Brewing tables from 1867-1871.

That's difficult to say I think. With all of the changes that have affected dark lager beers, the introduction of English kilns which eliminated the smoke flavor of the beer, the introduction of saccharometers and pale malts, increased attenuation with lower gravities and higher abvs as the result, the use of small amounts of strongly roasted farbmalz etc. Basically brewing has become more efficient, and I suppose that would make a relative degree of inefficiency important as far as authenticity is concerned.

 

I'd thus hold up Schlenkerla Märzen as a good example of an early 19th century braunbier. The use of 100% smoked malt, as per their website, along with the relationship between wort strenght and abv: 13.5-5.1, makes me think that it has alot of the hallmarks of bottom fermented early 19th century braunbier. For a beer which gives us a taste of what the Bavarian bottom fermented beer was like after the introduction of those English kilns I couldn't say. According to the written sources I've read some brewers were using farbmalz to get the color of the old type of beer whilst using paler colored malt to make up the rest of the malt bill.

Others stuck to using only dark kilned malt and didn't use farbmalz (or at least claimed that they didn't), and thought that the same mild "caramel" flavor couldn't be achieved by using strongly roasted farbmalz, which I think makes sense. Obviously if Münchener malt or a similarly kilned malt produces a different flavor than say pilsner malt, which seems to be the case, using 100% Münchener ought to make a difference compared to only using 30 or 40% Münchener and using pilsner malt (or a paler type of malt) for the remainder. Or using a large amount of pilsner or pale malt, some Münchener and then a small amount of farbmalz.

 

Weissbier of the past meant a beer made from air-dried malt, but the malt used could be either barley, wheat, or a combination thereof. I.e, a barley weissbier was made from air dried barley malt, as opposed to kiln dried barley malt, which at the time, before the introduction of English kilns, would have been smoky and more or less dark, resulting in braunbier, or brown beer.

 

I didn't mention this in my previous post (I thought you would look it up ), but the book makes it clear that all of those weissbier breweries were obergähriges, or top fermenting. Maybe that's what threw you off?

 

If you're talking about Prandtl's untergähriges weissbier then that's a different story all together since his brewery wasn't located in Bavaria but in Baden-Württemberg as far as I can tell. So I'm not claiming that the Bavarian weissbier, whether made with wheat or barley, was lagered cold. Just to make things clear.

I'm not sure that I'm following you here. Cloudy, lighter colored beers made from air dried malt were always called weissbier in contrast to braunbier. What's changed, aside from the pale malt being produced in a kiln instead of being air dried, is that the barley weissbiere have disappeared and only the wheat weissbiere remain in production (that I know of).

 

Gotcha.

I see. Well that's an interesting question I think. From what I've read the use of luftmalz as opposed to kilned pale malt imparts a different flavor, so that's one thing to consider on the malt side of things. On the yeast side of things I'd imagine that the development of pure yeasts reached weissbier brewing at some point. But how that affected the flavor of the beer I of course couldn't say, but it's an interesting aspect to consider.

 

Here's an excerpt from a German book on brewing from 1842 (page 24 in the book):

"Preparation of farbmalz (color malt). When pale kilned malt is used for braunbier brewing, a quantity of farbmalz must be added. This farbmalz can be made by two methods, either you roast it in a large malt drum carefully, whilst continously tossing it around, until it has a dark color of a roasted coffee and you take of this color malt one or two metzen for each scheffel of pale malt, depending on if the beer is to be more or less dark (if the beer doesn't need to be very dark, it is sufficient with half a metze of farbemalz), or, you kiln malt, under very strong heat and continuous overturning until it is dark enough to where a quantity of it, added to the pale malt, achieves this purpose. In any case the farbemalz gives neither sweetness or strenght to the beer, since all of the sugar content contained in it is destroyed by the strong heat, you only acquire the desired color.

You get the desired sweetness and the specific weight or strenght from the pale kilned malt. But if, as is still common in most braunbierbreweries, all of the malt is kilned to a specific color by high temperature, then it is the case, as has previously been described, that the diastase is destroyed and can of course, when mashed, not work to produce more sugar from the starch. The small amount of malt sugar, which is created by the heat from the kiln, does not stand in proportion to the loss, which by this method, for producing brown or color malt, takes place. We are constantly in breweries, which brew very dark beers from malt produced with the faulty method described here, where the beer has little sweetness and nutrition, while on the other hand a pale malt, by mixing with farbemalz, can produce a beer which is very sweet and nutritious, since only the pale malt can produce this sweetness and fullness in ample amounts."

 

Scratch that. It seems as though the author is not refering to Bavarian braunbier but of some other type of braunbier with this passage, since he describes the malting procedure of Bavarian brewing elsewhere in the book, and says that this produces a pale beer, and he holds this malting and kilning process to be the best.

 

In a book on Bavarian brewing from 1839 (Die Bayerische bierbrauerei by "former brewery manager" Friedrich Meyer) the author says that both weisses weizenbier and weisses gerstenbier is brewed in Bavaria. The weizen weissbier is, with few exceptions, only brewed in royal breweries and is not a common drink due to its "too high price". The gerstenbier is more common of the two and is brewed year round, but it is most frequently brewed in the summer when it is consumed by the harvest workers. Due to its low price it is consumed by the poorer classes. It is a light type of beer (bier leichter gattung), thirst quenching and cooling. It is also consumed by sick people.

He also says that when it is said that the consumption of weissbier is declining, this is not due to the braunbier being more sought after, but more to do with the fact that the weissbier is often of poor quality, and in many breweries the quality is in decline, to the point where many poor families are "forced to drink water".

It's interesting that the weisses gerstenbier was a cheap beer for the poor (similar to the story behind dampfbier), whereas the weisses weizenbier was brewed by the royal breweries and commanded a high price. It makes sense of course since wheat was more expensive, and the brewing of wheat beer a royal privilegie, but it's still interesting to see it described like that. It's no wonder then that there existed alot more breweries brewing weisses gerstenbier, since apparently the brewing of this beer was not subject to the same restrictions. And the beer could be produced and sold at a low cost due to it being made from barley malt. The rules for how much beer could be brewed from a scheffel of malt also didn't apply to weissbier, which enabled the weissbier brewers to brew a thinner, lighter beer of lower original gravity than the braunbier brewers, thus lowering the cost of production. The author even claims that it is economically beneficial to brew weissbier since the turnover is quicker, whereas braunbier brewing requires more storage space and longer storage times (this might be debatable though with the comparatively low demand for weissbier, and the lower price that it commanded).

Aside from weisses gerstenbier there would have been some nachbier made by braunbier brewers, i.e small beer made from second runnings. Some of that was meant for the brewery workers and the brewery owner but could also be consumed by the public. According to several books on Bavarian brewing it is made note that the nachbier made in Bamberg was especially good, since they used a different mashing system than the "altbayerisch" dreimaischverfahren. From what I've read it sounds like the Bamberg method was a sort of infusion mash. This, according to the authors, meant that a relatively high amount of sugar remained in the trub, which allowed for a stronger and richer nachbier than was possible elsewhere. The Bamberger nachbier was even prefered by some people over the regular beer since it didn't cause drunkenness as easily, and some Bamberg brewers even took smaller volumes of first runnings in order to make more nachbier from a single batch. It is also noted that it was quite bitter in taste, but that this taste was appreciated by the workers who drunk it. It was primarily drunk by the laboring classes, similar to the weisses gerstenbier in other words.

I wonder if nachbier would have approached the gravity strenght of the German tax bracket for einfachbier. The Bamberger nachbier might have been slightly stronger. Second runnings small beer was brewed in Sweden for centuries, and small beer of 5-6% plato made up half of all beer consumption here in the 1800s and first half of the 1900s. This beer was mostly top fermented however, in contrast with the German inspired lager beer breweries and their bottom fermenting beer. It's only recently that I've come to learn about the German equivalent to this small beer and I think it's fascinating stuff.

 

It might be interesting to compare these numbers with numbers provided for Bohemian beer and a certain Pilsener B. Brauhaus.

In a German yearbook on chemical technology from 1906 there is a short excerpt describing the brewing process in this brewery. It says that for 100 HL beer 22 hektokilo malt and 47 kilo of only the finest Saazer hops are used (and it says that the entire hop addition is added at the start of the boil, and boiled for two hours). The lagerbier is brewed to 12% stammwürze and the abzug or schenkbier brewed to 11%. If these numbers are divided per HL, 22 kg of malt and 470 grams of hops are used to produce one HL of beer. As per Prandtl's tables for his Schenk and Lagerbier the numbers are per HL finished beer appear thusly:

Prandtl's Schenkbier
Malt: 24.9 kg
Hops: 280 grams
Stammwürze: 12.49%

Prandtl's Lagerbier
Malt: 28 kg
Hops: 430 grams
Stammwürze: 13.9%

Bohemian beer from Pilsener B. Brauhaus
Malt: 22 kg
Hops: 470 grams
Stammwürze 12%

It's interesting to compare the theoretical beers proscribed by the 1811 regulativ, as well as the 1814 reformed regulativ per HL beer. As per the 1814 regulativ the amount of hops (3 pfund per scheffel of malt for winterbier, 5 pfund Böhmerhopfen per scheffel of malt for sommerbier) remained the same as in 1811, but one more eimer of beer could be made from a scheffel of malt of each type of beer. Per HL:

1811 Winterbier
Malt: 24.7 kg
Hops: 375 gram
1811 Sommerbier
Malt: 28.9 kg
Hops: 729 gram

1814 Winterbier
Malt: 21.6 kg
Hops: 328 gram
1814 Sommerbier
Malt: 24.7 kg
Hops: 625 gram

It's interesting that Prandtl's late 1860s-early 1870s schenk and lagerbier so closely follows the 1811 regulativ when it comes to the malt, whereas the hopping rates are lower. The 1814 regulativ allowed for a drop in both malt and hop use per HL, to where the 1814 winterbier is pretty close to the 1906 Pilsener lagerbier in the amount of malt proscribed. The amount of hops for the sommerbier is also interesting when compared against the 1906 Pilsener lagerbier, since it was proscribed that good quality Böhmerhopfen was to be used for sommerbier.

If the amount of malt is similar between the 12% pilsener lagerbier and the 1814 winterbier, 22 vs 21.6 kg, what sort of stammwürze would the 1814 winterbier have had? The oldest analysis of Bavarian winter beer that I've come across are 9 schenkbiere from 1841-1842 from a technical journal, where the stammwürze numbers appear as such:
10.75%
11%
11.2%
11.3%
11.6%
12%
12.4%
12.9%
14%

The article also refers to a previous analysis done in 1839 which showed an average of 11.4% for Munich schenkbiere.

For the 1814 sommerbier we would expect a higher stammwürze. The amount of malt per HL for the 1814 sommerbier is very similar to the amount of malt used per HL for Prandtl's schenkbier, which is not surprising since the 1814 regulativ essentially transformed the 1811 winterbier into sommerbier (albeit more strongly hopped), by allowing breweries to brew 8 eimer of winterbier and 7 eimer of sommerbier from a scheffel of malt, whereas the 1811 regulativ proscribed 7 eimer of winterbier and 6 eimer of sommerbier from a scheffel of malt. If Prandtl brews a beer of 12.49% stammwürze on average from 24.9 kg of malt, what sort of sommerbier did Bavarian brewers brew from the 24.7 kg of malt as proscribed, as the minimum, by the 1814 regulativ?

I found a table with Munich sommerbiers from 1867 a while back and it has some interesting numbers as it pertains to this question.


Looking at the column for stammwürze, one sees that the numbers run from 12.2-13.7, with an average of 12.98%. Not far off from Prandtl's average of 12.49 for his 1869-70 schenkbier.

 

I should mention that the excerpt on the Bohemian lagerbier from Pilsener B. Brauhaus says that the beer has a degree of attenuation of 55-58%, which from what I've read was typical for Bavarian lager beer as well (60% attenuation was the average for Swedish lager and pilsner beer in the early 1900s). The 1867 sommerbier samples above have an average degree of attenuation of 54. If the degree of attenuation for the Bohemian beer had been 75-80 as it is today for many pilsner beers, a comparison would of course have been more or less useless since the pilsner would have had a much higher efficiency.

 

Here's an interesting table with beer production in Bayern broken down by beer type and year in the years 1859-1871, as well as a table with a regional breakdown for the year 1871.


Schenkbier= winterbier
Lagerbier=sommerbier
Luxusbier (luxury beer)= the bock brewed by Hofbräuhaus, the Salvatorbier brewed by Zacherl's brewery, and various other "doppelbiere". The brewing of such beers was subject to restrictions until 1848 when the brewing of such beer was allowed for all breweries to be sold at a set price. Prior to this you had to get a royal warrant to brew such beer, and the production was dominated by the royal Hofbräuhaus bock and Zacherl's Salvatorbier (Zacherl had "inherited" the right to brew a strong beer when he acquired his brewery).
Weissbier= both gersten and weizenbier

There's alot of interesting bits of information that can be gleaned from the numbers. For example the decline of weissbier and the growth of braunbier. Also interesting is the bottom table which show that out of the 373 760 eimer of weissbier that was brewed in 1871, 307 549 of which were brewed in Schwaben alone. Also worth noting is the amount of luxusbier produced in Oberbayern, since the region encompasses both München and the bock produced by Hofbräuhaus, and Zacherl's brewery in Au where Salvator was produced. Mittelfranken produced the most luxusbier, but so far I haven't read anything about any doppelbiere that were being produced there.

Also interesting is the fact that if you take the regions which are dominated by schenk and lagerbier, or braunbier, and divide the number of eimers produced with the number of scheffels of malt that were used in that same year, you get numbers of between 6.6-6.7 eimer of beer per scheffel of malt. I.e right inbetween the 6 eimer proscribed for sommerbier and the 7 eimer proscribed for winterbier in the 1811 regulativ.