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 … Continue reading A Conversion Chart Between Beer Colour Scales
More than two years ago, I wrote an article discerning accounts from 1834 about various brewing methods as they were practiced in Germany and Austria, in particular Munich, Augsburg, Prague and Vienna, as part of #BeeryLongReads. I even won great prizes for it: Many thanks to @BoakandBailey for all these great #beerylongreads prizes! pic.twitter.com/XnOvfjT298 — … Continue reading #BeeryLongReads2018: Revisiting Brewing Methods
This is my contribution to Session 132 (aka Beer Blogging Friday). My homebrewing “career” started in December 2012, when my girlfriend (now wife) and I decided to just try out brewing with an electric preserving cooker and a mash bag. The first beer was not great. I got a terrible recipe from a German homebrewing … Continue reading Why homebrewing made me appreciate beer even more
As a followup to my last article on Beer Blogging Friday, “Beer at the Oktoberfest 120 years ago“, I looked more closely into which beers were advertised as being served at the Oktoberfest. This of course is not a comprehensive list of all beers that were served, but merely those that were advertised. Also, the … Continue reading More Historic Beer at the Oktoberfest
This is my short and quick contribution to Session 127. After Boak and Bailey asked me about my expectations of Festbier, I thought I should leave a few notes what beer was served at the Oktoberfest in the 19th century. The Oktoberfest didn’t start out as a beer festival. The first one was a wedding … Continue reading Beer at the Oktoberfest, 120 years ago
When working on my upcoming e-book about historic beers, one particular aspect of recreating historic beers crept through my mind: how similar or different are modern malts compared to malts that were produced 100 to 200 years ago? The biggest improvements in malting technologies, in particular kilning, happened in Continental Europe within the last 200 … Continue reading What was the colour of brown beer in the 19th century?
A few days ago, I interviewed Franz Pozelt about the topic of Kölsch brewing and its history. Franz learned the trade of brewer and maltster at Sünner brewery in Cologne, is an avid homebrewer, active in the local homebrewing scene in Berlin, and running the beer and brewing group of Slow Food Berlin. So naturally, … Continue reading Interview with Franz Pozelt about Kölsch
This is part of my series to discuss 500 years of Reinheitsgebot. The 23rd of April is getting closer, and more media is starting to be interested in and report about the Reinheitsgebot. FAZ, one of Germany’s largest and most influential newspapers, started a blog about beer and the Reinheitsgebot. In the latest article, they … Continue reading The Misunderstanding Of The Reinheitsgebot As Tradition
Only the other day, I stumbled upon a book called “The Art of Brewing“, written by one David Booth, published in 1834. It has a whole section of brewing in foreign countries, discussing differences in brewing between Munich, Prague, Vienna, and other cities. The basis for this section is credited to two unnamed guys, can … Continue reading 19th Century Brewing Methods in Germany and Austria