Vienna Lagers

Understood. It is entirely possible that some US breweries produced all malt Wiener beers and others produced Wiener beers with adjuncts. And needless to say a given brewery may have originally produced an all malt Wiener beer and later on used some adjuncts to produce that brand.

I did some web searching yesterday and based upon my non-results I agree with you here. Maybe researching the history of brewing Wiener beers in America would be a good project for Theresa McCulla.

Cheers!

 

FWIW, during my research I found reference to Hoster’s Wiener beer:

“1836: Hoster establishes the L. Hoster Brewing Company in what becomes known as the Brewery District. Eventually, the brewery grows to include numerous buildings. A bottling plant is built at at 55 W. Livingston Ave., and stables for delivery horses stand in the Worly Building at 503 S. Front St.

1892: Hoster had become a household name throughout Ohio and was the leading Columbus brewery. An article in the May 7, 1892, issue of The Columbus Dispatch says of the beer: “The fundamental principle, evidently, of the L. Hoster Brewing Co. is to make as good a beer as can be procured, regardless of trouble or expense. It is strongly recommended by physicians for family use.”

1901: Annual production at the Hoster brewery reaches 300,000 barrels. In addition to its flagship Gold Top lager, the company produce Wiener (German for “Vienna”), Muenchner (German for “Munich”), a bock and a brown October beer.

Circa 1920: State and national Prohibition cripples the Columbus brewing trade. After attempting to make soda pop and near beer, the Hoster brewery closes.”

http://www.columbusalive.com/conten...d/2011/05/hoster_set_to_bottle_its_names.html

And Schaefer made a Wiener beer too:



Cheers!

 

Thank you for the correction. Evidently I still have much to learn about such beer styles!

This makes me wonder if the use of caramel malts in the average Austrian lager is something of a remnant of Dreher's Vienna-style. So while a "fully" Vienna-style beer isn't really made by anybody except for some Viennese district breweries, it nonetheless still influences Austria's contemporary beer styles to some degree.

 

Yeah, there were a number of 'em. Besides Blatz in Milwaukee, Schlitz and Miller also brewed one and, as expected, quite a few in PA, including one from this tiny outfit up in the hills...


I always wondered if the WINNER BEER they brewed right after Repeal (maybe it was a 3.2 beer?) was a play-on-words for Weiner beer?

 

Saranac also has a vienna lager called adirondack lager.

 

It was a strength class in Austria, too. But these has been eroded over the years and doesn't really apply any more.

 

What is common usage for the term these days?

 

This kind of illustrates the "complicated" history of US beer style usage.

What is now simply labeled "Saranac Lager" was Matt's first Saranac-branded beer, "Saranac 1888", released in 1985 (coincidentally, just a couple months after Samuel Adams Boston Lager). Though obviously influenced by the Matt-contract brewing of "New Amsterdam Amber Beer" (and their own similar "F X Matt Season's Best - Amber Holiday Beer") earlier in the decade, originally Matt positioned the all-malt beer in the so-called "ultrapremium" price segment to compete with imports - even packaging it in green bottles.

The brewery was calling it a "highly-hopped Bavarian style" beer by the end of the decade, but M. Jackson called it a "pilsener-style" beer in both his New World Guide to Beer and Pocket Guide editions in the 1980s. Now, that might be a surprise but no less than Jim Koch used the same terminology for SABL at times in the early days.

Today, the brewery calls it a "German Amber Lager" and, interestingly, notes they use Hallertau and Tettnang hops - the original "1888" was noted for its use of Hallertau and Yakima Valley Cascades. Can't find an ABV citation from the '80s but somehow I doubt it was today's 5.5%.

 

Alot of interesting discussion already in this thread but I will add a few translated excerpts which I think are interesting when it comes to the question of the color of Vienna lager beers.

Excerpt from Bier, Malz, sowie Maschinen und Apparate für Brauereien und Mälzereien by Gustav Noback from 1874 (page 3):
"In the remaining crown countries of Austria Hungary a beer with the character of the Viennesse beer is mostly produced, namely a stronger beer from 11 to 14 percent worts in higher color (starting at dark golden yellow), full bodied with a more sweetish flavor, less hop rich than the Bohemian beer."

Excerpt from Geschichte des Bieres von der ältesten Zeit bis zum Jahre 1899 by Karl Michel from 1899 (page 27)
"Secondly: Viennesse beers, golden yellow, somewhat less extract rich, more alcoholic than the Munich beers."

Excerpt from Enzyklopädie der technischen chemie from 1928(page 386)
"The main representative of the middle colored beers is the Viennesse beer. Over the years deviations and variations have emerged, which make it more difficult to recognize and characterise the real Viennesse type. The beer of the old Viennesse type is a stronger brewed (14% original gravity) beer of golden yellow to red-pale-brown color, not so full bodied, malty and sweet as the dark Munich, not hop bitter, but strong in flavor. At a lower original gravity this type is characterized by versions of red color, such a variant was for a long time the northern German lager beer."

I found a couple of interesting Coors advertisements which I thought I would add, this one describing the beer as deep amber, then this one describing it as golden compared with the extra pale Pilsener, and another one similar to the second.

I could also add this excerpt from Chemie der menschlischen nahrungsmittel from 1903 showing three analyses of Swedish brewed beers from 1889.


The lager beer is listed as golden yellow, the Erlanger dark brown and the pilsener as pale yellow. The two main types of beer brewed by a Swedish lager beer brewery at the turn of the century would be a lager beer (formerly known as Bavarian beer), a pilsner beer, lower gravity versions of each, and then possibly some other kinds such as Bock or Erlanger, Kulmbacher etc. The Swedish lager beer had become less dark than the original Bavarian beers it was descended from, and more similar to the Vienna lager. This process of a lightening of the color of the beer brewed is something mentioned by Gustav Noback in his book on page 12:

"At this point an interesting circumstance must be considered. Since several years it can be noted, that in most of the beer producing countries in Europe they have gradually moved from the brewing of darker beers over to the production of paler ones."

When reading the excerpt from Ernst Hantke's book about American lager beers I think this should be taken into account. It's not that he's saying that American "lager beers" were Vienna lager beers, only that many of them most resembled this style out of the three main lager beer types (Munich, Vienna and Bohemian lager) in terms of color and flavor (which is the point I believe jesskidden was making and which I agree with).

 

Yeah, this would have been known by the Austrians as Märzenbier, a higher gravity (and thus more expensive, due to the taxation being based on the original gravity of the wort) lager beer. The largest output of the Austrian breweries was of abzugbier, bottom fermented beers of around 10-11% plato, the second largest output would have been lagerbier at around 13-14% plato, with smaller amounts of higher gravity "Märzenbier" (around 14.5-16% plato, the example in your excerpt being slightly over 15% plato) produced. A brief description of the differences between the different types can be seen here. See for example:

 

Yeah, that ad is pretty interesting given that they were claiming that Coors Export Lager was different enough in color from other US AAL of the era that one could pick it out just from that. (Remember, too, that Coors was tiny in the 1930s, so it's not like they are comparing their beer to breweries of their size necessarily).

As for the color, can't find it now but I'm pretty sure there's one ad where they call Export "golden amber"....

Yeah, that is the problem with US "styles" of that period in general - using modern day criteria and the geekery's obsession with "authenticity" and following the written guidelines, few beers would have met with approval. Rather than trying to reproduce European beer styles, they were simply kinda "inspired" by them (granted, the brewer's promo dept. often didn't get the message).

I thought I had already quoted it (maybe in an earlier "Vienna Lager" thread?) but the Wahl's 1937 ed. of The Handybook of The American Brewing Industry said this about brewing (well, "making" might be a better choice of words) "Vienna Type Beer":
The preferred method for producing beer having the characteristics of the Vienna type is to properly brew the mild Pilsener type* and also the strong Muenchener type and then after storage these two beers are mixed in approximately equal proportions giving a resulting beer having characteristics midway between between the mild Pilsener and the strong Munich beers.

* The Wahl's listed a fourth primary US lager type, a "Strong Pilsener Type Beer"

 

Ha, there it is (below, left) in post #20 on page 1 of this thread:
​

 

I suppose a smaller brewer could more easily find a market for more distinctive beers. (I recall here your musings about whether Shiner had brewed an all malt beer before WW2) I found two other ads which use the term pure barley malt beer and pure malt beer to describe Coors Export Lager. Then again some of the other ads seem really coy about the use of adjuncts by focusing only on the non-use of corn, so who knows.

Yeah. At the end of the day they had to brew what the market demanded and adjust themselves to the competition.

Ugh, I always find such economic brewing methods sad to read about (though there are certainly sadder ways to produce darker tinted beers out there, at least that one takes a bit of effort).

 

Below are a few translated excerpts from Ernst Hantke's book Handbuch für den Amerikanischen Brauer und Mälzer.

(page 295)
"With german malts for examination one mostly cares about determining the sugar ratio, since one can recognize the character of the malt, if it is Pilsner, Wiener or Münchener, from it, with American malts this examination is rarely necessary, since the american malts are of a similar character and the ratio of sugar to non sugar in worts according to the proportionality method is about 100:35."

(page 298)
"In the United States is mostly malt of one character produced, from which according to the mashing process different beers are produced. The American malts stand in their properties inbetween Pilsner and Wiener malt."

(page 462)
"In general the malt houses of the United States only produce pale, giving little color when mashed, good saccharification yielding malts, which in their type are most similar to the Wiener malt, only seldom are malts of another character produced."

(page 491)
"Since the american beers in their character most resemble the Wiener and the Wiener mashing process is most introduced in Austria and Germany, then the Wiener process is spoken of next:"

(page 452)
"Kilning is one of the most important jobs particularly when one wants to produce characteristic malts. In this country however the character of the beer is not entirely dependent on the character of the malt, which is mostly the case in european breweries: in general here, which has already been mentioned already, particularly since most of the malt is produced not in breweries, but instead in the large malt houses, only one kind of malt, which by its uniqueness is rightfully considered as a particular type of "american malt". Of the malt types used in Europe the american malt stands closest to the Wiener malt, it differs very little from Pislener however very considerably from Münchener and english malts. Despite however that in general only one type of malt is produced in the United States and because of this the work being technical and simple, the greatest possible attention is placed on the kilning,"

As a counterpoint to this (or for the sake of providing some context) I thought I would also provide this table from Schwackhöfer's book Amerikanische Brau-Industrie auf der Weltausstellung in Chicago showing the number of breweries with their own malt houses and independent malt houses in the different American states in the fiscal year 1892:



The table is divided between brauereien (breweries) and selbständige malzfabriken (independent malt factories). The brewery column is further divided between those ohne (without) and those mit (with) their own maltings.

 

And my brewing with these malts and some adjuncts (e.g., about 20% of the grain bill being corn and/or rice) the beer color would approach those of Pilsners (e.g., 100% Pilsner malt).

Cheers!

 

Yeah, the adjunct would dilute the coloring strenght of a paler base malt further, unless a coloring malt was used to adjust the color. Wahl and Henius wrote in their book on page 714:

"In America pale malt is generally used for pale, as well as dark beers, for the latter an addition being made of caramel malt, black malt, roasted malt, roasted corn or sugar color."

With a small percentage of roasted malt you can produce pretty much any color shade from golden yellow to black using a pale base malt and adjunct. Just to take as an example here's a website showing a few Australian macro beers, every pale macro brand lists roasted malt as an ingredient, no doubt used to counteract/adjust for a pale basemalt and the use of a colorless sugar adjunct.

 

In Austria, Märzen is a Pale Lager of around 12º Plato.

 

So if it's no longer an unambigous strength designation nor unique color description it has become simply a name for a beer at the brewer's choice?

 

I wonder when they stopped using the Cascades? The bottle I have (mid to late 2000's?) mentions the use of Cascades.





I also have this bottle (early to mid 2000's?), but there's no info on it.



I probably should have cataloged when these bottles were from.

 

Yeah, I was pretty surprised, too. In the mid-80s, an "old line" brewery using Cascade hops was sort of big news. Of course, Blitz-Weinhard's Henry Weinhard Private Reserve had also been heavily promoted as featuring them on the West Coast, as did the Matt-brewed New Amsterdam Amber Beer.

Most US-made beer bottles have the "year" of manufacture as two-digits among the characters embossed around the base of the bottle. That can usually get you close (obviously a bottle filled in January might be made the previous years).