Friday 14 March 2008

Weird wheats

I'm heartened by the response to my posts about old German styles, especially the weird wheat styles. I've had a few enquiries from brewers wanting to make a Grätzer or a Lichtenheiner. Glad to be of help. Maybe I'll even get to try one or two.

Spurred on by brewers' questions, I dug around in the crap that fills my house and exhumed a few numbers. No Lichtenheiner, but Berliner Weisse, Gose and Broyhan.


They are the beers "generally available in Berlin". Most are very weak, as was usual in North Germany. You'd struggle to get very pissed on all except the Gose. Even that's only as strong as Mild.

You've probably guessed by now that I still haven't finished the Berliner Weisse translation. It's Saturday tomorrow. I should have some time.

2 comments:

Andy Holmes said...

Interesting Stuff Ron, was most of the beer in Berlin weak or just the wheat beers?

I always plan to do loads of beery stuff at the weekend, it rarely works out that way though, family keep demanding my attention by jumping up and down and yelling "remember us".

Which reminds me I'm still at work, it's 7pm, I've been here 12 hours, home's 23 miles away, I should probably go home soon!

Ron Pattinson said...

These aren't all the beers that were available in Berlin. It's just Braunbier and Weissbier. British styles - Porter and Ale - were also sold in Berlin and were considerably stronger. You can see some here:

http://barclayperkins.blogspot.com/2008/02/
german-czech-belgian-dutch-and-british.html

You have to be very careful with the term Weissbier in the this period. It has nothing to do with whether the beer contains wheat or not, but how the malt was prepared. I'll probably post a proper explanation of the difference between Braunbier and Weissbier tomorrow.