Kulmbacher: Strong, Dark, and Hoppy

Discussion in 'Article Comments' started by BeerAdvocate, Jun 4, 2018.

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  1. JackHorzempa

    JackHorzempa Grand Pooh-Bah (3,181) Dec 15, 2005 Pennsylvania
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    Crap! You would need something like 60 lbs. of Pale Malt in addition to the listed grain bill to obtain an OG of around 1.065 for a 1 barrel batch. The resulting beer would not be very dark (e.g., closer to black) but more of a deep amber/brown.

    Ron's recipe is closer to the mark for creating a dark beer (ignoring the DP/conversion issue for the moment).

    Cheers!
     
  2. JackHorzempa

    JackHorzempa Grand Pooh-Bah (3,181) Dec 15, 2005 Pennsylvania
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    Doh!:flushed:

    The name of the Schell’s beer: “Schell's Stag Series No. 12 1879 Kulmbacher Export”

    The name of the beer recipe on Ron’s Blog: “1879 Kulmbacher Export”

    The same exact year of “1879” mentioned. Coincidence!?!:thinking_face:

    I think not. My guess is that Dave (@bergbrew) brewed the Schell’s beer based upon details he learned from Ron but made a decision to produce a beer with 37 IBUs vs. the 80 IBUs called for in Ron’s recipe.

    Cheers!

    @patto1ro @TongoRad
     
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  3. felsenpils

    felsenpils Initiate (0) Nov 4, 2012 Wisconsin

    Hopfenrösten sounds interesting, but actually, it is not what you might think it is. The technique was used to free older and sometimes moldy hops of their musty and unpleasant odors. Unfortunately, this also eliminated a lot of the hop oils. Let us not forget that back in the day, brewers used fresh hop cones which deteriorated quickly after harvest, so this technique was employed to make them usable long after harvest.
     
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  4. bergbrew

    bergbrew Initiate (0) Jan 12, 2004 Minnesota

    The beer was brewed for the historic lager festival at Urban Chestnut, and was indeed based on Ron's recipe.

    The problem with historical recipes, of course, mainly concerns hops (and sometimes malts, but almost every recipe has hop data that is missing). So you don't know the alpha acid, the age of the hops, etc. Combine this with the hop roasting in which the hops were boiled in a very small quantity of wort and considering the solubility of alpha acids, it seemed to me unlikely that the beer was indeed 80 IBUs. Ron was busy traveling and I needed to make the beer, so I decided based on my gut feeling and experience to shoot for something in the 40-45 range. Perhaps the originals were really 80 IBUs, but in my opinion, the resulting beer would have been wildly out of balance.

    To be honest, I didn't even know ours measured 37, and the IBU assay being what it is, I don't have a lot of faith in the measured value. It would be interesting to run it on an HPLC, but alas, I don't have one and don't feel the need to pay someone that has one to give me an accurate number. It was in the ballpark of what I consider 40 for a beer out of our brewery. Is it the exact IBU? I actually don't know, and it doesn't really matter. What actually matters is how the beer tastes.
     
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  5. JackHorzempa

    JackHorzempa Grand Pooh-Bah (3,181) Dec 15, 2005 Pennsylvania
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    And creating a balanced beer is important IMO.

    Cheers!
     
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  6. bergbrew

    bergbrew Initiate (0) Jan 12, 2004 Minnesota

    For those that like that kind of thing, Stan posted our brew log here
     
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  7. JackHorzempa

    JackHorzempa Grand Pooh-Bah (3,181) Dec 15, 2005 Pennsylvania
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    Dave, which malting company's Munich II did you use? What was the DP value in Litner of that malt?

    Cheers!
     
  8. patto1ro

    patto1ro Pooh-Bah (1,998) Apr 26, 2004 Netherlands
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    I assumed beer is slightly heavier than water.
     
  9. patto1ro

    patto1ro Pooh-Bah (1,998) Apr 26, 2004 Netherlands
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    It was brewed for the Urban Chestnut Historic Lager Festival, I assume based on the recipe I provided.
     
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  10. patto1ro

    patto1ro Pooh-Bah (1,998) Apr 26, 2004 Netherlands
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    From all the analyses I've seen, the alpha acid content of traditional hop varieties hasn't increased.
     
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  11. BallantineBurton

    BallantineBurton Initiate (0) Jan 22, 2012 Massachusetts

    Heileman did attempt to revive Blatz Kulmbacher in the 1980's and even went as far as to build the Val Blatz brewery in Milwaukee for their specialty beers. But AB is not the only brewer to sue over names. The Kulmbach brewing industry sued Heileman over the use of the Kulmbacher name in US court. They won making the Kulmbacher name unavailable for use in domestically-produced beers. That the names Kulmbacher (and Munich) remain in the Code of Federal Regulations (27 CFR 7.24(f)) as available for use with a qualifier - "type" or "American" - is simply a matter of TTB never amending malt beverage regulations. At about the same time, Munich brewers sued Heileman over the proposed use of Munich as a class and type of beer to be produced at the Val Blatz brewery. Munich won that as well thus prohibiting domestic brewers from using the names "Munich" or "Munchner" on domestic beers. It's no wonder that Heileman quickly sold their specialty brewery to Miller, now a Leinenkugel brewery.
    Wonder why the Munich brewers failed to notice Ballantine's Munich brand for so many years in the 1960's and 1970's but suddenly took action when Heileman began producing Munich beer?
     
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  12. EvenMoreJesus

    EvenMoreJesus Initiate (0) Jun 8, 2017 Pennsylvania

    The measurements in this article would make much more sense if the hops used were wet/not dried.
     
  13. jesskidden

    jesskidden Grand Pooh-Bah (3,071) Aug 10, 2005 New Jersey
    Pooh-Bah Society Trader

    Oh, yeah - have a vague recollection of reading about those lawsuits but don't recall how they came out - and can't find much info on them.

    Wasn't that quick - Opened in 1986, Heileman shut the brewery down in 1989 (perplexingly for the era, it was a keg-only brewery and, as expected, never got anywhere near capacity which was only in the 50-70k bbl/yr range), briefly re-opened it "for contract brewing" in 1994 and then sold to Leinenkugel (by then a Miller subsidiary) in 1995. IIRC, there had been rumors that Redhook, among others, had looked at it while it was on the market...

    Ballantine only marketed their discount Munich "Leisurely Aged in Wood" Beer brand for a few years starting in 1968 before the sale of their brands to Falstaff in 1972. Four years later:

    On May 28, 1976, Falstaff was sued by Verein Muenchener Brauerein, e.V., a German trade association, for certification mark infringement and unfair trade practices with respect to Falstaff's sale of Munich Beer. ... On March 17, 1978, pursuant to a settlement agreement between the parties, the District Court for the District of Columbia entered a permanent injunction against Falstaff which prohibits the company from marketing beer hereafter under the name "Munich."
     
  14. jesskidden

    jesskidden Grand Pooh-Bah (3,071) Aug 10, 2005 New Jersey
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    Well, "back in the day" is pretty vague and hop terminology has changed (today "fresh hops" means undried hops, which would have been called "raw" or "green" in previous decades) but, in the US at least, there's no record of brewers using "fresh hop cones" - hop farmers traditionally dried the picked hops on a daily basis, either air drying in the sun for small quantities or in kilns/oast houses, using heat from a furnace (wood, coal, and later gas or oil) located on the farm itself or nearby.

    In the US, breweries tended to be in urban areas, far from the hop fields and transportation was slow. In addition, brewing was eventually a year-round industry and hops were harvested only once in late summer-early fall.

    Drying all sorts of herbs, fruit, vegetables and grains was a standard method of preservation of agricultural products and, for hops, it was also a safety factor since undried hops in large quantities would not just spoil but spontaneously combust. Sometimes sulfur was burned in the kiln to further preserve the dried hops.
     
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  15. davehughes

    davehughes Initiate (114) Apr 20, 2016 Oklahoma

    " Sadly, there doesn’t appear to be a single beer brewed today in the Kulmbacher Export style "

    Sprecher brewery in Wisconsin makes a fine Bavarian Black lager that is described as a "Kulmbacher Schwarzbier". It won the 2016 World Beer Cup gold for schwarzbeers. IBUs are 32.
     
    #35 davehughes, Jun 7, 2018
    Last edited: Jun 7, 2018
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  16. zid

    zid Grand Pooh-Bah (3,058) Feb 15, 2010 New York
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    There's inspiration for an IPA name in there for an enterprising brewer.
     
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  17. Dan_K

    Dan_K Initiate (0) Nov 8, 2013 Colorado
    Trader

    Also of note, but the table of OG/FG in the article appears to have a type-o. OG should be something like 1.0752 not 1075.2. Unless there's a different unit of OG that they used to use.
     
  18. steveh

    steveh Grand Pooh-Bah (4,030) Oct 8, 2003 Illinois
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    So I got my hands on some of the Schell Kulmbacher export and would like to review it for my growing BA list. My question is, is this beer a separate "style" from the likes of a Schwarzbier? I know what to expect by the details in your article, but I'd like some sort of benchmark as a guide to know this beer.

    I see it's been added as a Munich Dunkel here at BA, but I'll bet it's far from that style in character.
     
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  19. JackHorzempa

    JackHorzempa Grand Pooh-Bah (3,181) Dec 15, 2005 Pennsylvania
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    @Chaz entered the Schell’s beer on BA. He stated:

    “Note: Although I entered this as a Munich Style Dunkel rather than a more prosaic Euro Dark Lager, I did so because it is simply a bit more complex than most Euro Dark Lagers, and more in line with the malt profile exhibited by Bavarian dark lagers. In fact, it is actually an older and by contemporary standards “obscure” style originating in Franconia, rather than in Bavaria. As Beer Advocate lacks the style designation for the Kulmbacher style, this will have to do for now.”

    But based upon his descriptions in his review (re: “heavy on the roast malt character”) it seems to me that perhaps the Schwarzbier style would be closer to the mark?

    Cheers!

    @bergbrew
     
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  20. steveh

    steveh Grand Pooh-Bah (4,030) Oct 8, 2003 Illinois
    Pooh-Bah Society

    Um, Added by garymuchow on 04-12-2018. Just sayin'.
     
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