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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.

Pub Guide

A Very Biased Guide To Berlin Beer and Pubs, October 2023 Edition

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Jess & Ray (Boak & Bailey) recently visited Berlin (and met my wife and I). They had previously approached me by email for some tips on beer and pubs in Berlin which I happily answered, and in their most recent blog post, hoped that I would turn these tips into a full-blown blog post. That’s what I’ve done here.

Please note that this is not by any means a complete guide to beer and pubs in Berlin. Even when just focusing on a very specific niche like craft beer bars or German-style brew pubs, there are so many options to review all over a very large city (it would take about 90 minutes on bus, regional train and tram to get from Brauhaus Spandau in the very west of the city to Schlossplatzbrauerei Köpenick in the south-east of the city, for example, just to give you a rough impression of the size of the city) that makes it hard to ever get a complete, up-to-date picture over everything that’s going on. So I’ll just stick to the themes Jess & Ray asked about and the answers that my wife Louise and I have given them.

Eckkneipen / Kiezkneipen

Eckkneipen are the classic corner pubs of Berlin. Kiezkneipen are essentially the same thing, local pubs for local people (non-locals most often also welcome), just not on a street corner.

Zum Stammtisch. This is one of our locals in Moabit, run by the same couple for well over 50 years. In the last few months, we found it to be not always open at the expected hours, which is probably down to the old age of the publicans, but our perception is that they’re in the process of handing it over or at least running it together with some of their children. One of the last places to still serve Engelhardt Pilsner, an old West Berlin beer brand, nowadays brewed at Berliner-Kindl-Schultheiss.

A 0.4 liter glass of Engelhardt Pilsner with a doily.

Brüsseler Eck. A local Eckkneipe in Wedding that has recently been taken over, and the new owners have found a balance between catering to their regulars and attracting a younger crowd. This means live music and a mix of classic Berlin beer (Schultheiss) and stuff for the younger crowd (Bavarian Helles, locally brewed Pale Ale from Eschenbräu) while keeping the classic decor. Louise says their beer glasses were not properly washed on our last visits, let’s hope that has improved.

Eschenbräu Panke Gold served at Brüsseler Eck.

Berliner Bürgerstuben. Louise used to live on the same street, but we never went there. It took moving away to convince me to go to it and we now really like it. Very good beer selection (Schultheiss, Berliner Pilsner, Tegernseer Hell, Meckatzer Hell), it’s reasonably priced, and also has a small offering of traditional Berlin food.

Krüger Eck. A classic Eckkneipe in Friedrichshain with a changing tap list. One of their regular beers is the Pilsner from Hops&Barley, but everything else can be in flux. You’ll occasionally see Franconian beers on tap, for example I’ve had Nikl-Bräu Zwickl one time and Schlenkerla Märzen another time. It can get very busy at the times, but they don’t do reservations unless you’ve been a regular for years.

Breweries and Taprooms

Vagabund. They started off with their tiny 2hl brewery on Antwerpener Str., but have since opened a larger brewery with a second taproom. Their beers are generally solid, and they were one of the early ones of the Berlin craft beer scene (full disclosure: I helped crowd-found their first brewery back in 2013).

Eschenbräu. A German-style brew pub with seasonal beers. Some people really like the beer (like me), others hate it (like Louise), and the waiter can sometimes be very weird, but it’s certainly an experience. You can bring your own food (they will even provide you with plates and cutlery), but there are also simple snack options like Obazda (pre-packaged), freshly baked pretzels (from frozen) and tarte flambée, all reasonably priced.

Schneeeule Salon. Schneeeule’s taproom, probably the best known craft brewery specializing solely on Berliner Weisse. Ulrike Genz, the brewery owner/brewmaster, is behind the bar on most days. A great place to drink their Berliner Weisse and try specialties and collabs that are otherwise hard or impossible to get. Besides sour beers, they will usually have some Franconian lager on tap, as well as some more bottles of otherwise hard-to-get Franconian beers.

Hops & Barley. Long-time brew pub, attracts a football crowd especially during weekends. The beer hasn’t been brewed on site for quite a few years, but that only helped with the overall quality and consistency. Besides the core range of Pilsner, Dunkel, Hefeweizen and Cider, also typically has a seasonal specialty beer on tap. In the past, that was sometimes a bit hit-and-miss (I have vivid memories of too much caramel malt that made some of the beers rather cloying; but then again, I’ve overheard other beer nerds sat at the bar rant about another Berlin craft breweries using even more caramel malt and accusing their head brewer of having a “caramel malt fetish”).

Bavarian-Style Beer Halls

Bavarian Beer Halls have a long tradition in Berlin. While some of them may seem like pure tourist traps, they are usually places for reliable food and drink for a reasonable price.

Augustiner am Gendarmenmarkt. May seem like a tourist trap from the outside, but Augustiner Edelstoff is served from wooden cask every day from 6pm, and plenty of Berliners actually go there. The atmosphere is great (it feels like you could actually be in an Augustiner beer hall in Munich), the prices are overall reasonable, it’s pretty much always busy, so better book in advance to be sure.

A wooden cask of Augustiner Edelstoff waiting to be tapped.

Hofbräu Wirtshaus. Now this is a properly mass tourism beer hall (Rick Stein featured it in one of his City Break episodes, if you want to see how they operate). The Hofbräuhaus beer is still really good, and the one time I was there with work colleagues, the food was solid. Beery friends of mine loved the Sunday brunch to visit with the whole family.

Maximilians. This was not actually on the list I had sent to Jess & Ray, but we went there with them after it was impossible to get any seats at Augustiner on a Saturday night. Serves Hacker Pschorr beers, including Edelhell from wooden casks. Extremely busy when we were there, and not quite the traditional beer hall feel, but overall still made a very good impression.

Other Pubs & Bars

Foersters Feine Biere. One of our absolute favourites with a great selection of German beers (lots of Bavarian/Franconian, occasionally also Altbier) and quality Brotzeit. Not cheap, but worth the money. It’s also where we meet for our (nowadays very irregular) Stammtisch. Co-owner Sven is one of the most knowledgeable people about German beer I know and will always recommend a beer to you that you’ll like and you’ve never even heard of before, even if you thought you knew it all already. The bar also features parts of Sven’s massive Steinkrug collection. If you’re in Berlin on NYE, Foerster’s special event that day is a Frühschoppen where Schönramer Festbier is served from 11am until 4pm.

Update Oct 31, 2023: Sven Förster announced just yesterday that Foersters Feine Biere will unfortunately close around end of 2023.

Foersters Feine Biere in Steglitz from the outside.

Victoria Stadler. A very Friedrichshain kind of bar, serving Schönramer beer on tap and from bottles because the owner is from there and very proud of the beer. In the winter, has a wood-fired oven in the one of the rooms which makes it extra cozy.

Prager Frühling. A Prague-Spring-themed bar in Pankow. Czech beer on tap (several Svijany beers, Pilsner Urquell, changing tap of local Czech breweries you’ve usually not heard of before), classic Czech bar snacks (marinated Hermelin cheese and the likes). Incredibly cheap, one of the grumpiest barmen you’ll ever meet, Czech radio playing in the background, feels like a pub in Prague, or with all Czech(oslovakian) and Prague-Spring-related paraphernalia all over the place, a Czech pub on steroids.

Svijany dark lager and pale lager in Tübinger glasses, served at Prager Frühling.

Final Notes

As mentioned earlier, this list is by no means complete. It’s based on what Jess & Ray asked us for, reflecting our personal preferences as of October 2023. These might change in the future. Berlin is huge, there are always new places to discover (e.g. Louise recently visited and really enjoyed Dicke Wirtin, but I haven’t been yet thus can’t give my opinion on it), old places shutting down and new ones opening up.

For another list of recommendations, see also the Berlin Beer & Pub Guide that was compiled and curated by the late Fred Waltman.

History

Bavarian Beer Halls in 19th Century Berlin

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Just yesterday I was on a bit of a beer tour in Berlin together with my wife, Jess & Ray and Ben Palmer. After having been rejected at the door of the beer hall of a well-known Munich brewery, and then having had dinner in the beer hall of another well-known Munich brewery, I mentioned in passing that beer halls in Berlin serving Munich beer wasn’t even a new concept, but had already been popular during the second half of the 19th century.

An 1891 tourist guide to Berlin lists a number of “beer palaces”, many of which were owned by or at least serving beer from Bavarian breweries, among them:

  • Franziskaner-Leistbräu, on Leipziger Straße 128
  • Hackerbräu, on Belle-Alliance-Platz 15 (nowadays Mehringplatz on the south end of Friedrichstraße)
  • Löwenbräu on Charlottenstraße 50, on the corner of Französische Straße
  • Münchener Bürgerbräu on Friedrichstraße 59
  • Münchener Hofbräu on Französische Straße 21
  • Münchener Kindl on Potsdamer Straße 123a
  • Pschorrbräu on Friedrichstraße 164/165
  • Spatenbräu on Friedrichstraße 172, as well Spittelmarkt 14
  • Frankenbräu on Königstraße 33 (nowadays Reinhardtstraße); I suspect this to be Erste Bamberger Exportbrauerei Frankenbräu AG, later known as Bamberger Hofbräu AG.

Similarly, the 1898 Baedeker guide to Berlin lists several more:

  • Weihenstephaner on Friedrichstraße 176
  • Brauerei Tucher on Friedrichstraße 180
  • Kulmbacher (“Mönchshof”) on Charlottenstraße 65a
  • Augustiner on Potsdamer Straße 123

Some contemporary publications commented on this as a “Bier-Kulturkampf” (beer culture war) between the classic Berlin beer culture of top-fermented white and brown beer and the newfangled Bavarian beers that made an impact on Berlin architecture. The most prominent beer palace in that regard was probably Spatenbräu on Friedrichstraße 172.

Spatenbräu on Friedrichstraße 172, 1907 (source)
Bottom section of the Spatenbräu building on Friedrichstr. 172, 1886 (source)

The sheer number of beer halls and restaurants made the area around Unter den Linden/Friedrichstraße/Leipziger Straße the “entertainment quarter” of old Berlin. They even got nicknames: “Unter den Linden” was “Laufstraße” (walking street), Leipziger Straße was “Kaufstraße” (shopping street), while Friedrichstraße was “Saufstraße” (boozing street).

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.

Brewing, History, Technique

19th Century Brewing Methods in Germany and Austria

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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 you guess who?

For the greater portion of ” the Brewing in Foreign Countries,” I am indebted to the manuscript and oral communications of two German Brewers (from Vienna and Munich), who have been, and now are, visiting the principal towns of Europe, for the laudable purpose of acquiring information concerning their business.

Yep, that sounds very much like Gregor Sedlmayr and Anton Dreher.

I also found another book, “Vollständige Braukunde” by Johann C. Leuchs,  that discusses the brewing methods of various German cities. In this article, I will try to summarize and discuss different German brewing techniques from the 19th century, and how they would be seen from a modern (home)brewer’s point of view.

Munich

For the mash, a mash tun made out of copper, with a false bottom, and a second, smaller copper, were used. The second copper was used for boiling the mash. The standard recipe is described to be 8 quarters of malt and 60 pounds of best Bavarian or Bohemian hops to produce 27 barrels of keeping beer. Calculating what the outcome of that would be, that would be a beer with about 6 to 7.5 % ABV, with probably 35 to 50 IBU. It does mention the Munich beer as keeping beer, meaning it was matured, or lagered, for a relatively long time.

The coarsely ground malt is doughed in, while the small copper is used to bring liquor to a boil. The boiling liquor is then added to the mash, to result in a 40 °C mash. Then a decoction is drawn, and brought to a boil. The author mentions a thick froth that is beaten down back into the mash. I assume this is hot break, and nowadays you would rather skim the scum instead of beating it back into the mash.

The first boil takes about an hour, where it gets a darker colour, until it is put back into the mash, to raise the temperature to 55 °C. Immediately, another decoction is drawn, but only boiled for 30 minutes, and then put back, with a resulting temperature of 67 °C. A third, thin decoction is then drawn, both taken from the top and taken from the tap (the mash tun has a false bottom, after all). Then it is boiled for 15 minutes, and put back, to reach a temperature of 75 °C. That whole procedure takes about 5 hours.

After that, the wort is drawn off. Hops are added while the first runnings are still drawn off, so this constitutes a first wort hopping. The overall boil lasts 2.5 to 3 hours. Fermentation is bottom-fermenting, as expected. What’s interesting is that after primary fermentation, the young beer is drawn into casks. A batch is spread out over lots of casks, though, so it takes about ten batches to properly fill all the casks. I presume this is to blend all the batches and to end up with a very consistent product over all casks even when the individual batches differ. Lagering period in the cellar is mentioned as lasting eight to ten months. That is indeed a keeping beer.

Beer brewed for the winter differs from this, as less hops are used, more wort is drawn off, and it’s boiled for a shorter period of time. There is very little maturation, and secondary fermentation for carbonation is initiated with Kräusen, and essentially happens in the publican’s cellar. This very much sounds like a running beer. Comparing with modern drinking habits, this is very counter-intuitive, as you’d expect the lighter beer to be brewed for the summer as a refresher, and the bigger beer to be made as a warming, boozy drink.

Augsburg

Apparently, the brewing methods in Augsburg were quite different from the rest of Bavaria. It starts with the malt: it is ground finely. The boiled hops of the previous batch are put on the false bottom prior to putting malt and then cold liquor over it. This is left for six hours. Boiling liquor is then added, and mashed for half an hour, and then more hot liquor is added, to bring it to 60 °C. This is then left for two hours. Sweet wort is then drawn off and put into the cooler. More hot liquor is added, and mashed for half an hour, with the resulting temperature being 67 °C. Then “all the goods” (I presume this means all hard matter) are put into the copper with hot liquor, and boiled for 45 minutes, then put back into the thin mash. The resulting mash is then at 86 °C. After some time, the cooled wort is put into the copper, the wort from the mash is also drawn off, hops are added, and the whole thing is boiled for two hours.

Fermentation is bottom-fermenting, and the beer is ready after about 2 months of maturation. Usually though, it is kept in large vats for a year to 1.5 years.

According to “Vollständige Braukunde”, beer brewed like that requires more cleanliness than the Munich approach, but has a higher yield and produces a milder beer.

Overall, a rather weird method in today’s standards. It seems like an infusion mash in the beginning, but with a final decoction, which would extract complex carbon hydrates, but leave the mash at temperatures where all amylases would have already been denatured, and no enzymes would be left to convert the starches into more simple sugars. Did the Augsburgers like their Blausud? (a Blausud is when a wort sample, mixed with an iodine solution, turns dark blue: it is an indicator that there’s still unconverted starches in the wort)

Prague

Prague’s brewing methods are described as similar to Munich, but with a fermentation “of the opposite kind”, which I assume means that in the 1830’s, Prague was still brewing with top-fermenting yeast.

Dough in starts at 46 to 50 °C, with an initial rest of nearly an hour. During that mash, more hot water is added to reach 59 to 63 °C. Then a decoction is drawn, brought to a brief boil, and then put back to get up to 67 to 68 °C. Then another rest of an hour follows. Wort is then run off, a Vorlauf if you will, with the express purpose to get rid of any grains underneath the false bottom. This wort is brought to a boil, and put back, to bring the temperature of the mash to about 84 °C. It is also emphasized that the grains must not be disturbed. Then a small portion of the wort drawn before is brought to a boil together with the hops, and the hops are taken out after 45 minutes. In total, the wort seems to get drawn off in batches and boiled, with the hops getting reused. A sparge is done, and the runnings are boiled with the hops from the previous boils.

Fermentation is done at 20 to 22 °C, so obviously top-fermenting. Maturation then happens in ice-cooled vaults for four to six weeks, and is served directly out of that cold environment. Yep, ice-cold beer.

Anyway, what we can see here is that the Munich style of mashing is a triple decoction, while Prague employed a double decoction.

Vienna

The crushed malt is doughed in with cold water, and mashed for two to four hours. Then cold wort is drawn off, and is brought to a boil together with liquor, boiling for 45 minutes. The froth on the top is skimmed off. It is then put back onto the malt, with a resulting temperature of 40 °C. Now this seems quite odd to me, as it would mean that a lot of the enzymes in the wort would be denatured quite early on.

Then something truly odd is done: wort is drawn off, and pumped back onto the mash. This is done for over an hour. A certain amount is kept in the copper, and again brought to a boil, but as soon as it starts boiling, it is added back to the rest of the mash, to increase temperature to 57 °C. Then more wort is drawn into the copper, again brought to a boil, boiled for 30 minutes, then put back into the mash. This is now left for 30 minutes at 72 °C. And then more wort is drawn off, again brought to a boil of 45 minutes, put back into the wort, and left for another hour at 82 °C.

Then wort is drawn off once more, and hops are added. When all the wort has been drawn off, the grains are loosened, and water of 56 °C is sprinkled onto it. The wort is boiled for 75 minutes, and some of it is put into the cooler. Then the second runnings are drawn into the copper, and boiled for another 90 minutes.

Then the wort is cooled to about 30 °C, and yeast is added. That’s a crazy pitching temperature. Fermentation is vigorous, and the young beer that is thrown out during the fermentation is collected and fermented in a separate vessel. This sound vaguely like the idea of a Burton Union, although with a separate vessel instead of recirculation. Shortly after fermentation has finished and the yeast has settled, casks of the young beer are sent out to the publicans. This all happens within 3 days.

So, in total, quite a strange process. Kinda like a decoction, except only thin decoctions are drawn. I wonder what prevented this from resulting in a Blausud, as well.

Berlin

This gets interesting now. Berliner Weisse. “The Art of Brewing” describes it as a beer made from 5 parts of wheat malt and 1 part of barley malt. That’s quite different from the 2:1 or 1:1 recipes that are listed in other old publications. “Vollständige Braukunde” mentions 20 parts of barley malt, 10 parts of wheat malt, and 2 parts of oat malt.

The finely ground malt is doughed in, and hot liquor is added to bring the temperature up 52 °C. This is left for an hour. Then wort is drawn off, and boiled with hops for 15 minutes. A thin decoction is drawn to interrupt the boil, and when this has reached 93 °C, it is put back into the mash, and left for 30 minutes, with a resulting temperature of 67 °C. Then another thin decoction is drawn, heated up to 96 °C, then both the mash and the decoction are put into the “tap-tun”, what sounds like a lautering vessel with a false bottom which is covered with straw (some sources say straw used in lautering was previously boiled in water). The resulting temperature in this tun is 75 °C. The wort is then drawn off, very slowly, though, and hot liquor is used for sparging. The overall lauter and sparge takes 7 hours, to produce a very clear wort. The wort is then put into the fermenting vessel, where yeast is added. Fermentation quickly begins, and the beer gets already shipped out to the publicans at this early stage.

In “Art of Brewing”, the author mentions that brewers thus have no yeast, and must buy it back from the publicans. To keep their yeast strains reasonably clean, they preferably buy from publicans that deal with other breweries than their own. The publicans also take care of bottling and storing the beer until it’s drinkable, which is usually after 14 days.

In total, this is quite the interesting process, as it does a kind of decoction, with the hop boil during the mash, and no further boil. Berliner Weisse is often described as a no-boil recipe, and people often ask themselves how the hops are added to it if there is no boil: directly during the mash. This way, the amount of isomerization of the alpha acids is easily to control, which is usually not the case if you added hops to a thicker mash that would undergo several decoctions.

Summary

In this article, I tried to summarize descriptions of different brewing techniques in German and Austrian cities at that time, in particular Munich, Augsburg, Prague, Vienna, and Berlin. It is interesting to see how the approaches completely differ, in particular the amount of decoctions that are drawn, what kind of decoctions are drawn, what is boiled for how long and in what order, and what temperatures are kept. With today’s knowledge and understanding of brewing and the microbiology behind it, it is fascinating to see what would be considered good practice nowadays, and what wouldn’t. The Munich triple decoction is a well-researched and well-documented method, as is the Prague double decoction. You would find descriptions of these in most modern brewing literature. The other methods, not so much. There, we find temperatures that would extract more tannins, or early thin decoctions that would denature lots of crucial enzymes early on in the brewing process. I seriously wonder how these brews went fine, and whether they produced Blausude.

Events

Berlin Homebrewing Competition 2015

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For the first time, there will be a homebrewing competition this year, for homebrewers from Berlin and Brandenburg. This competition is organized by Rory Lawton. More information about the competition can be found here.

Rory is currently looking for some judges, so if you’re experienced in beer tasting and haven’t registered yet, please do so here, because you need to register by the end of March. So hurry up!

Talking about the homebrewing competition, I will be submitting beers to three out of four categories, so I’m not eligible as judge for all but one category in the first place. In addition to that, I’ll be in Northern Ireland and Yorkshire for a total of two weeks in May, when the judging takes place.

Also, I will publish recipes for my beers (an English Brown Ale, an American Pale Ale, and a Czech Pilsner) here at some point after the submission deadline, that’s the 18th of April. To be frank, I’m already quite excited about the judging results that (hopefully) will be published at some point in May. Homebrewing competitions in Germany are… rare, to say the least, so getting absolutely honest and unbiased feedback from an anonymized tasting is something to look forward to.