt at 12-13°P OG. Finally somebody got it right.

I then noticed that this wasn’t even a recent change, so I looked at all the important specs (min/max OG, min/max FG, min/max ABV, min/max bitterness, min/max colour) from 2014 until 2024.

The change in minimum colour already happened in 2022 when it was set as 12 EBC, down from 20 EBC the year before. Before 2017, it was even as high as 24 EBC.

In terms of bitterness, this has always been the same (22-28 IBU), same for ABV (4.8-5.4%) and OG (11.4-13.8°P). Only in 2024, the FG range somewhat changed: before that, it was 3.1-4.6°P, but since the 2024 version, this has been somewhat narrowed to 3.1-3.9°P.

A historic Vienna Lager, like it was likely brewed in the 1870s, with its 4.6% ABV, 13.25°P OG, 4.25°P FG and 12 EBC colour would fall just slightly outside of these style guidelines, but probably be close enough so that this wouldn’t be noticed during a blind taste test.

It most definitely is a major improvement compared to what the BA style guidelines used to be 10 years ago, or even compared to the most recent BJCP style guidelines.

So if you’re a brewer and you face the problem that your Vienna Lager from 100% Vienna malt and otherwise inspired or informed by historic Vienna Lager brewing is claimed to be “out of style” outside of a competition, just point people to the latest Brewers Association style guidelines.

Beer Styles, Recipes

How to Brew Historic Kölsch from 1927

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Johannes Olberg’s book “Moderne Braumethoden” from 1927 contains a multitude of recipes for more than 50 different beer styles. One of them is Kölsch, briefly discussed as the “national drink” of Cologne, and characterised as golden, thirst-quenching, “not too heavy but digestible” beer. The recipe is particularly interesting because it’s the only well-documented Kölsch recipe I’m aware of from before the end of World War 2.

A lot has changed since then, and the Kölsch of 2024 is of course very different from Kölsch about 100 years earlier. Even the modern standards of what Kölsch is supposed to be, the “Kölsch-Konvention”, was only developed from 1981 onwards, Germany’s Federal Cartel Office signed off on in it 1985, and it was finally signed by 24 Kölsch breweries in 1986.

Olberg’s recipe doesn’t mention a specific malt to use, but judging from the colour description, we can assume that a pale malt like Pilsner malt was used.

A number of mashing methods were used, like Kesselmaische, or boiling one or two thick decoctions, but the following process was described more in detail:

The crushed malt is mashed in with brewing water to get to a temperature of 35°C, then rested for 30 minutes. After that time, the mash is slowly heated up to 50°C over the course of an hour (that’s 0.25°C per minute), and then to 70°C over the course of another hour (0.33°C per minute). It shall then rest at this temperature until the mash is fully converted. The author suggests that this would take 30 to 40 minutes and that an iodine test should be used to ensure full saccharification.

After that, the temperature shall be increased to the mash-out temperature of 76°C, either by heating up the mash, or by moving one third of the mash into the lauter tun and boiling two thirds of the mash in the kettle, then mixing it back into the mash to increase the temperature to 76°C (the two thirds doesn’t sound right, I’d reverse the ratios).

When the mash is in the lauter tun, lautering begins. About 6 to 8% of the total amount of hops are reserved for later, and of the remaining hops, a third is added to the first runnings. The wort boils for a total of 120 minutes.

Another third of the hops is added after an hour of boiling, and the last third is added 40 minutes before knock-out. The 6 to 8% of hops reserved earlier are added to the wort shortly before knock-out. The hopping rate is about 30.9g of hops per kg of malt that is mashed in.

The resulting wort should have an original gravity of 11 to 12°P.

The wort is then chilled to 10°C and the Kölsch yeast is pitched. Fermentation should last about 5 days. After fermentation is finished, it is then pumped over into maturation casks which are only loosely bunged. After 5 to 6 weeks the beer can get filtered and sent out to customers.

The maturation casks are also prepared before the young beer is pumped in: hops (at a rate of about 0.9 g/l) are put in 75°C hot water for about 30 minutes, then the steeping water and the hops are added to the casks.

Using all this information, I came up with the following recipe to brew about 20 liters of this historic Kölsch:

  • 4.9kg Pilsner malt
  • 150g hops, ideally a traditional low-alpha-acid German variety with a fine aroma, the finer the better. For my recipe, I assumed Hersbrucker with 3% alpha acid, but Spalter, Hallertauer mittelfrüh or Tettnanger would be equally suitable.
  • German Kölsch yeast, e.g. WLP029

Mash in with 14 liters of water, then proceed with mashing and lautering as described above. The hop additions are:

  • 46g hops in first runnings
  • 46g hops 60 minutes before end of boil
  • 46g hops 40-x minutes before end of boil

After the end of the boil, whirlpool, then knock-out. Take the time between end of boil and knock-out into consideration for the last hop addition (it’s basically the x in the last hop addition). Shortly before knock-out, add 12g of hops to the wort.

Chill the wort to 10°C, then pitch the Kölsch yeast. Wait until fermentation is finished, then add 18g hops to a small amount of water and keep it at a temperature of 75°C for 30 minutes. Depending on whether you move the young beer into a separate vessel for maturation or not, either add the hops-water mixture into the maturation vessel before you pump in the beer, or simply add it to the fermenters. Mature the beer for 5 to 6 weeks, then carbonate, filter (if you have the facilities, most homebrewers don’t) and package it.

The resulting beer should have about 12°P. If you’re using hops with 3% alpha acid, the final beer should have about 44 IBU (calculated).

In terms of bitterness, this is a very different beer from modern Kölsch. And not only is it quite bitter, it is also kind of dry-hopped. The difference is that the hops were briefly treated with hot water at 75°C, which should denature the natural amylase enzymes in the hops which could cause hop creep, but is still not quite hot enough to cause the alpha acid to be isomerised and introduce even more bitterness in the beer.

So, if you want to rebrew a hundred year old historic Kölsch, this recipe is a good place to start.

Beer Styles

How to brew Dortmunder Adambier

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Okay, this is slightly random. Dortmunder Adambier is a beer style I never really looked into, and when I wrote my book Historic German and Austrian Beers for the Home Brewer, I didn’t really come across anything useful that resembled a recipe.

Earlier this week, I was contacted by homebrewer Jesper Hjortshøj who asked me whether I had any more information about how to brew this beer style. I admitted that I didn’t know anything, but it got me started to look into it how much I could find out. And quite quickly, I actually came across a description that was sufficient enough to derive a recipe from it.

The August 1869 issue of the Der Bierbrauer contains a whole article about the beer style with lots of information and details.

Dortmunder Adambier, apparently often also just called “Adam”, was a very strong dark wheat beer, often aged for years, and thus very clear, with a dark-red-brown colour. The malt made to brew it was kilned to only a pale colour, and no additional dark malts were used, so any colour of the beer came from “browned proteins”, as the article says it, basically from the long, intense boil the wort undergoes.

When Adambier was poured, it poured like oil, but without any foam, and had a sweet taste and vinous taste to it. It was brewed from either wheat or barley or a mix of both, but Adambier brewed from wheat was more full-bodied and tartaric, and thus preferred.

A very basic chemical analysis indicates that it was a very strong beer with 8.54% alcohol by weight (or 10.73% alcohol by volume), 21% residual extract by weight, 16.7°P apparent extract as measured on the saccharometer, and an attenuation of just 52.1%.

We also get more hints about the strength: one example that was analysed had an original gravity of 34.9°P. But there’s another hint: it says that in order to brew 20 Ohm (a local pre-metric volume measurement, I assumed the Brunswick Ohm of 144.8 liters) of Adambier, the same amount of malt is needed as for brewing 50 Ohm Bavarian beer. Assuming an OG of 12 to 13°P for Bavarian beer at the time, that means that Adambier brewed that way would have roughly have an OG of 30 to 32.5°P. Slightly lower than the analysed beer, but still roughly a similar strength.

We also learn about the hopping: for every Ohm of beer, 1 Pfund (500g) of “fine Bavarian” hops were used (later in the text, it even talks about 2 Pfund per Ohm). That converts to 3.45 g/l of hops, or if you use double the amount of hops, 6.9 g/l.

In 1869, the brewing this beer style was apparently already partially modernised, and it is implied that Bavarian triple decoction mashing was employed. But the old way of mashing it is already described, and it is wonky: the grist was doughed in in a kettle (the amount of liquor or the temperature of it isn’t documented), then left to rest, until it was brought to a boil. It takes 5 hours to bring the whole mash to a boil, during which probably the mash fully converted.

After the boil, the mash was moved to the mash tun, left to rest for 2 hours, and then wort was drawn off. At the same time, water was heated up for a second mash to draw off even more wort. Both worts were added to the kettle, hops were added, and the wort was boiled vigorously enough to effect good evaporation up to the desired strength.

The wort was then chilled to 10°C, and yeast was added at a pitch rate of 345 ml of yeast slurry per hectoliter. Primary fermentation took about 4 to 5 weeks. It was then filled into 10 Ohm casks, and the bunghole was kept open until the beer stopped ejecting yeast. It was then loosely bunged and aged for 2.5 to 3 years.

If I was to brew such a beer at home, I would approach it like this: since this requires producing such a strong wort, I would only brew half the amount of what I’d brew normally, let’s say 10 liters. I’d dough in my ingredients, Pilsner malt and pale wheat malt (the text says that pale malt was used, after all) with the same amount of liquor that I’d normally use for a 20 liter brew.

To make life slightly easier, I would probably just do a single-step infusion mash at 68°C or similar, or at most go for a double decoction, because I think most of the character of the beer will come from the long boil anyway, lauter, and then just go for a very long boil with 69 g of Hallertauer hops added to the first wort until I got the volume down to about 10 liters or the desired OG of somewhere between 30 and 35°P.

I would then chill down the wort, pitch whatever top-fermenting yeast I have on hand, and then just let it go. For sour beers, I have a dedicated fermenter that is contaminated, so any wort going into it probably gets infected with lacto and/or brett. Jesper said that when he brews his Adambier, he intends to pitch the dregs of a Schneeeule Berliner Weisse for just a small amount of lacto and brett, which is actually similar to my approach for the Old Ale that has been maturing for almost a year, where I simply pitched the dregs of two Gueuze bottles for secondary fermentation.

I hope that should give everyone who wants to brew a historically fairly accurate Adambier a good idea how to approach it and how to formulate a recipe for it. And thanks to Jesper for making me look more closely into the beer style!

Beer Styles, History, Uncategorized

The Demise of Carinthian Steinbier

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Back in 2020, I wrote about how Carinthian Steinbier used to be brewed. In that article, I also mentioned that Steinbier brewing in Carinthia ended in 1917, as brewing ingredients had become unavailable during the war.

I now found concrete data about how much Steinbier was brewed in the last few years of this style’s existence. Fairly detailed data from 1904 to 1917 (with the exception of 1907-1908) about the production volumes of Carinthian breweries were published in trade journals at the time.

The last three remaining breweries were Ure and Kaschitz, both located in Waidmannsdorf, nowadays part of the Carinthian capital Klagenfurt, and Schorn, from Untergoritschitzen near Klagenfurt.

YearUre [hl]Kaschitz [hl]Schorn [hl]
19031,4131,30524.69 hl (1902/1903)
19041,2671,117
19051,4161,413
19061,3591,289
1909839744
1910792733106
19111,098768168
1912874704153
1913810675144
1914823609154
1915690372121
191674433417
191752
Production volumes of breweries Ure, Kaschitz and Schorn, 1903-1906, 1906-1917

As you can clearly see in the numbers, before Steinbier brewing ended, it was on an almost steady decline over the course of 13 years. For 1917, the records say that production at Ure and Schorn was shut down, while Kaschitz had produced a mere 52 hectoliters.

Before that time period, we only have spurious records, but even in 1886, the total Steinbier production in Carinthia amounted to just 2474 hectoliters between 11 breweries, and between then and the 1910s, Ure and Kaschitz may have had a tiny boom by being able to fill the gaps left by the other breweries that presumably closed down:

  • Kaschitz (Waidmannsdorf): 810 hl
  • Ure (Waidmannsdorf): 480 hl
  • Marinitsch (Gurlitsch): 435 hl
  • Archer (Haarbach): 348 hl
  • Kometter (Köttmansdorf): 81 hl
  • Jablatnig (Amschkau): 87 hl
  • Rovin (Rauth): 64 hl
  • Goritschigg (Dobeinitz): 58 hl
  • Tritz (Straschitz): 51 hl
  • Dobinnig (Haber): 45 hl
  • Wedenig (Unterwuchl): 15 hl

Of these breweries, all brewed Steinbier with an original gravity of 6°, with the exception of Wedenig, who brewed a 4° Steinbier.

This low original gravity of Steinbier also seems to show (although not explicitly stated, so this is slight speculation) in the 1889/1890 brewing season beer volume statistics of Austria-Hungary by original gravity: 6° beer was the lowest OG listed, with a production volume of 2,587 hl (which is roughly in the ball park what all the Steinbier breweries together used to brew in a year), and that number is significantly higher than the next stronger beers: of 7° beer, just 49 hl, and of 8° beer, just 102 hl.

In any case, the production volumes are tiny, the numbers are going down, all clear signs of a declining “industry” that was really closer to homebrewing, serving what was probably a tiny market of aging consumers. Despite the fact that brewing stopped because of a lack of ingredients during World War 1, the tiny volumes were probably a big contributor to not resuming brewing after the war.

Beer Styles

Alcohol-Free Augustiner: The Tasting

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A few weeks ago, I wrote about alcohol-free Augustiner and why it’s a big deal. At the time, I hadn’t tasted it and was purely relying on other people’s verdicts and information.

Well, yesterday was the day. I’m currently in Munich for my job (it’s a hard life, eh), and so I tried to get some bottles of it. My wife had sent me to a bottle shop that may have it, but alas, no chance (“nobody has it right now”, as the guy behind the counter said).

So after dinner, I went to Augustinerkeller with a work colleague (a second one joined us later), to have some fresh Helles from wooden cask and to try the alcohol-free Helles because if one place just has to have it, it’s one of Augustiner’s top spots in Munich, right?

So, yes, they did have it.

A glass of Augustiner Alkoholfrei Hell on a beer coaster on a bar counter, with a second glass of it in the background, and a number of waiters further in the background

So let’s just get to the point: it’s very good, but it still tastes like an alcohol-free beer. I would happily order it again, and I would also happily use it to blend it with regular bottled Augustiner at home.

Last time I wrote about it, I said that with the traditional methods of brewing alcohol-free beer, you either end up with a full-bodied but sweet beer, or a very thin and slightly sour tasting beer. This beer balances this out: it’s full-bodied with a very mouthfeel compared to virtually all other alcohol-free beers I’ve had, it’s not sweet, and that sour taste is a lot less than in other beers. It’s more bitter than their regular Helles. It does not have that Augustiner house flavour (that bit of pleasant sulphur), though, but still all the other properties of a good Bavarian Helles.

My work colleagues also both liked it, one of them compared it favourably to Jever Fun. All of us ultimately still preferred Helles from wooden cask, which is understandable because at Augustinerkeller, it’s about the best Augustiner beer you can possibly get.

After that very unscientific sensory evaluation of this new alcohol-free beer, I stand by my prediction that this could be a game-changer. I think the fact alone that it’s impossible to get even in Munich and that Augustiner seemed to be slightly overwhelmed by the success of this new beer shows that they’ve created a bit of a hype.

Fun fact: while we were at Augustinerkeller, we witnessed 3 big wooden casks getting tapped, in a very consistent 40 minute interval. I asked what size they were. One-hundred litres, they waiter said. 100 litres, in just 40 minutes, at least 3 times over. Absolutely massive. But then, football was on, with Bayern playing Arsenal, and Augustinerkeller were showing it on big screens.

Two empty glasses of Augustiner Alkoholfrei Hell
Beer Styles, History

How Pilsner Lost Its Geographic Indication Status in Germany

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In the 19th and early 20th century, it was common to call beers in Germany and Austria by the place where they came from, a geographic indication if you will, such as Pilsner, Budweiser, or Münchner. Nowadays, this concept is applied to all other kinds of food and drink, and even has its own categories of protection on the EU level.

The success of specific beers of course often came with imitators. Some American breweries were good at marketing their locally brewed beers as all kinds of European beer types. One of my favourite examples is this Schlitz ad from 1891 that mentions Schlitz-brewed Budweiser, Pilsener, Wiener, Erlanger and Culmbacher, all referring to places in either Bohemia, Austria or Bavaria, all of them well-known for their beer at the time.

An ad for Schlitz Brewery Milwaukee from 1891, advertising Budweiser, Pilsener, Wiener, Erlanger and Culmbacher, among others.
An ad for Schlitz Brewery Milwaukee from 1891, advertising Budweiser, Pilsener, Wiener, Erlanger and Culmbacher, among others.

The case of Budweiser, which meant a century-long legal struggle between the breweries of Budweis/České Budějovice and Anheuser-Busch, is probably the best known one, but in the early 20th century, also some of the breweries of Pilsen/Plzeň weren’t super happy about the proliferation of the “Pilsner” resp. “Pilsener” name used for beers not from the Bohemian city of Pilsen/Plzeň.

(Ironically, nobody ever seemed to care about Anheuser-Busch stealing coopting another Bohemian place name well-known for its beer as a brand name, Michelob/Měcholupy)

In 1910, the breweries of Pilsen seem to have sued a number of German breweries, such as Pankow-based Engelhardt brewery, which were then initially banned from calling their beer “Engelhardt Pilsener” resp. “Engelhardt Export Pilsener”. The German court then found them to abuse the designation of origin of a foreign beer without clearly specifying that their beer wasn’t from Pilsen, but rather from Pankow just outside Berlin. This initial verdict is quite interesting, as it even specifically points out that a “light [i.e. pale], highly hopped, bottom-fermented bitter beer” didn’t necessarily need to be called a “Pilsner”, and specifically mentions Schultheiss Märzen as a counter-example of a beer with similar properties that makes no reference to the Bohemian city.

In December 1913 though, the Reichsgericht (Supreme court of the German Empire) in Leipzig passed a verdict that the term “Pilsener” had simply changed in meaning and couldn’t be seen as a pure geographic indication anymore, but rather as a statement of quality about the product, and that enforcing it as a geographic indication would be an interference into the “free development of business” by the court. The court also rejected any possible confusion of customers because of the price difference between “German Pilsener” and “real Pilsener”, and referred the case back to a lower court (this basically means that the Supreme court told the lower court what the correct legal opinion was meant to be). The complaining parties, namely Bürgerliches Brauhaus Pilsen, 1. Pilsener Aktienbrauerei and Pilsener Genossenschaftsbrauerei, were presumably not happy about it.

Just earlier that year, they had also sued Geraer Aktienbrauerei in Timm near Gera, Radeberger Exportbierbrauerei and Böhmisches Brauhaus in Berlin to stop calling their beers Timmser Pilsner, Radeberg Pilsner, resp. Pilsator (a brand that Böhmisches Brauhaus had started using only in 1909). The courts in these cases argued slightly differently, namely that while “Pilsner” hadn’t entirely lost its geographic indication, the prefixes of respective place names “Timmser” resp. “Radeberger” made the origin clearer and demoted “Pilsner” to a generic product name. In the case of “Pilsator”, it also noted that the beer had always been used in connection with Böhmisches Brauhaus Berlin, thus always making clear where it had come from.

This was hardly surprising, because even the Austrian administrative court had ruled in 1910 that “Pilsator” was merely a fantasy name that obviously did not indicate a provenance from Pilsen.

Little fun fact: the brand name “Pilsator” was the outcome of a competition in 1909 by Böhmisches Brauhaus Berlin that had been advertised with the slogan “Thousand Mark for One Word”. Among many thousand submissions, the jury selected the brand “Pilsator”. As this brand had been submitted by 26 competitors, the winner had to be chosen through a lottery, in which Josef Seestaller from Munich was drawn as the official winner. The Pilsner Tagblatt reported on this with the sarcastic comment that now the Berlin-based brewery just needs to do one more thing: brew a real Pilsner. The Pilsator name continued as a beer type in East Germany’s TGL 7764 regulation, and is still used as a brand name, namely Pilsator Pilsner brewed by Frankfurter Brauhaus in Frankfurt/Oder.

Pilsner beer wasn’t the only concern of the Pilsen breweries, though. In 1911, they petitioned the Prague commodity exchange (Produktenbörse) to stop using the terms “Pilsner malt”, “Vienna malt” and “Munich malt” because German and American breweries using “Pilsner malt” could claim that they were making “Pilsner beer” and that they had to defend their geographic indication in German courts. At the time, the question was referred to the Viennese commodity exchange.

Trade publication Der Böhmische Bierbrauer discussed in April 1912 how the term “Bohemian malt” was really more appropriate as it had been in use in scientific and trade publications, while “Pilsner malt” was more of a marketing term by maltings at the time. They suggested to change the official terminology at the Prague commodity exchange from “Pilsner malt” to “malt of wort colour up to 0.25 cm2 ⅒ n iodine solution”, “Vienna malt” to “malt of wort colour up to 0.40 cm2 ⅒ n iodine solution” and “Munich malt” to “malt of wort colour over 0.40 cm2 ⅒ n iodine solution”.

The article relents that this won’t get the term “Pilsner malt” banned but it will simply not get used anymore in official commodity exchange documents. They still asked readers to use the term “Bohemian malt”, not “Pilsner malt”, “as nobody will gain anything from it.”

Just a few days later, Der Böhmische Bierbrauer published another update about this matter. A report of the commodity exchange came to the conclusion that the proposal was practically a failure as it would only be limited to official documents at the exchange. At the exchange itself, it would also affect the interests of trading maltings that have used that term in their trade for a while now. Abuses of geographic indication should be pursued in other ways, according to the exchange.

Assuming from the lack of further reports on the matter, that seems to have been the end of it with regards to malt, and since the terms “Pilsner malt”, “Vienna malt” and “Munich malt” are still common trade names in the 21st century, the maltings have definitely prevailed.

Beer Styles

Why Augustiner’s new alcohol-free Helles is a big deal

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Augustiner brewery of Munich, known to be very conservative, secretive and loaded, recently announced their latest addition to their portfolio, an alcohol-free Helles, aptly named “Augustiner Alkoholfrei Hell”. Augustiner hadn’t released a new beer in 38 years, and in fact was the last of the “big six” Munich brands without an alcohol-free beer.

They first teased the release of a new beer type on Instagram without getting specific, which of course came with lots of outcry, “oh no, not an alcohol-free one! Please anything but an alcohol-free beer!” and such, but my first thought that this could be a game changer. Augustiner obviously cares a lot of about the quality and presentation of their own beers (for example, they still run their own cooperage on the outskirts of Munich to ensure that they can serve all their Oktoberfestbier from massive 200 liter “Hirsch” wooden casks, and will typically serve at least one beer from wooden casks in their prime locations), and a poorly-received alcohol-free beer (or any new beer type, really) could have really tarnished their reputation.

On Monday, 18th March 2024, the rumours of an alcohol-free beer turned out to be true, when Augustiner officially presented their new beer. I was of course very curious, and checked out early reports about it. Süddeutsche Zeitung was probably the first one to report on it (link to a paywall-free archived version of the article), and one thing that caught my eye was how openly Augustiner spoke about their method of production.

Basically, there are two ways of producing an alcohol-free beer: one is to brew a low-gravity wort and ferment either with a poorly attenuating yeast (essentially, one that cannot ferment maltose sugar) or to stop fermentation shortly after it’s started by chilling down the beer very quickly to prevent the yeast from metabolizing any further sugar. This approach is called arrested or restricted fermentation. The other method is to brew a regular beer and then dealcoholize it, i.e. remove the alcohol after fermentation through some method of cold distillation. This is generally called physical dealcoholisation. Both methods have their advantages and disadvantages, leading to either worty-sweet beer with the former method, or very thin, watery and slightly sour with the latter method. And as the Süddeutsche Zeitung says, “Augustiner decided on a mix of both methods.”

Through my very good friend Ben who works as a brewing scientist at VLB, I’ve learned about the paper Effect of Production Technique on Pilsner-Style Non-Alcoholic Beer (NAB) Chemistry and Flavor by Nils Rettberg, Scott Lafontaine, et al., published in early 2022 (Ben himself wrote about his experience with non-alcoholic beers after completing Dry January 2022). One of its conclusions was that blending non-alcoholic beers from restricted fermentation and from vacuum dealcoholisation produced a more harmonious beer that generally fared better in blind tasting than beers solely produced using either method. Another conclusion was that more hop compounds, such as through late kettle-hopping or dry-hopping, can mask the less pleasant flavours of non-alcoholic beers. This a very interesting paper, though of course rather technical, but if you’re interested in all the nitty-gritty details, definitely worth checking out.

While the paper is about Pilsner-type beers, and Helles is certainly not a beer type that has a particularly large amount of hop aroma or flavour, it still shows that for more lightly hopped beers, it still seems to be a practical approach for Augustiner, and they seem to have either drawn the same conclusions as the paper above or got convinced by the methods through it.

The tasting notes from Mareike Hasenbeck describe the beer as having a fresh, spicy and malty aroma with a hint of sulfur, while the flavour is malty-bready with a touch of lemon and sulfur and ample carbon dioxide on the tongue, finishing with a noticeable hop bitterness. Especially that last bit made me wonder whether the hopping rate was slightly increased compared to Augustiner’s regular Helles to create an overall nicer and rounder beer. Even though Augustiner’s approach was not to create a 1:1 copy of their flag-ship Augustiner Lagerbier Hell but rather a really good alcohol-free beer that meets their exacting, Mareike Hasenbeck notes that straight from the fridge, the fact that the beer is alcohol-free could be easily missed by laypeople (i.e. the non-nerdy, less discerning drinkers).

And I think that’s a big deal. If a regular beer drinker can have the non-alcoholic beer served under optimal conditions and not notice that it doesn’t contain alcohol (or at least, less than 0.5% by volume), you’re at a point where it is satisfying enough for consumers. At least for me personally, unless I specifically want to get inebriated, it would then make no difference whether I drink the regular version or the alcohol-free version. In fact, I would sometimes even want to specifically have the alcohol-free version, for example to avoid getting tipsy too quickly.

Previously, only one beer got close enough for me to this ideal, and that’s Guinness with the 0.0 version of their draught stout. When I first had it from nitro can, this was quite the revelation. To this day, I would still call it the most convincing alcohol-free beer, and don’t mind having a can or pint (or two) whenever I have the chance. Unfortunately, Guinness 0.0 has not made it to Germany yet, but I’m still hopeful. The only other beer that got close to it for me was Riedenburger Dolden Null, a German alcohol-free IPA, but their trick is basically to hide the worty flavour under loads of hops.

Everything I’ve read about the Augustiner Alkoholfrei Hell sounds to me as if Augustiner may have pulled off the same as Guinness, to release a convincing alcohol-free Helles that may be pleasing even to consumers and Augustiner fans that otherwise would not choose an alcohol-free beer. That’s a big deal, and could change the landscape and expected quality of alcohol-free beer in Bavaria and the rest of Germany.

As for myself, I have yet to try the new beer, and it doesn’t seem to have arrived in Berlin yet. One drinks wholesaler with a dedicated beer shop in Charlottenburg estimated it 3 to 4 weeks until they get it, while a restaurant/beer garden near the government district that is known for its Augustiner from wooden cask estimated it to take more like 4 to 8 weeks.

Ben on the other hand has already had a chance to try the beer at Augustinerkeller in Munich, and called it “unsurprisingly excellent”. With everything he also told me about it in private conversations, I am very hopeful that Augustiner Alkoholfrei Hell will indeed be a game changer.

Since the release, Tegernseer also started talking about how they’re currently working on their own alcohol-free Helles. The game is definitely on.

P.S.: in case you wondered what the last beer was Augustiner launched 38 years ago: it was their Hefeweizen.

Beer Styles, Recipes, Technique

How To Brew Mönchsambacher Weihnachts-Bock, according to the brewmaster

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At HBCon 2024 (more about the event here), one of the sessions I attended was a seminar about how to brew easy-drinking Bockbier. Basically, brewmaster Stefan Zehendner told us all the details about the beer, the idea an concept behind, everything about the ingredients and the brewing process, and of course lots of little details and anecdotes.

A lot of information about that particular beer can already be found in this article in Craft Beer & Brewing, and if you’re a subscriber to that magazine, there’s even a home-brew recipe available.

Mönchsambacher produces a total of about 6000 hl of beer per year, with no intention of further growing the business. Of this, about 1,500 crates (i.e. 150 hl) is Weihnachts-Bock, which is usually sold out within a week.

The Weihnachts-Bock has about 17.5 to 18 °P original gravity. To achieve consistency, all the lager tanks are blended into one beer during packaging. It has about 3.3 to 3.5 °P residual extract, and is hopped to 48 IBU. Compared to the brewery’s other beers, this CO2 content is slightly higher, making this whole beer a hop-forward, not too sweet, well-integrated beer.

The brewmaster considers his brewing water to be one of the keys to his beer. The water is very hard: 28 °dH (German degrees of hardness), where 1° equals 0.1783 mmol/l. About 13 to 14 °dH are magnesium, and about the same amount is calcium, much of it bound to sulfate. This hardness results in a higher mash pH for the Bock, around 5.6 to 5.7.

The grist is simple: 100% Pilsner malt. As many other local breweries, Mönchsambacher gets their malt from local maltings Bamberger Malz. The grist is also used for all the other bottom-fermented beers, except for the Festbier, which is brewed from a 50/50 blend of Pilsner and Vienna malt. The Pilsner malt from Bamberger Malz is slightly less modified.

This is what the mash schedule looks like:

The grist is mashed in at 45°C, then rested for 10 minutes.

Then the mash is heated up to 52°C, for another 10 minute rest.

After this rest, the mash is heated up to 62°C, and the first (and only) decoction is pulled: about one third of the mash volume (relatively thin mash) is pumped into the kettle, brought up to 72°C and rested for 15 minutes for saccharification. It is then brought to a boil and boiled for 5 minutes before it is mixed back.

Stefan called this decoction to be important for the bright golden colour of the beer and a more robust (he used the word kernig which is impossible for me to translate) body.

After mixing the decoction back, the mash should have reached 72°C. It is then left to saccharify for another 20 minutes, after which it is heated up to 78°C, which is when lautering starts.

The wort is boiled for a total of 75 minutes. The only hop variety used in the brewery is Perle. In the case of the Weihnachts-Bock, the hops are added at 3 points: at the beginning of the boil, 25 minutes before the end of the boil, and in the whirlpool. The hops in the whirlpool are added beforehand, so it has 10 minutes of contact while the wort is pumped into the whirlpool, and then left for a trub cone to form for another 15 minutes until the wort is pumped out of the whirlpool.

The wort is then chilled to 7.5°C, yeast is pitched, and fermentation happens at 9.2°C. The brewmaster said the yeast strain they use is W-34/72 which they get delivered from Speckner yeast lab in Augsburg. I’ve not been able to find that particular strain in Speckner’s list of available strain, so this is probably a matter of miscommunication (Speckner has W-34/70 and W-34/78 in their portfolio). In any case, Zehendner finds the water much more important than the yeast, so for home-brewers, W-34/70 is probably totally sufficient.

What is important though is that the yeast must have gotten used to the brewery before it is used for fermenting the Weihnachts-Bock. So any yeast going into Weihnachts-Bock has been pitched once or twice before.

Fermentation takes 13 days in tanks which are left open, so it is effectively open fermentation. Before moving the beer into lagering tanks, Kräusen (freshly fermenting beer) from another tank is added at about 10% before it is lagered to ensure a very clean secondary fermentation/lagering. Lagering itself happens at 2°C for a total of 12 weeks, with fermentation slowly progressing for 10 weeks.

The last time this recipe has changed was when the brewery upgraded their brew system in 2000. As part of the adjustments, the number of decoctions was reduced from 2 to 1, and because they had sold the coolship, the hop addition had to be removed. Because there was no more coolship, the whirlpool was instead chosen to have a similar geometry so that the wort can “stink out” in the same way, so basically that DMS and other unwanted chemical compounds can evaporate in the same way and at the same rate.

When the beer is bottled, it is always unfiltered. Zehendner considers a bit of yeast to be absolutely vital to have a beer that can age well. Apparently, the beer will ferment a little bit more after bottling, so practically, the Weihnachts-Bock is a bottle-conditioned beer. The best before date is 3 months for the Weihnachts-Bock and just 5 weeks for the regular Lager. The main reason for the short date is that the beer changes in the bottle, and slowly loses its sulphur notes, making it taste different from what regular drinkers expect. Mönchsambacher also keeps their bottled beers chilled at all times, and are selling it chilled directly from the brewery.

Something that I had never heard before was the anecdote of a pediococcus infection they struggled with for about a year. Pediococcus is a bacteria that makes beer go “ropey”, it gives it a slimey texture and leaves behind plenty of diacetyl. They struggled with such an infection on and off for about a year, until they finally discovered the unlikely source of the infection: the water source! After spending about €80,000 on a membrane filter, this has finally been cleaned up and now the brewery is infection-free again. The brewmaster pointed out that the water treatment with chlorine dioxide would have been another option, but he decided against it specifically because he thinks that it could also negatively affect yeast health in the long run.

Still, this is the only time where I’ve heard that the infection vector of a brewery was the water. It is quite insidious: after disinfecting the whole brewery, all it needs is some water to rinse off disinfectants, and you got the infection back on your equipment.

Stefan Zehendner is not just a traditional Franconian brewer, he also likes to experiment: recently, they filled a batch of Weihnachts-Bock into a wine cask that was previously filled with spontaneously fermented Silvaner wine. In the future, he’s also thinking about producing Weihnachts-Bock wort and getting it fermented somewhere else as a sour beer, which also sounds absolutely intriguing. And apparently if you visit the brewery taproom at the right times, there’s a chance that a keg of Cantillon might be on, about the last beer you’d expect in Franconia.

The process I described here does not just apply to the Weihnachts-Bock, but their other Bock, the Maibock, is also brewed essentially the same way. The only differences are a slightly reduced original gravity of 16.5°P and a reduced bitterness of about 40 IBU.

And that’s how you brew Mönchsambacher Weihnachts-Bock, based on all my notes from the session at Heimbrau Convention 2024. I think this description is complete enough to brew a pretty faithful clone at home.

Beer Styles, History

The Diversity of Beer, 200 Years Ago And Now

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You’ve probably heard the complaint before: craft beer is becoming monotonous, it’s all about IPA, most breweries just brew hazy bois with a few fruited sours and pastry stouts sprinkled in between, and if they feel extra special, a West Coast IPA. This is usually refuted with the argument that brewers just brew what pays the bills, it’s what people want to drink, etc., which is again countered with lamentation that other beer styles are dying out (ok, a bit hyperbolic) because nobody brews them anymore.

This is not a new phenomenon.

150 to 200 years, German beer and brewing experienced a massive shift. Small breweries were previously mostly brewing relatively small amounts of beer solely for the local market using little to no automation, brewers were organized in guilds, not interested in scaling out their businesses, and sometimes even bound by local law to brew and sell their beer on a rota (Reihebrauen). Then the industrial revolution came and destroyed a lot of these structures.

In some cases it was young brewers with an entrepreneurial spirit taking over from their fathers and looking to expand and grow it using modern technologies, in others it was simply trained brewers backed by money to start entirely new brewing companies with all the latest equipment and scientific knowledge to brew excellent beer.

Bottom-fermented beer became fashionable, and due to how it was produced and stored (at cold temperatures with a yeast that increased the sulphur content of the beer, two factors contributing to a more stable beer) the beer became more suitable for export. Export in this context simply meant shipping it further than what was the common “local” area, but innovations like the railroad made it possible to ship beer quite a bit further, and with the invention of ice waggons, some breweries were even able to establish proper cool chains (a famous example for that is the Dreher brewery in Kleinschwechat near Vienna which shipped ice-chilled lager beer from their brewery to the Paris Expo 1867, one delivery took just 5 days and was kept at a constant 4°C). The beer tasted clean, fresh and properly quenched the thirst of beer drinkers.

People started craving this fashionable beer, so naturally, the market adjusted to it, beer legislation was liberalized, and more brewers had the opportunity to enter the market and brew bottom-fermented beers. At the same time, the old-time breweries where “local beer for local people” had been brewed for hundreds of years, didn’t have the money to upgrade their equipment to brew these new-fangled beer styles, or even to make smoke-free malt like the new lager breweries were doing it.

Within just a few decades, a lot of small, local breweries simply shut down because they couldn’t compete, and local beer styles (German brewing literature at the often spoke of Lokalbiere) simply went extinct because nobody wanted to drink them anymore. A lot of these beers we only know by name these days, a few have been preserved in the form of recipes, though a lot of details like how specific malts were prepared are not so well documented, leaving more questions than answers.

When we look at Germany, which beer styles are prevalent (because craft beer is really just a teeny tiny 1% segment of the whole market) and which of these beer styles are from before the industrial revolution, it becomes apparent how bleak it really is.

To the best of my knowledge, the list is really short: Berliner Weisse, Bavarian Weißbier, Altbier and Kölsch (I like to group them as Rhenish Bitter Beers or Top-Fermented Lager Beers because they are more similar than different though people from Düsseldorf and Cologne may hate me for that), Leipziger Gose, and Bamberger smoked beer, and some of them did not fare too well in the last 70, 80 years and were only just rescued from dying out.

Berliner Weisse was still brewed by a few breweries in both East and West Berlin after World War 2. The biggest shock was probably when Schultheiss stopped brewing their traditional unboiled mixed-fermented version. Berliner Kindl Weisse, a very industrial beer brewed by fermenting a low-alcohol beer normally and blending it with another batch that was just fermented with lactic acid bacteria and then sterile-filtrated, thus became the only available brand on the market. In Berlin, the style was really only rescued by a few craft brewers, such as Andreas Bogk, BrewBaker, Lemke, Schneeeule, Berliner Berg, Vagabund, and others, who specifically intended not to let this piece of beer history die out.

Bavarian Weißbier was already a niche product when it again became permitted for private Bavarian brewers to brew with wheat again, and it only survived because of a relatively small group of connoisseurs, until the 1960s when it suddenly somehow became more fashionable again and thus had its revival.

Altbier and Kölsch were not particularly popular during the interwar period, and really only regained popularity after World War 2: Kölsch as it was marketed as a genuinely local beer, appealing to the hyperlocal patriotism in Cologne, while Düsseldorfer Altbier apparently only regained popularity in the 1960s. Münstersches Altbier, another Altbier style, really only exists in the form of one brewery, Pinkus Müller.

Leipziger Gose was actually functionally extinct from the early 1960s when the last Gose brewery shut its doors until the mid-1980s, and it could only be rebrewed and revived to its original taste because the East German brewers producing it could have it taste-tested by beer drinkers who still remembered it from before the 1960s.

And finally smoked beer. Even in Bamberg, this is kind of a niche product. Of the more than 10 breweries that are still around, only two still make their own smoked malt to brew their very own smoked beer, Brauerei Heller (Schlenkerla) and Brauerei Spezial. Greifenklau stopped their own kilning operation in the early 1970s, but fortunately is still around. Nowadays, they brew some smoked beer as a seasonal product, but their owning malting and kilning operation is long gone. And Polarbär brewery, which I like to call the fourth Bamberg smoked beer brewery isn’t operational since the 1950s or so.

And yet, none of these beer styles are truly extinct or even remotely in danger of going extinct. Why? Simply put, thanks to craft beer. Starting in the US, but now really all over the world, there are countless beer nerds who truly care about these old beer types, some rebrew them at home, others brew them commercially, making these beers that were definitely at the brink of extinction better known to beer drinkers all around the world.

Yes, there is some truth that IPAs and hazies are taking over, and yes, some breweries certainly struggle with that problem, because it’s what pays the bills. “The customer is king”, and it would not make sense economically to brew a beer that would not be as popular and thus not sell as well. In the end, IPAs keep the other styles afloat, as the money earned through them gives brewers some freedom to also try out other styles. Styles that used to extremely local to just small regions of Germany have now gained worldwide fame. Even 50 years ago, this probably would have been mostly unthinkable.

Beer Styles, History

Danish Temperance Beer in 1905

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While browsing Gambrinus (an old Austrian brewing industry newspaper), I came across an article discussing Danish temperance beers. At the time, Denmark had a significant amount of distilled spirit consumption (14.57 liters per capita per annum, allegedly the highest in the world at the time, compared to 9.8 liters in Austria-Hungary) as well as a significant beer consumption (91.39 liters, compared to 41.2 liters in Austria-Hungary) that was allegedly only topped by Belgium, the UK and Germany at the time.

In this environment, lower alcohol beers, so called temperance beers, were made tax-free: if a beer had less than 2.25% (the article isn’t clear whether this is by weight or by volume), no duty had to be paid on the beer itself.

Interestingly, these beers were brewed top-fermented, using different methods. The first method was to use a low-gravity wort that was then fully fermented, while the second method involved a regular-gravity wort that was fermented but fermentation was stopped early to only achieve a low attenuation. The article then compares the analytical data of five of these Danish temperance beers with the same data of a Viennese Abzugbier and a Bohemian Schankbier (výčepní).

Mörk Carlsberg Skattefri (Dark)
  • OG 7.47° Balling
  • Residual Extract 2.73°
  • Alcohol 1.92%
  • Apparent Attenuation 63.46%
Lys Carlsberg Skattefri (Pale)
  • OG 6.40° Balling
  • Residual Extract 1.71°
  • Alcohol 1.90%
  • Apparent Attenuation 73.28%
Aegte Kroneoel
  • OG 11.36° Balling
  • Residual Extract 7.51°
  • Alcohol 1.56%
  • Apparent Attenuation 33.89%
Export Dobbeltoel
  • OG 14.68° Balling
  • Residual Extract 10.90°
  • Alcohol 1.53%
  • Apparent Attenuation 25.75%
Krone Pilsener
  • OG 9.48° Balling
  • Residual Extract 5.76°
  • Alcohol 1.51%
  • Apparent Attenuation 39.24%
Wiener Abzugbier
  • OG 10.04° Balling
  • Residual Extract 3.46°
  • Alcohol 2.42%
  • Apparent Attenuation 65.54%
Böhmisches Schankbier
  • OG 10.09° Balling
  • Residual Extract 2.66°
  • Alcohol 3.02%
  • Apparent Attenuation 73.63%

In another article in Der Böhmische Bierbrauer from 1906, Krone-Oel-Bryggeriet is discussed in greater detail. They started brewing tax-free beers with the Kroneoel in 1895. Because of the product’s great success with just 1.5% alcohol by weight, a second product, Krone Pilsener was added in 1899, which was designed to be paler and lighter in original gravity, with a fine, mild hop bouquet. Just a year later, the portfolio was extended with Export Dobbeltoel, a dark beer very high in extract.

The popularity of these tax-free beers (this article is clearer, they must have less than 2.25% alcohol content by weight in order to be tax-free) shows in the sales figures:

  • 1895/1896: 2,918,508 half liter bottles
  • 1896/1897: 5,702,032 -“-
  • 1897/1898: 7,750,032 -“-
  • 1898/1899: 9,281,958 -“-
  • 1899/1900: 10,018,905 -“-
  • 1900/1901: 10,939,750 -“-
  • 1901/1902: 11,430,867 -“-
  • 1902/1903: 13,638,806 -“-
  • 1903/1904: 13,665,237 -“-
  • 1904/1905: 14,704,359 -“-

That is an astonishing increase of the sales volume by 503% over the course of just 10 years, from 29,185 hl to 147,043 hl per year. For comparison, Kleinschwechater Brewery from Austria, one of the largest European breweries at the time, produced 441,490 hl of beer in 1905. Producing a third of that volume just in bottled low-alcohol temperance beer seems quite a feat.

After reading about Danish tax-free beer, naturally I wanted to know more about. After some searching I found this Facebook post that gives a brief overview over it. According to the article, in 1891 the first beer tax law was introduced in Denmark (please note that this was not actually the first beer tax law in Denmark, as the situation is a lot more complicated; in Beer and Brewing in Pre-Industrial Denmark by Kristof Glamann, taxation of beer in Denmark is attested at least since the 1620s). It divided beer between tax-free beers (under 2.25% ABW) and taxable beers. In 1917, this was further revised and only top-fermented beers remained tax free, while other types of beer under 2.25% ABW were put into tax class 2. Previously taxable beers were put into tax class 1.

During World War 1, breweries were restricted how strong beers could be. These restrictions were lifted in 1923 and taxation was again revised. In particular, tax class 1 was divided into 3 sub-categories: the new tax class 1 consisted of all beers with no more than 10.75 °Balling original gravity, tax class A more than 10.75° Balling and up to 13° Balling original gravity, and tax class B consisted applied to all beers with more than 13° Balling original gravity. The new classes 1, A and B again only applied to beers with more than 2.25% ABW, so low alcohol beers could have a higher OG without getting taxed. This was again only revised in 1993 to have different brackets of OG (<2.25% ABW/2.8% ABV beers still remained tax-free), and again in 2004 when it was changed to a sliding scale system (<2.8% ABV beers still tax-free).

Even though the “skattefri” category of beers doesn’t seem to be as obviously prominent in the Danish beer market, it still exists in tax law.