An Oktoberfestbier 'style' question...

Märzen isn't really a style per se, it's a strength band.

 

Proper ammonia cooling machine. Just like modern refrigeration.

 

The problem with discussions about beer styles is that we seem to want a definition which brings 100% certainty. But the only thing on this topic that I can say with 100% certainty is that I love beer.

 

And I love Märzen, whether it's pale, amber, dark, smoked, unfiltered, whatever. Some great beers with the name.

 

In the more modern perception, of which I completely understand, but it also carries a stylistic brand to it.

So, in order to ask the question under your terms, when did it evolve from practice to brand? After all, not all pre-refrigeration Märzens were of the same strength.

 

In 1870?

 

For those of you interested in refrigeration used for brewing, below is something I just found via a web search (for a different topic):

· 1860 World's first brewery refrigeration machine installed in Australia. Pasteur discovers role of yeast in fermentation process. One of the first "big" brewers, Matthew Vassar - founder of Vassar College - hits a production level of 30,000 barrels per year.

· 1869 America's first brewery refrigeration machine installed in New Orleans brewery. 1870s Malting engineers Galland of Belgium and Saladin of France install pneumatic malting system, thus offering more control and consistency to the maltster.

Cheers!

 

According to Wikipedia (?) the Spaten refrigerating plant was installed in 1873 and used dimethyl ether as the working fluid. Before long von Linde switched to ammonia.
Refrigeration was quick to catch on, by 1880 meat was being shipped from Australia and New Zealand to the UK in refrigerated ships.

 

No idea, really. Was the beer called Märzen always really brewed in March, even pre-refrigeration? My sample of Märzen is so small, that it's difficult to draw any real conclusions about its strength.

 

Very good information here. Thanks for that! When Oktoberfest rolls in I don't get too bent on beer style and such. It's more important for me to be in the spirit of the whole thing. I also take the opportunity to celebrate the end of the intensely hot summer months and the beginning of intensely hot college sports.

 

Ray Daniels discusses the history of Vienna, Marzen and Oktoberfest beers in his book Designing Great Beers. Below is a small extract of the history that Ray Daniels discusses:

“By 1732, fourteen breweries operated near Vienna. … One of the barley beers was known as Marzenbier. No doubt that this beer bore little resemblance to the Marzen of today, but it demonstrates that the term was used at an early date in Austria.

I find the first reference to Marzenbier in Munich just a few decades later. The history of the Hofbrauhaus Munchen reports on the extensive cellars under that structure in the late half of the eighteenth century. These cellars, it notes, all became used for the storage of Marzen beers.

Elsewhere, the same history reference names the brewery’s early products, including two types of brown beer: Braunes Winterbier and Braunes Sommerbier. The brown summer beer would logically be a Marzen: a beer brewed to a higher gravity and cellared until needed during the hot months. The Hofbrauhaus book makes this clear by parenthetically adding “Marzen” after the Braunes Sommerbier notation.

It is fairly clear from these notations that the term Marzen was not actually applied to Munich beers at the time. The creation of a distinct Marzen style appears to have come from Vienna and was then adopted by Munich brewers to become the Oktoberfest style.”

Two sources that Ray Daniels used for the above:

· Hofbrauhaus Munchen 1589 – 1989: 400 Jabre Tradition Festschrift

· Michael Jackson: The New World Guide to Beer

Cheers!

 

I have faith in your research powers Ron, they shine bright!

But to the "March" brews brewed in "March," I believe that's pretty established by their title... at least prior to industrial help to the process.

 

That was the time, roughly, in which industrial refrigeration began in the USA (and brewing was the first industry to make extensive use of it). I'd guess the timeline would be similar in Germany, which was at more or less the same level of industrial development as the US.

EDIT: I should've kept reading to find that you were already being answered. Never mind!

 

They have been lightening the recipe year after year to fit the modern consumers tastes unfortunatly

 

It is indeed true that the beer being served at the Oktoberfest celebration is like a higher alcohol Helles. Weihenstephan Oktoberfestbier is a higher alcohol Helles and it is a very tasty beer. Paulaner Oktoberfest Wiesn is also a higher alcohol Helles. Some folks like to refer to these beers as being pale Marzen beers.

Luckily there are still a lot of amber Marzen beers available. You can drink amber Marzen beers brewed in Germany (e.g., Paulaner Marzen, Spaten Oktoberfestbier Ur-Märzen, etc.). There many US brewed amber Marzen beers; last year my favorites were Sly Fox, High Point (Ramstein) and Shiner.

I like to drink both pale and amber Marzen beers; I enjoy them both. They all have a malty aspect to them but the amber Marzen beers may have more dark malt flavors to them

Cheers!

 

Nice Meshuggah avatar! Cheers

 

Please don't keep repeating this misinformation. The beers serves at the Oktoberfest are Helles Märzen. To say thet they are higher alcohol Helles totally distorts the German way of classifying beers.