krakow Archives - Daft Eejit Brewing

2024 was an exciting year. For the first time, I was invited to speak at a conference about one of my favourite topics, Vienna Lager, and not just at one conference, but actually two. First at Heimbrau Convention (HBCon) in Romrod back in March, and most recently, at Sympozjum Piwowarów in Kraków, Poland.

Beyond just talking about Vienna Lager, both events were great: at HBCon, I learned everything there is to learn about brewing beer like Mönchsambacher Weihnachts-Bock which I then used later on in a home-brewed Franconian-style Kellerbier, drank lots of excellent home-brewed beers, and met up with lots of other homebrewers, while in Kraków, I got to meet people from the Polish craft beer scene as well as see a few super interesting talks about the history of Porter, the latest brewing trends in the US, and a rather enlightening introduction to the human sense of smell and taste.

I also managed to go to Bamberg 3 times. First, as a farewell to a good friend and beer aficionado who moved from Berlin to Bishkek earlier this year but had never been to Franconia before; then to celebrate my good friend Ben‘s 30th birthday by doing a crazy day trip where we took the first train in the morning from Berlin to Bamberg, went all over Bamberg, and then went home on the last train; and finally, as a place to stay and visit BrauBeviale, the annual brewing and beverage industry fair in Nuremberg. For a slight change, we ventured a bit further out and did a day trip to visit the breweries Hummel and Wagner in Merkendorf and Höhn in Memmelsdorf, followed by a leisurely Frühschoppen trip to Zur Sonne in Bischberg the next day, all breweries we had not been to before that were easy enough to reach by public transport (if you pre-plan your trip a bit).

For my 40th birthday, my wife got me a two week trip to the US, which we of course used as a beery holiday and as an opportunity to meet people we had previously only known or talked to online or heard of their beers. Our main stops were Chicago, Austin, and Boston, with visits to Dovetail, Goldfinger, Live Oak, Notch and a few more. It’s safe to say that the American craft lager scene is very strong and is brewing tasty, diverse beer at a high technical level, combined with an incredible enthusiasm for the products they create.

And at the beginning of October, I even managed to visit Oktoberfest and the Augustiner tent on the festival’s very last day.

On the beer writing side, I did not manage to get any new big projects started, but I was nevertheless productive: in 2024, I wrote and published 31 blog posts (including this one), adding up to more than 31,000 words. In terms of page views, these are the top 5 most often read articles of 2024 that I wrote in the same year:

I was a bit surprised to see just how popular my blog posts about Augustiner’s new beer, an alcohol-free Helles, had gotten, but then, non-alcoholic beers with ≤ 0.5% ABV have been the big new trend in 2023 and 2024, with overall quality of beers massively improving compared to 5, 10, 20 years ago. At Oktoberfest, I then experienced the new Augustiner beer in its absolutely best state: properly cold and served fresh on draught by the liter, it is a delight that is virtually indistinguishable from the regular strength beer. I didn’t miss the alcohol in the beer, because it didn’t feel like it was actually missing, and there were none of the off-flavours typical for alcohol-free beer that would have reminded me of the fact what I was drinking.

But the actual number one most often read blog post this year was not even written in 2024, but rather A Very Biased Guide To Berlin Beer and Pubs, October 2023 Edition, which is now responsible for more than 30% of all the page views on my blog.

Cheers to that! And while I don’t have any other big beer history project lined up, I still have a few more interesting topics that I want to further research and discuss in this blog. Watch this space.

Earlier this month, I was invited to speak at the Sympozjum Piwowarów (lit. “Brewers’ Symposium”) in Kraków, Poland, which happened on 10th to 11th December, 2024.

At the Heimbrau Convention in Romrod earlier this year, I met the President of the PSBR, the Polish Association of Craft Breweries, who invited me to talk about the history of Vienna Lager, which I gladly accepted.

The journey from Berlin to Kraków is straightforward, but not exactly fast: a direct train line connects both cities, but it takes about 7 hours in each direction. On the positive side, PKPIC, the Polish train company operating InterCity trains, seem to be operating more reliably and more on time than Deutsche Bahn (DB), and even apologised for slight delays that would still be within DB’s definition of “being on time”.

On the evening before the conference, we attended the party for conference attendants. We didn’t stay too long, but it was great to meet a few people and shake a few hands. The conference venue was Klub STUDIO, a bit outside the city center, in the middle of what seemed like blocks and blocks of student accomodation. One of the great things about it though is that it comes with a brewery, Browar Górniczo-Hutniczy.

On the first day, I watched the talks of Randy Mosher, who spoke about the scientific taste of smell and taste, which was very enlightening. From what I understand, he’s been working on a book about that very topic, which should be out in 2025.

Randy Mosher on the stage. Behind him, a slide that says “We’re much better than we think. Humans can scent-track like dogs! * Cloth with chocolate flavor * People on all fours * Swinging noses side-to-side * Got better with practice”.

Right after that was Jamie Bogner’s talk about the latest trends in American craft brewing of 2024. Jamie Bogner is the co-founder and editorial director of Craft Beer & Brewing magazine. Of course, a lot of these trends are around IPAs, but these points stood out:

Hazy DIPAs are less and less consumed on draught, but more in packaged formats.
Lower ABV versions are more popular.
Hazy IPAs are branching out into further sub-categories, such as beers driven by Citra/Mosaic or NZ hops.
Noble hops are increasingly getting integrated into IPAs
Flowable hop products (flavour extracts) help with reducing loss and increasing intensity.
Most award-winning West Coast “IPAs” are fermented with W-34/70 these days.
Crystal malt has seriously fallen out of fashion, as customers want very pale beers (at least when it comes to West Coast IPA).

Jamie Bogner on stage, on the screen there’s a slide with the headline “American Brewing Trends December 2024”

After that talk, we talked to some of the people at the company stands. As the next scheduled talks were all in Polish, we decided to visit the stained glass museum instead, then went to visit the Kraków Christmas market, and finished with a few beers and dinner.

The next day, Martyn Cornell did his presentation on the history of Porter. Martyn said that he hopes that his book on the subject matter should get published at some point in 2025, and after seeing his talk, I’m even more looking forward to it than before.

Marty Cornell on stage, with the title slide on the screen, saying “Porter, the beer for working class Londoners that conquered the world”

My talk was right after Martyn’s, in which I briefly talked about how Vienna Lager was created, why it went extinct in Austria during World War I, and how it used to be brewed during the 19th century, based on historic sources. I all went okay, except I ran out of time a bit. No matter how well I thought I had prepared the talk and timed it, I still overran because speaking at home apparently is an entirely different thing than speaking on a stage.

Right after my talk, I had to leave quickly as I had an appointment in the National Archives in Kraków to review a few documents that I had ordered. I have yet to fully review the material I’ve taken pictures of, but I’m sure you’ll see a blog post or two in the next few days or weeks about it.

After the visit to the National Archives, we had early dinner (I had my first pierogi at a proper sit-down restaurant) to return to the venue for the Kraft Roku 2024 award ceremony. Kraft Roku (lit. “Craft of the Year”) is Poland’s craft beer competition. Even though we understood very little (Google Translate in camera mode at least helped me understand the text on the big screen), it was still great fun, the Górniczo-Hutniczy beers we had also helped.

The audience at the Kraft Roku award ceremony

We stayed at the party afterwards as long as we could, but eventually needed to leave because we had to catch our train back the next morning.

Overall, Sympozjum Piwowarów was an excellent event. Lots of very good presentations (though I couldn’t exactly understand many of them), lots of interesting people to meet, and just an expression of how active and enthusiastic the Polish craft beer scene is. As a friend of mine noted, in Germany you either have a very academic-industrial approach to beer, or you have the home-brew scene, but nothing in between. Well, this symposium exactly filled that “in between” gap.

(full disclosure: both train journey and hotel were paid for by the Sympozjum Piwowarów organisers for me and my wife)

Daft Eejit Brewing

Tag Archives: krakow

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