Monday 19 May 2014

Rice in German beer (again)

I know. Obsessing about rice in German beer is weird. I just can't help myself.

There are other things I should be up to. Like researching Dutch Lager styles. I'm supposed to be giving a talk on that soon. Or German sour beers. Another topic I'll soon be lecturing about. So far I've only piled up Dutch brewery histories on the floor behind me. I spent a big chunk of yesterday hunting for  a Heineken history, only to find it within reach of where I sit. That's the main drawback of my way of sorting my books. The just-remembering-where-it-is method.

But I digress. I'm supposed to be telling you aboout rice in German beer, amongst other things. Spinning a tale around a table of dull statistics from a hundred year old chemistry magazine. (Jahresbericht über die Leistungen der chemischen Technologie, if you're interested.)

I guess first I'd best explain what the statistics are for: the Brausteuergebied. What was that? The part of the German Empire with a unified beer tax regime. It literally means Beer Tax Area. It's easier to explain what it wasn't, rather than what it was. Everywhere except Bavaria, Baben, Württemberg and Alsace-Lorraine. Most of the country, really, but missing the major brewing areas in the South.

Right, what to tell you first? One of the most obvious is the rise of Lager. While the output of top-fermenting beer was flat, the production of bottom-fermenting beer more than tripled. The result was that the chare of top-fermenting beer more than halved from 36% to 16%. It was a trend that continued in the 20th century.

Use of taxable raw materials and beer production in the Brausteuergebied
tax year 1 April - 31st March use of taxable brewing materials
grain malt substitutes quantity of beer brewed in 1 hl of beer
total ground barley malt total rice all types of sugar all types of syrup top fermenting bottom fermenting top fermenting bottom fermenting grain and rice malt substitutes
hk hk hk hk hk hk hl hl % % k k
1882 4,469,280 4,328,286 22,611 3,755 13,591 1598 7,901,207 14,211,973 36 64 20.23 0.09
1887 5,503,903 5,354,779 43,312 9,684 25,434 2358 8,503,919 18,971,927 31 69 20.07 0.12
1892 6,330,765 6,168,393 87,164 50,767 28,649 2129 7,664,889 25,498,919 23 77 19.24 0.11
1883 6,553,787 6,356,370 91,535 51,074 27,468 1641 7,522,307 26,854,999 22 78 19.15 0.12
1894 6,435,636 6,246,062 109,090 67,805 27,922 1651 7,111,305 26,856,048 21 79 19.15 0.12
1896 7,029,267 6,824,308 119,382 75,782 28,551 1757 7,884,114 29,841,501 21 79 18.83 0.12
1896 7,118,439 6,914,923 121,055 75,957 29,576 1558 7,544,730 30,803,611 20 80 18.76 0.12
1897 7,590,880 7,380,322 142,067 98,669 31,732 1474 7,777,049 33,654,123 19 81 18.55 0.12
1898 7,644,366 7,444,983 157,596 102,254 36,720 1606 7,566,770 34,698,630 18 82 18.33 0.13
1899 7,810,734 7,619,275 157,663 98,090 42,123 1515 7,280,851 35,925,271 17 83 18.30 0.14
1900 8,007,273 7,811,851 149,809 89,573 42,112 2009 7,428,980 37,300,826 17 83 18.10 0.13
1901 7,964,681 7,782,839 149,620 87,371 42,571 3013 7,322,999 37,712,996 16 84 17.88 0.14
Note:
The taxed export beers of Bremen are not included
Source:
Jahresbericht über die Leistungen der chemischen Technologie, 1903 page 446.

On a side note, you can see how barley was pretty much the only grain used. Which is interesting, as many of the old North German top-fermenting styles contained wheat. They were clearly being brewed in tiny quantities.

Rice was by quite a long way the most popular adjunct, though in comparison with barley malt, not a great deal was used. I'm surprised at how little sugar was used. It's such handy stuff. It would be great to have figures for how much sugar is used in German brewing today. I can't remember ever seeing statistics for that. The Deutsche Brauerbund probably isn't keen on advertising the fact German brewers use sugar. Even though they always have. (The Reinheitsgebot allows sugar in top-fermenting beers.)

Just for fun, I've calculated the average OG of the beers. I've based it on 80 brewers pound per quarter of malt. A hectokilo, the unit used in the table, is just about exactly two hundredweight, or two-thirds of a quarter. You can see that it looks much like modern German beer, strength-wise:

year average OG
1882 1049.1
1887 1048.7
1892 1046.4
1883 1047.4
1894 1046.4
1896 1045.3
1896 1045.1
1897 1044.5
1898 1044.0
1899 1044.0
1900 1043.5
1901 1043.0

Was gravity really falling or were they just getting more from the malt? I'd suspect the latter, but could be wrong.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Love this post. In the USA it is so hard to get reliable info on what German breweries actually did, as opposed to the usual "only four ingredients" simplification we usually read.

Please keep up the solid historical factual reporting.

Anonymous said...

Could it be that the decrease in gravity is the result of pilsner brewing growing in importance in north Germany at the expense of "Bavarian-style" lager beer? It would fit the time period in question quite nicely.

Ron Pattinson said...

Anonymous,

Pilsner was a pretty marginal style in Germany before WW II. Export was the most popular style for a long time. 1901 is way too early for the change to have been caused by Pilsener.

Rod said...

Ron -
If memory serves, you've shown recently that for Oktoberfestbier and Salvator OG fell but attenuation increased, so ABV in the finished beer stayed pretty well constant. Perhaps that was happening all over the German brewing industry - beers getting leaner and drier?