Tag Archives: photos

History

Photos of Johann Götz from the National Archives in Kraków

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This is a bit of an unusual type of post for my blog. Instead of lots of texts, I’ll be mostly posting a few images instead, namely photos depicting Johann Götz (aka Jan Ewangelista Goetz) that I found in the National Archives in Kraków. The quality may not be the absolutely best, as I basically just took snapshots with my Pixel 6 phone camera, but it’s good enough for now.

None of the photos were dated, so when it comes to the age of them, all I can say is “1893 or earlier”.

Photo of Johann Götz by Awit Szubert, Kraków. Digitisation licensed under CC BY 4.0. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Photo of Johann Götz by Awit Szubert, Kraków.

The first one is a photo taken by Awit Szubert (1837-1919), a photographer from Kraków. In this photo, Johann Götz wears historic clothing of Polish noblemen, a kołpak hat with a feather on his head, and boots. Attached the clothes is some sort of side arm, like a knife or a small sword. Johann Götz is stood next to a table and has his left hand on a book. On the other side of him, there’s a cushioned chair.

Portrait of Johann Götz by Walery Rzewuski. Digitisation licensed under CC BY 4.0. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Photo of Johann Götz in a sitting position with his right arm resting on a table and his left hand resting on his left upper thigh, showing him halfway from the side, by Walery Rzewuski. Digitisation licensed under CC BY 4.0. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

The next two photos show Johann Götz wearing a suit jacket with two medals, one around his neck, and one as a breast medal. Both photos were taken by Polish photographer Walery Rzewuski (1837-1888), based in Kraków. The breast medal is the Golden Cross of Merit with the Crown, while the one around his neck is the Knight Commander medal of the Pontifical Equestrian Order of Saint Sylvester.

Portrait of Johann Götz by Franz Grainer. Digitisation licensed under CC BY 4.0. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Portrait of Johann Götz by Franz Grainer. Digitisation licensed under CC BY 4.0. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

The final set of photos are two portraits of Johann Götz by Franz Grainer (1840-1904) in Reichenhall, Bavaria. Again wearing a suit jacket but this time buttoned up all the way, he looks more serious with a straight head on the left one, but a bit more smiley (as much as that’s noticeable with his beard) with a slightly tilted head on the right one. Franz Grainer was also the court photographer of Princess Therese of Oldenburg, as is noted on the back of one of the photos.

Judging from the years of death of each of the credited photographers, I would say that the photos themselves are all in the public domain (in Poland, copyright expires 70 years after an author’s death). Please note that this is not legal advice.

Brewing

Brewing a Vienna Lager

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About a month ago, I posted about some things I found out about Vienna lagers, and how the historic original probably was like compared to modern versions of that style.

So yesterday, we finally got around to brewing it on my own. I compromised a bit in the whole process, though, just to make a few things a bit easier for me. In particular, I decided not to do a decoction mash.

I use a Weck preserving cooker as a mash tun, as it can contain plenty of liquid for the mash, and it’s electrically heatable, allowing to go through specific rest temperatures without having to resort to having to add hot water later. Just don’t trust the internal thermostat, and use a proper food thermometer instead.

I used 20 liters of water at 66 °C, and mashed in 5.3 kg of Vienna malt. The resulting mash was at 62 °C, and from there on I did a simple Hochkurz infusion mash:

  • 30 minutes at 62 °C
  • 20 minutes at 72 °C
  • 10 minutes at 78 °C

For modern malts and a high degree of diastatic base malts (like 100% in this case), that’s good enough to fully convert all starches.

After an iodine test showed that all starches were indeed converted, we continued with lautering. For that, we use a simple bucket from my preferred homebrewing online store, with a Mattmill false bottom.

For sparging, we always employ a colander with a food container lid set in the middle, to sprinkle hot water on the mash. BTW, my hot water is… my boiler. My flat contains a large boiler that actually delivers 80 °C hot water. Perfect for sparging.

 

The collected wort showed a pre-boil gravity of about 12 Brix, which later turned out to be probably not quite exact. I think I need to recalibrate it with distilled water. *sigh*

Anyway, we boiled it for 90 minutes, with 60 grams of Saaz hops for bittering, and no other hop addition.

After a whirlpool, I moved the wort to a fermentation bucket, and cooled it down to 20 °C with an immersion chiller, then moved it to my keezer to further cool it to 11 °C.

The hydrometer showed a bit more than 13 °P as original gravity, while the refractometer showed 14 Brix. A recalibration really seems necessary.

Finally, in the evening, I pitched a starter of WLP820 yeast. That should give a low attenuation comparable to the lager yeast that was used in the 19th century in Anton Dreher’s brewery. The beer is going to ferment in the next two weeks or so. I’ll use Brülosopher’s quick lagering method, as I’ve had some good experience with it in previous batches of lager brewing.

As soon as the beer is finished lagering and carbonating, I’ll post a report about the final result.