Bayernbiere Bought and Drunk

I’ll keep my eye out for HB Freising, but I doubt with the weird distribution in DC if I can find it. I know there isn’t Von Trapp here (but it’s skips onto Virginia).

 

Reading a bit about slow brewing on their website it sounds like they're pretty serious about their certification if one is to believe that they actually recieve information about their criteria from the breweries they certify. The English nomenclature might make them sound less serious, but I guess the term "bierpolizei" doesn't have the same ring to it these days .

Some points about what they require of the breweries:

Cannot use high gravity brewing
Cannot ferment bottom fermented beers above 12C
Cannot use continuous fermentation
Cannot use isomerized hop extract or tetra alphaacids
Cannot use clarifiers like isinglass, gelatine or irish moss
Cannot use foam stabilizers
Cannot use antioxidants

It seems like the idea is to reduce as much as possible the adoption of modern processing aids and processes, which I think makes alot of sense. I can appreciate a brewery that works according to older systems of production, and I can also appreciate an organization which tries to reign in a process of ever increasing efficiency that puts the old working methods at risk, and which can help to highlight those breweries which do hold on to those older methods and who deserve the recognition. Whether or not one prefers the actual taste of the product is of course a different question, but regardless of whether you do or not, I don't think that knowing that a brewery lives up to a particular standard is a bad thing, and if you do enjoy the taste of the beers produced, I would think that knowing that the brewery lives up to those standards would increase one's appreciation of that brewery.

 

Patrik, do you have any idea what this means?

Cheers!

 

It is the concept of having a continuous stream of wort which is fermented continuously and then drawn from, instead of fermenting the beer in batches.

 

What I was saying is that no matter what marketing gimmick may have been used, it was wasted on me -- I didn't even see it. Not terribly effective (in a positive or negative manner) -- no matter how lame it may be.

 

Hmm, I have heard of this before.

Are you aware of any commercial breweries that do this?

Cheers!

 

Yes it is a marketing tool, but a part of marketing is providing or conveying information, about your process and about your products, what defines you. As a consumer I appreciate marketing in the form of information, whether I find it on a brewery's own website, recieve it when asking the brewery itself via their contact information, or via a third party organization, or even legislation and regulations, that can provide me with additional information.

I am also aware that just because one brewery promotes a certain marketing seal that conveys their adherence to various standards, doesn't mean that another brewery which does not use the marketing seal does not. I think one benefit of a seal like this is that the brewery itself doesn't have to focus on what they do not do in their own marketing, they can focus on what they actually do instead ("this is how we brew our beer"). But that marketing might leave out things, or not touch on topics, which as a beer-interested beer drinker I might want answered (and which the brewery might take for granted, or assume to be uninteresting or of no marketing value, being too technical, or complicated for a layman to understand), and here is where a seal with a particular set of standards can come in handy, information-wise, for those who want to know.

At the same time I fully support breweries being transparent on their own, independently, and I also appreciate any effort made to inform me as a beer drinker about their process. It is not an either or proposition I think, the way I see it information about these things will always be piecemeal, never complete, or cover every angle, so any additional degree of information is a net positive in my book.

The two examples I have come across would be DB breweries in New Zealand way back when, and I recall reading something about Carling attempting something similar in one of their breweries (@jesskidden might know more about that particular story). In other words, I cannot recall off the top of my head a modern example of the practise.

 

Yeah, that was in the current Ft. Worth TX brewery operated by MillerCoors:

The History Of Carling Black Label Beer In The USA

Miller renovated the brewery (which, I guess, meant adding a standard brewhouse?) and --- maybe it's urban legend?--- but supposedly the failure of Carling's system, it was later found, was due to an incorrectly installed valve*.

* EDIT - OTOH - The 1.7M member Baptist General Convention of Texas in 1967, however, noting the closing gave “...praise and glory to our Lord for the circumstances and factors in the failing” of the Carling brewery – so maybe the pipefitter who screwed up the valve installation was scapegoated!

 

I smell sabotage!

 

Ah yes that sounds familiar. It does sound like the goal of that kind of process is to speed up the process, maybe by the continued action of the yeast, not allowing the yeast to settle and by continually bringing in new wort into the mix. In the sense of wanting to maintain a vigorous fermentation maybe Schlitz's use of "Accurate Balanced Fermentation" filled a similar purpose. It sounds like the idea was to agitate the yeast during fermentation to maintain fermentation. I believe that's what is refered to by the slow brewing page as "rührgährung" ("stir fermentation"), which they also do not allow to be used. And to tie this together with the continuous fermentation process, which as it seems might not have caught on, why even mention it on their page?

Here is a video from Alfa Laval showing a new process for pumping the yeast through a recirculating loop during fermentation with the help of a pumping/recirculating action performed by agitators placed in the fermentors (again with the idea being to speed up the process). The concept was being tested out by Carlsberg Denmark and Royal Unibrew. This sounds alot like what Schlitz was tinkering with back in the day. My point being that just because an idea or concept of achieving increased efficiency didn't catch on immediately, does not mean it will not be adopted in the future, or remain ignored by a brewing industry which is faced by ever continuing/increasing competitive pressures, cost increases and potential sales declines.

So having a guardian of sorts which promotes those breweries which do not go along with this development, and high lighting the comparative "slowness" of their process (which put them at a disadvantage in competition against more efficient firms more willing to adopt the latest methods of production), might not be such a bad idea.

 

It gets even stranger becoming one of those "lemon into lemonade" stories, (with likely some nice tax benefits for Miller). In 1967, as Miller rips out the CF system and installs a traditional brewhouse, they donate the equipment (said to be worth $1M in 1967 dollars), consisting of “stainless steel tanks, pumps, centrifuges and filters, as well as the electronic control panel", to the Wadley Research Center and the Blood Bank of Dallas to produce L-asparaginase, an enzyme which destroys leukemia cells.

 

Please let us know what you hear from the brewery - thank you.

 

Drinking a new beer from the monopoly launched this month. Engelbräu Urtyp Hell. 4.9%. The aroma is very clean and quite light, it's just a light beer smell with nothing that stands out. The taste is mild as well, but there's some pale malt flavor at least and a mild hop bitterness with the slightest bit of German hop flavor. The aftertaste is similarly light, but it's also very clean. It's too light tasting for my tastes, at least if I'm going to make it a regular purchase. Out of the German helles lager beers which are available to me I'd rather buy cans of Löwenbräu or bottles of Spaten which I think have more heft to them. I'd also opt for quite a few Swedish Export lager beers over this beer. I can't see this brand staying on the shelves beyond the first year, which is a shame since I bet alot more interesting beers lost out in the tender process.

 

Not sure how/why, but bottles of Schönramer pils, dunkel, and festbier just showed up in Denver. They were only bottled in mid-January, too.
I've only tried the pils thus far, but it's excellent. It's up there with the absolute best import pilsners we receive out here.

 

Is that a large format bottle? What did you pay for it?

Cheers!