The Original Oktoberfest Beer

Never had it. A beer guy in Germany once gave me a Mönchshof Radler as a gift. Maybe he didn't like me.

 

or he really-really liked you?

 

You hinted the brewery was Hofstetten but never said it distinctly. Is this beer from Hofstetten?

 

Another "original" German from Austria, then?

 

Fairly sure that when the modern Maerzen was introduced, it was stronger than the beers sold earlier at the Oktoberfest. I've seen enough analyses of 19th-century Bavarian beers to know that a beer of 14 Plato would have been nowhere neat 6% ABV. Especially dark Munich-style beers.

Saying it was 14 Plato sounds like just extrapolating the modern beer's strength into the past. I seem to remember the Oktoberfestbiers analysed around 1900 had gravities above that. I can't check, I'm afraid, as I'm in the US without access to my material.

Sounds to me like the only thing they've got right is the colour.

 

Of the beers posted in http://barclayperkins.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/munich-oktoberfestbier-1901-2006.html , the highest modern gravity is 13.7 Plato, while the lowest from 1901 is 14.6 with most well over 15 Plato.

 

The abv is pretty high relative to the original gravity. For an OG of 14% I would expect the abv to land somewhere around 5% give or take if the lower degree of attenuation of Bavarian lager beer was being emulated. The hopping rate seems low for what would have been the strongest hopped beer style in Bavaria at the time, the lager/sommer/märzenbier meant to keep until september/october when winterbier could start to be brewed.

On the Hofstetten website it mentions that the beer is hopfengestopft which I take to mean that it is dry-hopped. In the Bavarian brewing books and texts that I've read from the 1800s the hop additions are either described as being added in the beginning of the boil, or it is recommended that this is done in order to fully extract the desirable/beneficial elements of the hops whilst boiling away the volatile hop oils (which were thought by some to produce headaches). In a book on brewing from the mid 1800s written by a former brewmaster at Spaten, Philipp Heiss, he writes in favor of adding the entire hop addition at the start of the wort boil. The same procedure can be found described by Benno Scharl in his book from 1814 and later editions. My understanding is thus that this was the standard procedure in Bavarian brewing, whereas late boil hop additions was more common in Austria and Bohemia.

The only reference to a beer brewed in Bavaria which used dry-hopping that I've come across was described in a Bavarian brewing journal from the late 1860s-early 1870s (I'll have to look up the journal in question again in order to provide the link for it) by a student at Weihenstephan, the beer in question was intended for export and a certain amount of high proof spirit was also added to the barrel prior to bottling along with the dry hops.

If I was going to brew a 1810 version of a Bavarian sommerbier meant for late september I would add a substantial amount of hops at the beginning of the boil (between 500-800 grams per HL wort) and boil it for some 2 hours. I very much doubt that such an amount would result in a mere 21 IBUs, even after storing the beer for 6 months or more. It was made note already in 1814 by Benno Scharl that some people preferred to drink only winterbier due to the sommerbier being too bitter on account of the larger amount of hops.

One other aspect to consider would be the kilns used to produce the malt (and the resultant malt). According to historical writings on Bavarian brewing it is claimed that Gabriel Sedlmayr was the first to introduce an English inspired kiln in the year 1818 which began the move away from direct-heated smoke-kilns (a process which was rather quick according to these same sources), and what various authors referred to as the vile and disgusting flavor which these kilns generated in the finished beer (another good example of how people have always enjoyed and disliked different things). Whether this was the first actual indirect-heated kiln in Bavaria is of course difficult to say but it's an interesting aspect to consider visavi a märzenbier anno 1810.

Another interesting aspect to consider pertaining to this issue is how long the malt had been stored prior to being used. My understanding is that it was common for Bavarian brewers to store the malt for some time prior to using it. In Bavarian descriptions of the brewing procedures of Dreher at Klein Schwechat and elsewhere I've come across remarks about how he didn't store his malt for very long before using it, which seem to indicate that this was something which differed from the typical Bavarian brewing process, but this is an area which I haven't concentrated as much on so I only mention this as an aspect to consider. If the malt was typically stored for some time before being used in brewing, even if it had been dried in a smoke kiln, the smoke flavor in the finished beer might have been less than what one might assume, if we assume that the malt was in fact smoked.