The style hung on through the first half of the 20th century but gradually disappeared from most countries after WW II. Even in its Munich heartland it had to play second fiddle to Helles after the war.
“Muenchener Type Beer
We recommend in order to supply the higher alcoholic variety the Munich type beer be brewed. The Muenchener beers are higher in alcoholic content than the Pilsener and to correctly brew this type of beer a greater amount of materials per barrel are necessary. For the strong flavor quality introduced with the increased materials as well as that inherent in the alcohol produced in the fermentation of this grain mash a coverage quality stronger than that of the hops is necessary.
To correctly brew this type of beer therefore a very high percentage of malt is necessary. This type of malt should be dried at high temperatures by the maltster in its manufacture. Such a procedure gives this malt considerable caramel flavor, better known to the brewing trade as a malty flavor. To be correctly brewed the Munich type of beer should have a taste which predominates in malt.
"Beer from the Expert's Viewpoint" by Arnold Spencer Wahl and Robert Wahl, 1937, pages 170 - 171.
That’s pretty clear, isn’t it? It should be brewed from mostly malt and should taste, er, malty. It’s implying that dark Munich malt should be used as the base, rather than using a small amount of highly-coloured malt on top of a pils malt base. I wonder how true that was in the 1930’s? Even in Germany a pils malt base was common for dark beers. Why else does Sinamar exist?
Here are some more details:
“As above stated a brew of this type having 4-4.5% alcohol by weight cannot be brewed to its perfection with a high percentage of brewing adjuncts having a very neutral flavor. Furthermore, the hop quality of this type of beer should be subdued by the employment of not more than .55 pounds or slightly more than 0.5 lb. hops per barrel if the wort can be removed from the hops in less than one-half hour's time. This Muenchener type beer should be made from worts of approximately 14% original extract.”
"Beer from the Expert's Viewpoint" by Arnold Spencer Wahl and Robert Wahl, 1937, page 171.
That’s 5 to 5.3% ABV. Which doesn’t sound particularly high strength nowadays. But you need to remember the poor degree of attenuation prevalent. A modern Bavarian Märzen of a similar gravity is usually around 6% ABV. Half a pound of hops per barrel is pretty light hopping. But only a little less than in the lower-gravity Pilsener types we’ve already looked at.
Here’s something else I don’t really understand:
“This high alcoholic beer with a predominating malt flavor should receive considerable boiling period in the kettle. It contains a high percentage of malt which requires considerable boiling to stabilize. The longer boiling period furthermore adds an additional malty flavor produced from caramelization in the kettle. (See analysis on Muenchener Type Beer.)”
"Beer from the Expert's Viewpoint" by Arnold Spencer Wahl and Robert Wahl, 1937, page 171.
I’ve never heard before that malt-accented beers needed to be boiled for longer. I can see you might want to get more colour through a long boil, but malty flavour?
Here’s the nice table of details on this type of beer:
| MUENCHENER TYPE BEER | ||
| Reported by Wahl Institute, April 27, 1936 | ||
| This beer is composed of the following substances, reported in percentages or pounds per hundred: | ||
| Alcohol (by weight) | 4.53 | |
| Real extract (dry substance) | 4.75 | |
| Carbonic acid. | 0.59 | |
| Water | 90.13 | |
| 100 | ||
| The real extract (4.75) is made up of the following substances: | ||
| In Percentage | In Percentage | |
| of the beer | of the extract | |
| Acid (Lactic) | 0.117 | 2.46 |
| Acid salts | 0.081 | 1.71 |
| Protein | 0.613 | 12.91 |
| Ash | 0.19 | 3.3 |
| Sugar (reducing) | 1.243 | 26.17 |
| Dextrins | 2.506 | 53.45 |
| 4.75 | 100 | |
| The following are important brewing figures: | ||
| Specific gravity of beer | 1.011 | |
| Original balling of wort | 13.81 | |
| Apparent extract of beer (balling) | 2.85 | |
| Real attenuation | 9.06 | |
| Fermentable sugar in the wort | 10.3 | |
| Apparent attenuation | 10.96 | |
| Alcohol (by volume) | 5.66 | |
| Percent of extract fermented | 65.6 | |
| Percent of extract unfermented | 34.4 | |
| Percent of sugars in original wort | 74.6 | |
| Percent of non-sugars in original wort | 25.4 | |
| pH value | 4.7 | |
| Total acidity | 0.198 | |
| Carbonic acid by volumes | 3 | |
| Amylo dextrins | none | |
| "Beer from the Expert's Viewpoint" by Arnold Spencer Wahl and Robert Wahl, 1937, page 176. | ||
Surprisingly, the percentage of sugars in the wort is higher than for the Pilseners – 69% for Mild Pilsener and 72.6% for Strong Pilsener.
The degree of attenuation is higher, too – 79%. It was 72% for Mild Pilsener and 77% for Strong Pilsener. Fascinating stuff, I’m sure you’ll agree.
It’s brilliant. This is going to keep me going for ages. Plenty more beers styles to come. Half and Half is particularly exciting.
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2 comments:
"This high alcoholic beer with a predominating malt flavor should receive considerable boiling period in the kettle. It contains a high percentage of malt which requires considerable boiling to stabilize. The longer boiling period furthermore adds an additional malty flavor produced from caramelization in the kettle"
I don't think there's a problem with the idea that a long boil will produce a deeper colour in the wort (due to the Maillard reaction), or that some sugars in the wort may be caramelised during a longer boil.
What I don't understand is what he means by wort being "stabilised" by a longer boil. Does he mean that an all-malt wort needs a longer boil to achieve the hot break (presumably because it contains more protein than a wort produced with adjuncts)?
If he doesn't mean that, then I'm really not sure what he means.
Ron, I think they are implying that a prolonged boil in the kettle will caramelize the beer further due to the slight burning of the sugars on parts of the kettle's base. Stroh in America (Detroit) claimed to do something similar until its demise in that city, and it had to do I think with coal or gas-fired (naked flame) jets vs. jacketed heat conduction.
Personally, those flavors sound potentially as off-flavours - certainly distillers never wanted that burning and did everything they could do to avoid it - but probably with beer the taste added was subtle at best, buried so to speak in the heavy body produced mainly by the malt bill.
Their statement about the part alcohol plays in this is something I never thought of before with beer but am familiar with from distillation practice. Fermentation produces higher alcohols, aldehydes, acids and esters, commonly called congeners, in addition to ethanol. Unlike in distillation, all of these stay in beverage beer. So it is true that the more ethanol you produce, the more of these other substances are created, some of which taste "good" (most esters), some of which taste "bad" (e.g. aldehydes). These guys would have been shocked probably by modern DIPAs and English-style very strong beers and been confounded how to "mask" the additional fermentation flavors they didn't want.
Of course, the extra hops would help but they might have been concerned about high hop content, i.e., for their intended consumer.
Recently, a brewing and distillation expert, more technically trained than a product of the craft era (older chap in his 70's) told me many years ago, it was determined that what the ultimate (ideal) alcohol content was for beer. It was under 5%, maybe 4.3% or in that neighborhood. He said in relation to malt and hop taste that level offered the perfect overall taste, the best balance of you could get from these materials.
Of course that is an arguable conclusion, but the point about higher amounts of congeners from higher amounts of alcohol makes me think there is some logic to it. The less ethanol you have (which is essentially flavourless) the less these other things will abound as e.g., the aldehydes which can be somewhat nasty.
Gary
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