Brewing tables from 1867-1871.

Here's a table from an article in the Journal of the institute of brewing from 1960, dealing with the brewing industries of Germany and Denmark which I thought was interesting as it pertains the question of Märzen beer:


And here's an excerpt from an article published in 1966 on the topic of the German brewing industry written by Ludwig Narziss:

"The West German export beers are somewhat darker.
For these beers, as well as for
the Bavarian pale-coloured lager beers, malt
with a good modification and a colour
of approximately 4° E.B.C. is required.
Occasionally a certain percentage of "Wiener"
malt with a colour 5-0-6-00 E.B.C. is used in
the grist, although this malt is normally used
for "Marzenbieren" (medium coloured beers).
The dark Munich malts have a very wet
and intensive germination and are kilned
off at 100-105° C; as a result they obtain a
good aroma. Owing to the lengthy kilning
they are poor in enzymes and have to be
mashed very carefully. They are used on
their own, or together with approximately
1% coloured malt for the brewing of dark
beer. For Marzenbiere they are blended to
50% with pale malt."

 

Found this table in a book from 1843 which was interesting, it's a list of "every winter beer" which had been brewed by Munich brewers and taken from the breweries on the 24th of january. The abv appears to have shifted between around 3.4%-4.9% and the original gravity between around 10.76-15%.

 

Here it is, the table is on page 706.

 

I found some interesting tables of beer analyses which I thought I would post here.
First is a set of tables showing beers analyzed from five different Munich breweries from year to year (all of the tables are from various editions of Bayerisches Brauerjournal).



Next is a table showing dark summer lager beers, Märzen beers, a couple of starkbiere, Salvator and three weissbiere. This table is taken from a 1908 edition of Bayerisches Brauerjournal.



Here is a table from 1912.


This table is from 1913.

And this finally is from 1914.



One interesting thing about these tables is the column for "colour in 1/10 normal iodine solution" or "farbe in 1/10 normal jodlösung". The pattern which can be seen here is that the two Pilsener samples are the lightest at 0.6, then comes the Märzenbiere, then the Winterbiere, then the starkbiere and lastly Salvator. The higher gravity Märzenbiere are thus lighter in color than the lower gravity winterbiere, so instead of having a color inbetween winterbier and Munich starkbier/Salvator, it instead ranks inbetween Pilsner and Winterbier, as one would expect of Vienna-style lager beers.

 

Here's a short article from the same journal where Lintner describes the principles of measuring the color depth of beer. For this a standard solution is required, which the beer is then measured against. The value of one means that the beer matches the standard solution perfectly, a higher number would mean that it is darker than the solution. He exemplifies this by using a Munich beer which is found to have the value 4.2, which means that it is 4.2 times as dark as the standard solution or a beer which has the color of the standard solution. If we were to attach an srm value to the value of 1, then perhaps this could be used as a means of approaching the color of the analyzed beers, albeit imperfectly.

 

I recall here the correspondence between Carl and JC Jacobsen referenced earlier in the thread:

From Carl in 1868 (after visiting both Dreher at Klein Schwechater and Sedlmayr in Munich):

"The Munich beer is a bit darker than the Viennesse's Märzen. (The export beer, which you have seen in Copenhagen) but the difference is only minor. It has apparently been darker in the past. No burnt malt what so ever was used for it."

From JC in the same year replying to Carl's letter:
"Sedelmayr's malting has changed since my time I see. At that time it only lasted for five days and the sprouts only became half the lenght of the kernel. He "dried off" at a high temperature, but not as high as now and yet the beer was pretty brown."

 

That would be a safe bet. In both Bavaria and Austria "farbmalz" was used for coloring dark beers, this "color malt" was malt which was roasted in a drum until it took on the right dark color.

Here is an article on farbmalz and caramel malt from 1901:

""Whereas in producing pale beers, all factors which would cause an post-coloration of the wort produced from pale dried malts is avoided, and in order to attain the so beloved greenish-yellow tinge of Pilsener beer, the natural color of the roasty aromatic malts used for producing dark beers isn't enough, to give the beers the dark brown color, which people for years have become accustomed to with Bavarian beers. It is not possible, to attain the darker colored worts through stronger drying of the malt, since through this process the diastatic ability is severly impacted and through this problems arise in the brewing process with associated poor efficiencies, insufficient fermentation etc. To help with this the adding of color malt is used."

"In the past the color malt was produced thusly, by heating regular dry kilned malt in iron drums through continuous rotation until the kernels took on a dark-black-brown appearance. The flour as well as the shells were black-brown, not seldom was the product more or less charred. Nowadays a large part of the color malt is produced from moistened kilned malt or from semi-kilned malt. In this way a more even browing of the flour is achieved, the shell also does not suffer from the same degree of decay, which takes places when directly roasting the dried malt, which also through the strongly overheated shells gives the color malt an unpleasant aroma and flavor."

 

Some interesting notes by Carl from his time at Klein Schwechater can be found here.

"The amount of malt is as follows
Märzen a 0.15% B
30# per eimer = 30 kg pr hecto
Hops. 0.368# p eimer (Vienna pound not toll pound) that is 1.229# pr centner malt
Lager a 13.0% B 24# pr eimer (malt)
0.280# hops pr eimer
(abzug around 11½%B 23,6 kilograms?)
(This last part seems to not be correct but was told to us thusly)
The Paris-beer 32# pr eimer 0.45# hops"

The Märzen at 15% balling thus uses 613 grams of hops per HL.
The Lager beer at 13% balling thus uses 466 grams of hops per HL.
The Paris export beer thus uses 750 grams of hops per HL.