German / Imported Märzens

Given all the B. United and Schlenkerla talk, a local specialty shop coincidentally just posted on their Facebook page a picture of this delivery:


I'm trying to figure out if that Lentbeer is really early or really late

 

As an aside: if anyone is interested, Pumking & Warlock are out, so I guess pumpkin season is here too.

 

@EmperorBatman posted that one of his locals replaced Spaten Okto with the Lentenbier on the tap stand. Must be a lot of Lenten left over -- probably another COVID effect.

 

Two locations of one of my favorite stores posted earlier this week that they received the Surly Oktoberfest, so you should have it too (or soon).

 

Maybe because the oak they ferment in is 'young'?

FWIW I question the rationale for why some craft breweries think it is a good idea to ferment in oak vessels (foudres). I am guessing because this the how Pilsner Urquell used to ferment in the olden days (and in their cellar breweries today):



Now, I have no way of knowing for sure but I would be willing to bet that the oak vessel above has been used to ferment many (hundreds? thousands?) of batches. What I can relate is that the beer I drank for the Pilsner Urquells cellar brewed beer had zero aspects of oak (astringency?) that I could perceive. In the 1800's breweries had to use wooden vessels because stainless steel vessels were not available to them. If I was a commercial brewer I would ferment and lager in stainless steel vessels. Progress moves onward!

Cheers!

 

LOL!

Cheers!

 

You are learning young Padawan!

 

I remember reading that post.

The problem I have is that this is the first time this year that I've seen the 2019 Lent beer on the shelves. It'd be interesting to read B. United's/Schlenkerla's excuse as to why it's only showing up now--maybe COVID has some part in it, but I find it hard to believe that it's kept the beer off the shelves for this long.

 

The latest Fastenbier started to show up in my area 5 months ago.

 

Though I see that they do call the 14º special.

 

2019? Typo, or are you seeing Lenten as "vintage" offerings?

 

After making some attempts at looking up the actual regulations here is what I've found. There's a brief mention in Ludwig Narziss's Abriss der bierbrauerei where he notes that the "new" beer law (is he talking about the one from 1993 or an earlier version? I have no idea) dictated that beers should have an original gravity which was in line with what consumers expected:

"In order to continue to provide consumers with beers of the strenght they are used to, the new beer law sees minimum original gravities for certain beers for example Lagerbiere 10%, Hell, Pils, Dunkel 11%, Export 12%, Märzen, Festbier 13%, Bockbiere 16%."

According to the Bavarian department for health and food safety, while there are legislative regulations concerning the original gravity of "beers with a low original gravity", "schankbier", "starkbier" and "Bockbier", for most terms used there are no legal requirements. This includes terms such as:

"Leichtbier, Lager/Hell, Dunkel, Keller-/Zwick(e)l-/Zoiglbier, Pils/Pilsener, Export, Märzen, Fest-/Jubiläumsbier, Oktoberfest-/Wiesn-Bier, Fastenbier, Doppelbockbier" etc.

In an article in bierwelt from 2014 which deals with labeling requirements in Germany it is again noted that there is on the one hand legally required labeling: the labeling of the product as "beer", as well as original gravity based labeling (whether the beer is a "low original gravity" beer, below 7%, "schankbier", between 7-11% or "starkbier" above 16%). For the gravity band between 11-16% (which includes the former vollbier class of 11-14% and the original gravity gap between 14-15% as noted by Ron) there are no requirements concerning labeling apart from the aforementioned requirements, along with the voluntary term "vollbier" or a commonly used trade name such as Pils or Helles or Weizen.

To me the information I've found thus far seems to indicate that yes, there have been legally binding lower limits for original gravity for different beer styles in the not so distant past, but they have lost their legal basis (one could speculate about them being viewed as trade barriers by the EU, and if one looks at the regulations referenced by the Bavarian health department one can see that much of the legislation is EU based (or "EG", Europäische gemeinschaft), there is limited room for individual member states to maintain and enforce detailed legislation which might interfer with the sale of products from other countries within the common market.

What remains are the broad gravity based standards for "beers with a low original gravity", "schankbier", "starkbier" and "Bockbier". These can still be found in the German beer legislation BierV, or bierverordnung. I personally think it's a mistake to only focus on laws, ignoring convention and tradition. Not all things are maintained by laws. Even if there is no law in place, convention and tradition will ensure that there's not simply a blank slate. A foundation exists, but as time goes by, things change and are not set in stone. Considering the fact that the German brewing industry has to deal with two lineages of Märzenbier, both the original domestic Bavarian Märzenbier as well as the Bavarian derived Austrian Märzenbier, later emulated by Bavarian brewers, and then altered over time, it's no wonder any conceptualization of Märzenbier has to be a broad one. But that doesn't mean that Märzenbier cannot be understood, as long as one understands the history and where it comes from. That's my take on this at least. The German brewing industry are the caretakers of their country's brewing history and traditions.

Good point. Those tax classes have never been entirely logical. For example in 1919 when the first gravity band based legislation was introduced the cut off between vollbier and starkbier was set at 13%, basically right in the middle of lager beers at the time. Then in 1922 they introduce the schankbier as a separate tax class at 8-9%, whereas in Bavaria before WW1 the schankbier had been brewed to 12-14%.



In Bavaria the schankbier and lagerbier, winterbier and sommerbier, were similar in original gravity unlike in Austria Hungary where the schankbier was brewed significantly weaker around 10-11%. With the new German legislation the term schankbier came to be associated with small beer gravities and has been relegated to irrelevance.

1919
Einfachbier up to 4.5%
Vollbier 8-13%
Starkbier 13%

1922
Einfachbier up to 5.5 %
Schankbier 8–9%
Vollbier 9–13%

Compare with the numbers from turn of the century Munich:

 

Drinking a Hofbräu Oktoberfestbier right now

Surprised by the date code

June 15th 2020 if I'm translating the 167th day of the 20th year (T) correctly. The freshest German option I'll likely have this year. Cheers

 

There is a fresher batch, not sure if it's due to distribution. The ones I picked up Thursday are T181 (June 30) so don't give up hope.

HB can bottle their beer in mid-late June and have it on the shelves by the end of July; makes me wonder why other German breweries are bottling in March, April, and May.

 

Like, now? Right now? 10:00 in the morning?

You should be drinking Weizen -- it's the Münchner Früstück bier!

 

Typo indeed! Too much wishful thinking for 2020 to just disappear and too much Gaffel and Spaten.

 

Did you have any on draft at local pubs that wasn’t the same as the cellar beer? If so, how did that compare to the Pilsner Urquell here in the US?

If you’re ever in New England I would highly recommend going to Notch in MA and Schilling in NH. Both make Czech styles with the appropriate nomenclature for the styles.

Notch actually has a beer they recently released a month or two ago called “Tmavé”. I’ll post a picture of it on draft at their brewery, it was my first draft in the “new real world”.

 

We got a nice Tmave here too by Utepils. Draft only for the colder half of the year.