Most “Historical-Tasting” AAL?

It's like their great-great grandchildren who misspell, use the wrong word and ignore capitalization on internet forums, and then say
"Ahhh... they know what I mean."

 

Well, the topic of "Pre-Prohibition Lager" can be a bit confusing since prior to Prohibition there was a variety of lagers being produced including Wiener (Vienna Lagers) and Muencher (Bavarian - Marzen) type beers but by and large the popular selling beers prior to Prohibition were brewed with adjuncts (corn, rice) and much more hoppy than contemporary AAL beers. We homebrewers refer this sort of beer as being Classic American Pilsners (CAP).

If you have an in interest in learning more about CAP beers send me a PM and I will provide you an article I wrote on this topic in Zymurgy magazine.

Cheers!

 

When speaking of lager beer brewing in the early days, 1850s-1860s the question of cooling and ice are interesting topics. Pre artifical refridgeration. I came across a reference to lager beer being brewed in New Braunfels Texas from 1858. That made me wonder what they could muster in terms of cooling. Likely they would have built underground, isolated cellars of the kind found in Bavaria at the time. Though I don't know how cool such a cellar would be in that area. That made me think about the ice houses of the northern states referenced by the Austro Hungarian Ludwig Häcker in his book about his travels to the US in the early 1860s.

Elsewhere he writes:

He also notes that:

A coupe of points. Firstly that even for a city such as St Louis keeping the cellar temperatures down seems to have been an issue at this time, even though they had access to some ice from ice companies it apparently wasn't enough. His mentions of "by September and October when the carbonation is quite low" and "already in the first summer months" and "When in late summer the lager beers are rare" also tells us that at this point the brewers were still following the old system of brewing lager beer in the cooler months and storing it throughout the summer, with stocks dwindling by late summer. Schenkbier/winterbier, or lower gravity, short aged bottom fermented beer, was also being brewed. One Hundred Years of Brewing also notes that:

A 13% Balling beer fermented down to 2-2.5% Balling would have an abv of between 5.62-5.88%. For a contemporary comparison we might consider what Carl Jacobsen wrote about his visit to Klein Schwechater in 1867

As per Carl the Schwechater Lager beer was brewed to 13% Balling (typical Vienna lager strenght). So 13% Balling and minimum 4.7% Balling, that would be around 4.48% abv. The Austrian Hungarians were used to measuring the beer in Balling since 1855 when the empire adopted it as the basis for taxing the beer, and Häcker owned a brewery in Hungary brewing bottom fermented beer since the mid 1850s and would have been familiar with all aspects of bottom fermenting beer brewing prior to his visit.

What is interesting to me is also the mention of "such areas of the west" that got their beer from St. Louis. Evidently one of those areas was New Orleans from where I found an 1858 advertisement for St. Louis Lager Beer. In the same book one also finds a list of "beer houses" with a conspicuous number of German sounding names among the proprietors. One also finds a list of "ice dealers" (and a huckster!). Where did the ice come from I wondered. It seems like a good deal came from Boston going by this book from 1855. And it sounds like Boston was a major "exporter" of ice to other parts of the US, all along the seaboard, from Charleston to Mobile, to New Orleans to even Galveston and Indianola Texas. So the question is I guess how far inland that the ice got in Texas once it reached the Texas coast, did it arrive to ice dealers/insulated ice houses in San Antonio for it to then be bought and delivered to smaller towns like New Braunfels? It's intriguing to consider.

Of course another question to ask would be if this beer was actually lager beer to begin with, or "simply" schenkbier. A German speaking Swiss author, Hemmann Hoffmann, writing about his travels in California, Nevada and Mexico in the the period 1863-1868 wrote:

"The Americans call all German beer Lager beer, this Lager beer however is generally only a month old and normally turns over quickly. Aside from this the beer is put out in two types; as Flatbeer and as Steambeer, however both originate from the same brew and their difference arises when filled into barrels. The Flatbeer is the regular Schenkbier."

According to him English speakers called all German beer lager beer, even though Bavarian bottom fermented beer was divided into two kinds, summer beer and winter beer, or lager beer and schenk beer, each making up roughly half of the market. The table below showing beer production in Bavaria in the years 1859-1871 divided by beer class (schankbier, lagerbier, luxusbier [i.e doppelbier, i.e Bock and Salvator and the like], weissbier) and administrative region.


I found this table of beer production in St Louis interesting when compared against the numbers in the table above.

I am tempted to think that the statistics, "translated" from German, disguises schenkbier behind the Anglicized term Common Beer, and that St Louis breweries were brewing similar amounts of lager and schenk beer, with the lager beer being primarily sold during the summer months, dwindling sometime in late summer or autumn.

One hint that both lager and schenk was being brewed by St Louis breweries is given by another book from 1859 where it says:

"lager and schenk", the term schenk seems to have been not widely used by English speakers and lager beer was the term that stuck. So were the breweries in New Braunfels brewing lager beer or merely schenkbier/schankbier? That's anyone's guess I suppose, but it catches the imagination. Steam Beer on the west coast evidently was influenced by Bavarian schenkbier in having shorter storage times and being kräusened, as opposed to a long lagered and bunged/spunded lagerbier. By opting for brewing schenk beer instead of lager beer the requirements placed on long term cold storage would have been reduced. But the question remains if this was done, and if it was, did the German immigrants drinking the beer know the difference? Or were they simply sold schenkbier as lagerbier while being none the wiser?

 

As a side note I thought this snippet from a New Orleans city directory from 1875 was neat. "Western brands served ice cold". If they opened that day and had several brands on hand that would be pretty special I imagine, so not a tied house yet.

 

Patrik, I am well acquainted with the climate of New Braunfels since I have family down there and I have visited every year for the past 10+ years. It gets damn hot there. The first year my sister was down there she had a summer where it exceeded 100 degrees F for something like 90 days. Going down into the ground would yield some cooling but nothing like lager temperature cooling. Lots of ice would be needed here.

I am not a 19th Century Ice Trade expert but I would think that another source for the Ice Trade would be ice from the upper Mid-West (e.g., Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, Illinois) delivered to the south via the Mississippi River. This would be convenient for cities like St, Louis. Maybe not so convenient for New Braunfels.

I found it intriguing that already by 1860 ales were not a popular beer type. Only two breweries are listed as providing ales (400 barrels and 4000 barrels) and one of those brewery's amount was quite modest at 400 barrels. It would appear that by 1860 the ale type was already in serious decline in St, Louis.

Cheers!

 

Every source I've ever seen defined US "common beer", which many German immigrant brewers made before the availability of lager yeast, as top fermented. Two quotes from History of the Brewing Industry and Brewing Science in America John P. Arnold & Frank Penman. (1933)

Unknown Author, 1857:

Unknown Author, 1875:

 

That does sound like some serious scorching heat and a challenge when constructing cellars for keeping beer cool during fermentation and cold during storage. I too would think that "some" ice would be helpful in this regard. Perhaps it was easier during parts of the year to maintain "workable" as opposed to ideal temperatures, akin to the descriptions of the brewing of Steam Beer on the west coast where the beer could go from warmer than normal primary fermentation temperatures straight over into trade packages with a kräusen addition (a similar practice, minus the warmer primary fermentation temperature can be found described for the brewing of schenkbier in Bavaria already in the early 1800s).


Gratuitous shot of a Swedish lager cellar cooled with blocks of ice, just to stir the imagination.

Yeah I've come across some later 1870s-1880s references to St Louis based ice companies harvesting ice in Missouri (King's Lake) as well as in Illinois (Quincy Bay and De Pue), while having "storage for ice" in Minnesota as per the first reference (one would think that they also cut ice there) it would seem reasonable to think that there was a similar trade back in the 1850s as well along the Mississippi.

I guess it's as simple as lager beer early on being the main driver of growth in the beer business in the Midwest, thanks to German entrepreneurs and an immigrant German customer base, in time expanding to include also English speaking Americans.

 

Yeah, Häcker himself notes that the common beer was top fermented in his book:

He even notes that the common beer breweries tended to be owned by Germans. There is no doubt in my mind that the "Common beer" was top fermented in America. So from this one could easily draw the conclusion that the common beer referenced in that table was in fact top fermented. Which is why I'll be careful and say tempted to think, as opposed to convinced, that it was in fact bottom fermented schenkbier instead, hiding behind the English term common beer. I've tried locating that Mississippi Handels Zeitung online but without any luck.

As I've noted in the past I found it interesting that in one of the articles on common beer on your website (the Nashville Union & American article from 1871) the author makes a comparison between common beer and "shank" beer strenghtwise, while stating that the common beer was fermented warmer than lager, conflating the two terms schenk and lager in the span of a sentence. That sort of apparent difficulty in upholding a coherent terminology when discussing bottom fermentation beers, as well as the table being a list of production of beer in the context of coming out of German owned and operated, lager beer brewing St Louis breweries in the year 1860 taken together makes me think that common beer in this particular case in fact meant schenkbier.

 

Yeah, I could see it. Maybe to those early, relatively primitive US brewers of the mid-west and west "yeast was yeast" - and top or bottom (open) fermentation was kinda immaterial, especially with temperature hard to regulate.

But, certainly a lot of the citations of "common beer" in a 19th century brewing history like 100 Years of Brewing frequently refer to a brewery or a brewer (esp. in the regions of the US noted above) which started out as a brewer of "common beer" and then converted to lager production, sometimes in addition to other beers. Some examples:

So, what changed? Just the addition of cellars and lagering tanks, enough capacity for the then-long periods of lagering? Did common beer brewers, esp. of German heritage, just "switch" yeasts when lager yeast became available, but continue to brew common beer (or, market their schenk beer as such), typically sold for less, in addition to more expensive lager? Maybe "common beer" eventually just referred to either a top- or bottom-fermented cheap, non-lagered beer?

Wait. Which page? (I really hate when I spend hours researching a topic and then go to file it away and find the same articles and info in my files from a couple of years previous...).

 

Oh, yeah. Kentucky Common Beer - I've been meaning to check that page but new research is always more fun than re-reading the old stuff. And it gets down to the general attitude of yeast and fermentation type not really meaning a lot (or, certainly wasn't the defining characteristic) to the majority of US brewers in the 19th century right up until the (much more picky) "Craft Era".
Top and Bottom Fermenting Yeast

 

I found some information about a brewery started in the 1850s by a man named Menger in San Antonio which I thought was interesting.

I'm not sure how the spring water was used exactly, did they build the cellar right next to the irrigation ditch meaning the water flowing by outside cooled the walls? Häcker also mentions the use of springwater in his book:

Looking on google maps it looks like the Menger hotel is quite close to an off shoot of the waterway that runs through the town. Whether or not the waterways look the same now as they did back then is another question of course.

 

Just to add something to discussion of cellars in the deep.south before refrigeration, going 10 ft into the earth (whether down or into a hillside) will yield a consistent 54F temperature regardless of the outside temp. A shallower hole will yield less insulation and more temperature fluctuations depending on the outside temp.

As to using proximity to a spring to cool the cellar, I'd imagine they were using a similar concept to the swamp cooler where the evaporation of water cools the air around it. Could be as simple as diverting the water course to run along the edge of the cellar.

 

Very interesting. Such a temperature would get one alot closer to acceptable primary fermentation temperatures.



When speaking of storage cellar temperatures I thought this advertisement for Engel & Wolf of Philadelphia was interesting since it says that "about 45 feet below ground where they keep their well known LAGER BEER
Temperature of the vaults in midsummer 46 degrees of Fahrenheit."
I had to use this page to zoom in to make out the 6 with surety. As per the website it's from around the year 1855. Now was this temperature the fermentation cellar temperature or the storage cellar temperature, well I don't think they would be brewing lager beer at that time in "midsummer", so I take it to mean the storage cellar temperature. Goes to show how the temperature could and would creep up in lager cellars during the summer. It's at least better than the 50-54.5 degrees of the cellars Häcker came across.

I think the 46 degrees would be a reasonable number to match for any would be lager beer brewers in Texas at that time. What it would take to get them there, and if they got there, remains the question.

 

Patrik, I have no idea how Menger managed the spring water at his brewery but maybe it is similar to how the Springhouse of a Colonial Plantation did this in near to me Ridley Creek State Park (see link below).

The Spring House of this Plantation was a stone structure and they had a ‘U’ shaped ditch that was located along the walls of the structure with the spring water flowing. They would then place their food items in jars or earthen ware containers within the ditch with the flowing water always flowing by it. Pretty much the same concept of placing your six-pack of beer in a flowing stream near your campsite (to keep your beer cool).

From the below link:

“9. Springhouse and Pratt Run. Visit our functional springhouse (i.e. colonial refrigerator) and see how underground water sources were used to keep our food fresh.”

https://www.colonialplantation.org/show_page.php?pid=6

Perhaps on a related note there is a spring (Comal Springs) that flows through Landa Park in New Braunfels. Maybe this spring water was used by the brewers of New Braunfels to help cool the beers they brewed?

You can visit the below link and read (and watch) more:

https://www.edwardsaquifer.net/comal.html

Whatever you do, do not dangle your feet into the cool water of Comal Springs. My sister got yelled at by a park ranger when she did this.

Cheers!

 

It's true. Once you get a few feet into the ground you'll find pretty consistently cool soil temperatures between 45-55 degrees across most of the world, unless it's an extreme environment like arctic permafrost or volcanic/geothermally active areas. The same principle applies to root cellars, of which there are worldwide historical pre-refrigeration examples of by one name or another. You can just walk into the basement of a house to feel the effect of cooler surrounding soils. Add a little human engineering, like deeper/better insulation/cool spring water or ice and it's not hard to imagine decent temperature control, even in places like Texas.

@Crusader

 

Just to re-enforce that you will indeed need ice (and I suspect plenty of it) to achieve lagering temperatures in Texas (especially during the 6+ months warm time of the year).

And while ambient temperatures in the lower 50's are in the lager fermentation range, during primary fermentation the fermentation process generates heat. I recently fermented two batches of lager in my basement and while the ambient temperature was cool I had to place the buckets in pans of water and also add refreezable blue ice blocks to the water to maintain a proper lager fermentation temperature (i.e., less than 55 degrees F). The heat from fermentation was elevating the temperature of the fermenting beer too much.

Cheers!

 

To add another point of interest, there is a long history of using the evaporative energy in water to create cooling. The most impressive that I've heard of is the yakchals of ancient Persia.

This kind of technology only works in arid areas but I'm sure that the people who lived in the desert south of the US and mexico were aware of these principles

 

There was once an industry that would harvest, store, and distribute Ice. I remember walk in ice storage units, and the term "ice boxes". Eugene O'neal's the "Ice Man Cometh" is a classic.

There were some photos in different museums in Bamberg Germany showing ice being harvested off of the river, so it wasn't just the US.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_trade

Railcars that were insulated with sawdust were used to goods needing cold temperatures used block ice before mechanical refrigeration.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refrigerator_car

 

Not to poke my nose in but cisterns were used for hundreds of years to store and to have running water. So managing cool water probably wasn’t much of an engineering feat. I suppose modern day moonshiners have some of the same obstacles as beer and whisky start life in about the same way. Both need cool water.

 

Dale, there is a difference in the primary fermentation of beer vs. Corn Whiskey:

“The temperatures that I refer to, BTW, for the fast turbo yeast fermentations are between 80 and 90F (27 and 33C). And, in Making Pure Corn Whiskey I recommend a fermentation temperature range between 70 and 90F (21 and 33C) for the production of whiskey.

Now, the production of beer, wine, and whiskey (or any other flavour-positive spirit, for that matter) is a different story, because the congener profile formed during fermentation will pervade through to the finished beverage. This is clearly true of beer or wine where no distillation is done, so whatever is formed is with the substrate for the duration of its life cycle. Flavour-positive spirits undergo distillation but since certain families of congeners are retained this makes such spirits sensitive to the congener make-up of the mash, unlike grain neutral where everything but the alcohol is stripped out.”

https://homedistiller.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=21242

So, as you can read above it is OK for primary ferment in the production of Corn Whiskey up to 90 °F.

For the majority of yeasts used to produce ales you really need to be much cooler than this. I personally do not exceed 73 °F when brewing my ales (and higher temperatures are for Begian style beers only). There is a ‘new’ type of ale yeast that some folks are brewing with called Kveik which can perform OK at higher temperatures.

What the poster above means by “congener profile” as regards fermenting a beer too warm are higher alcohols (fusel oils) which will provided a harshness to the resulting beers (with the exception of Kveik yeast strains apparently). I suppose these aspects do not survive the distillation process for Corn Whiskey?

As regards the production of lager a very cool/cold environment is needed. A lager is typically fermented around 50 °F and ideally would be later lagered very cold (near freezing temperatures). Producing a lager in the South prior to the invention of refrigeration would have been challenging.

Cheers!