Today I can proudly announce that I just published my new book, Bavarian White Beer. Very much in the spirit of my previous book about Vienna Lager, my intention was to find out as much as possible about Bavarian White Beer, the beers people more commonly know as Bavarian Weissbier, Weizenbier or Hefeweizen, first from a historic perspective: how did the beer style get popular? How did it develop over time? What were the important locations and historic events during all of that? How did it survive to this day?
I then looked into the historic brewing literature to see what we can learn about the style there. This is also where the title for the book came from: I very quickly realised that even though the style’s history is also closely connected to the use of wheat malt in brewing, using wheat was far from obligatory, and plenty of examples of white beer using just barley malt were also brewed. This is why I don’t like using names involving only wheat when talking about the breadth of historic beers in that tradition.
And since my focus of previous books of mine has also been on brewing in general, I also took a look at the latest science and state-of-the-art technology and processes that are used to brew great Bavarian(-style) white beer in all its forms. This is of course complemented by a collection of homebrew recipes that cover the variety of historic and modern styles and variations: classic banana-forward Hefeweizen, oak-smoked wheat beer (a Bavarian-style wheat beer loosely inspired by early historic descriptions), historic Kelheim wheat beer from 100% wheat malt, Hefeweizen brewed on a Burton Union set (and what the Burton Union has to do with brewing wheat beer), modern hoppy wheat beer, and three homebrew versions of commercial beers: Skeleton Key & Goldfinger’s Bavarian Breeze, a beer that I was able to try at Goldfinger’s taproom in 2024, then the award-winning Live Oak Primus Weizenbock, and finally Sapwood Cellar’s Exaggerated Truth, a hazy IPA recipe that demonstrates how Bavarian wheat beer yeast can be used to add more complex fruity flavours to hoppy beers. Homebrewers can even learn how to malt their own wheat and make historically accurate air-dried wheat malt at home.
In terms of what’s covered, this is the most detailed brewing and history book solely dedicated to Bavarian white beer. You can buy it on Amazon as paperback or e-book. Visit waizenbier.de for more information. It has all the links to all the Amazon stores, and you can get an overview what to expect through the book’s table of contents.
What inspired me to look into this whole topic was actually another beer writer getting in touch with me. In early 2023, Jonny Garrett approached me with very specific history questions about the Degenberger family for a book he was working on then, The Meaning of Beer. The Degenbergers were a noble family from Bavaria who were very closely involved in the early development of white beer, in particular in Lower Bavaria. I couldn’t answer some of the questions, so I had to visit a specialised library to see what existing literature there was about the Degenbergers and the beginning of the Bavarian white beer monopoly. And just that got me down a rabbit hole about a nowadays very popular beer style that had already been popular in Bavaria from the 16th to the late 18th century.
And while some literature about it was around, it was either about super specific aspects of this whole history or just more general brewing literature. I realised that no book just focusing on this style existed that explained both history and brewing science to the level of detail that I would have liked to have. So I sat down and wrote that book myself.
While the idea had been in my head since 2023, it took me until June 2025 to actually start the work on it, and in the roughly 12 months since then, I managed to write a book pretty much how I wanted it to be. I have not been able to answer every single question about the style that there is, but I was able to dispel quite a few myths and unearth surprising historic details along the way, and overall, it covers all its important history, from its early establishment as a beer style in the 15th and 16th century all the way to the 21st century.
While writing the book, I noticed an interesting 80:20 effect, or at least something like it: in the first 2.5 months of working on the book, I wrote roughly 60% of the final text, while for the remaining 40%, it took me another 8 months, most of which was researching a lot of tiny details and very particular aspects of the history and brewing science of Bavarian white beer. The remaining time was proof-reading, incorporating corrections from reviewers, and technical things like fixing the layout, finding and adding images, and just sorting out all the tiny details to get everything ready for self-publishing both as a printed paperback book and as an e-book.
At this point, I also have to say many thanks to the people who were willing to review my manuscript and give me valuable feedback on it: Brian Alberts, Dave Carpenter and Ben Palmer. Their feedback greatly helped me improve the bits and pieces that just weren’t quite there yet.
I’m also saying thanks to David Bailey, who created the colourful, happy-looking cover image of a beer hall full of people enjoying Bavarian wheat beer, snacks, and each other’s company. I’ve known David’s work mainly through Pellicle Magazine, and always loved his style, so I was very happy when he agreed to draw the book cover.
One thing that I rediscovered while writing this book was how much I actually liked Hefeweizen. The beer style as such was quite formative for me because it was the only truly different beer on offer back when I was 17, 18 years old, compared to all the Austrian Märzen (which is really just a slightly more bitter Helles). As part of my work on the book, I also reacquainted myself with the style, and drank all the ones I could find, no matter whether on draught or from bottles. I realised how good the beer style actually is, and how much complexity there can be to it, and it somewhat made me understand why the beer must have been popular when the alternative would have been darker, slightly smokey lager beers.
As part of sampling all this Bavarian wheat beer, I also ventured into territories I hadn’t explored much before, and also realised that Kristallweizen (basically a clear, filtrated version with slightly more bitterness) can be excellent, even when it’s probably one of the least fashionable beer styles around right now.
So yeah, I hope the book can also increase the interest in this quite unique beer style, get more people to homebrew Bavarian white beer, and learn something about the beer’s history along the way! So please buy my book (all the information is on waizenbier.de), and don’t hesitate to get in touch if you have any further questions about the topic.
“Why waizenbier.de?”, you may wonder. Well, the story behind that is that I like vanity domains to promote books. What would be spelled “Weizenbier” in modern German actually wasn’t standardised until the German Orthographic Conference of 1901, and in particular the spelling “Waizenbier” was nearly as common between the 1760s and the late 19th century. The very first time G. Schneider & Sohn served their beer at Oktoberfest in 1895, they advertised their stall (it was likely more like a wooden hut) as “Waizenbierbude”, and that was very much my inspiration.
