The Mysteries and History of Bavarian White Beer Revealed
Andreas Krennmair has quietly been doing some incredible historical research into beer. His indispensable blog charts fascinating investigations into, for example, early Munich helles beers, the kinds of beers served at Oktoberfest in the late 19th century, or a debunking of all the romantic facts attached to the Reinheitsgebot. The blog alone is an important archive of historical research about the beers (mainly in Germany, Austria, and Czechia). But periodically, he also publishes a book that goes deeper on a topic, including a remarkable treatment of Vienna lagers. He recently added another book on a venerable and important style, and you can tell even from the title that he’s setting the record straight.
Like Vienna Lager (highly recommended!), Bavarian White Beer is part history and part brewing manual. The title is a translation of the German weissbier, but also a mini lesson. For many—certainly many Americans—“Weiß” is assumed to mean “wheat.” That’s not precisely correct, as Andreas explains: “Historically, Weißbier in its most general sense referred to any beer brewed from malted cereal that was germinated and air-dried (so-called Luftmalz, lit. 'air malt’), resulting in a very pale malt, or at least was kilned to a very pale colour.” He consulted historic records, finding that white beer could be made solely with barley, or with just a bit of wheat. Indeed, that was common.
When researchers hit the stacks and read primary sources from centuries past, they discover this kind of nuance. In Bavarian White Beer, Andreas tells a relatively familiar story that is suffused with new details about the style—or mild correctives to long-held assumptions about it. I did a lot of research about weissbier for The Beer Bible, relying on secondary sources. Reading Bavarian White Beer, I was surprised again and again to find that much of what we “know” is not quite right. The old histories are blurred by centuries of error; Andreas offers a crisp new style biography with fine, precise detail. For anyone who wants to understand Bavaria’s famous ales, it’s a must.
Like Vienna Lager, Krennmair divides the book roughly in half. The first half provides a detailed history, beginning with weissbier’s migration from Bohemia in the 15th century. The second half is a unique brewing manual in which he describes raw materials and processes from different eras and breweries and how the beers were made.
Nearly every page contains something new and interesting, even if you’re familiar with the broad contours of weissbier. I’ll give an example or three, but bear in mind that these kinds of nuggets are everywhere. My favorite passage in the whole book involved the propriety—and legality—of using sugar to make weissbier. Today, breweries use wort to bottle-condition their beer (Speise, literally “food”), which seems a very old-fashioned approach to creating a secondary fermentation. Actually, in the 19th century, it seems it was far more common for brewers to just use sugar. This, however, ran afoul of Article 7 of the Bavarian malt taxation law, which started to become a problem by the end of the century.
What follows is a fascinating account of a wrangle among breweries, the state, and even scientists. Eventually, brewers created a petition to amend the law and allow sugar. Andreas summarizes their argument:
“That petition was discussed in State Assembly: the petitioners argued that sugar has been in use for a century to clear the white beer, to increase carbonation and to improve the flavour of the beer. The addition is not made during the brewing process to save malt, but rather only during the bottling process. Sugar was considered necessary to make a good white beer and even at the White Court Brewhouse in Munich the practice was in use, it was taught to all brewers and it was also documented in all brewing books of the time. In the last thirty years, white beer sales had gone up considerably, supervisory authorities had made very few reports, and orders had allegedly been given to authorities to quietly tolerate the practice of using sugar.”
To summarize: for a hundred years, Bavarian brewers had been priming their bottles with sugar, which they considered the superior method for making beer, despite the fact that it was technically illegal. You see the peculiarly Bavarian rationale tucked into the argument: “the addition is not made during the brewing process….” The brewers understood the power of Reinheitsgebot and were clearly gesturing to it by distinguishing between brewing and carbonating. Obviously, they lost, which is why brewers use Speise today, but for a good long time, Bavarians must have had bags of sugar stacked in their breweries. Who knew?!
As an example of the detail Krennmair provides, let me offer the following paragraph on the way Reinheitsgebot was interpreted in the 20th century. He points out that while the law is quite old, the name dates to just 1904, which he references at the start of the paragraph. I have italicized the portion that stopped me cold.
“An early usage of the word in the context of beer dates from 1909[155, p. 1894] and actually referred to the new beer taxation law that was introduced in 1906 for Northern German states: for bottom-fermented beers, only barley malt, hops, water and yeast were permitted ingredients, while for top-fermented beers, malt from other grains as well as various types of sugar (cane, beet, invert, starch) and caramel colouring were allowed.”
What??
Finally, I’ll leave you with this amazing tidbit from the brewing section. Andreas had already established that brewers used two methods of fermentation, open-vat fermentation, or much more commonly, fermentation in a barrel. In 1831, a German brewing book detailed an improvement on the cask method, which involved using a series of interconnected casks the fermenting wort passed through. According to Andreas, this system was refined by brewers in England and became the Burton Union system. Remarkable!
A detail from the 1931 brewing book, reproduced in Bavarian White Beer
“In one German brewing book from 1831, technical writer Johann Leuchs included an illustration of a rationalised setup consisting of a series of casks that all expelled foam from the bunghole into a tub via a long pipe. From the tub, any beer that was expelled with the froth could then run back into the casks via a different pipe[215, p. 293]. This allowed brewers to ferment larger amounts of white beer using the Spundgärung method without having to manually refill any of the casks with expelled beer. Any froth would also not run off on the side of the cask, but rather through a tube, making the process more hygienic and reducing the risk of microbiological contamination.”
The Germans may have nicked pale-malting techniques from the English, but it seems the English may have committed some petty larceny of their own by lifting the weissbier fermentation system for their pale ales.
The book is full of wonderful details like these. Most beer drinkers would find it too technical to bother with, but for those who love history and technical information—readers of this blog, for example—it’s a joy. Moreover, we all have a vested interest in keeping Andreas interested in these kinds of projects, so encourage him by supporting his work and buying a copy of his book.