Friday 12 June 2020

A film about the Velkepopovice brewery in the 1920s

This is one of the most detailed films I've seen about brewing from this sort of period. Absolute gold.



Some really cool stuff in there. Especially the bit about adding 4% Kräusen to the "kvasnicové pivo" (yeast beer). then showing exactly how the Kräusen was added to the cask before it was filled. Then saying that the beer had to rest in the pub for 10 days before serving.

Add to that showing how they pitched the lagering vessels and you've got some great stuff.

8 comments:

Rob Sterowski said...

Does that mean it was real ale then?

Ron Pattinson said...

Barm,

yes, obviously.

Thom Farrell said...

One wonders why it was only in Britain that there was a consumer backlash against the demise of real ale.

Mike in NSW said...

Another brilliant one is a German brewery of the same era. You don't need subtitles, the terms and equipment are the same as today or you can work it out almost instantly: Wurtzpanne, LauterBottich, Hopfen, etc.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1f7m31b_HE&t=238s

Mike in NSW said...

Thom, even as late as 1976 you could still find European beer in wooden casks - I was staying in Steyr in Austria and on the way out to the bogs at the back of a pub I took a wrong turn into a yard and it was stacked with wooden empties, alongside S.S. kegs. I noted the name on the labels - GoldQuell - as opposed to GoldFassl in the kegs and did a side by side of them back in the bar.
The keg was a bit more fizzy but not a lot of difference. And they were both served on top pressure out of tall bar fonts.

So I'd guess the public didn't notice too much of a difference and had probably been 'softened up' over the decades by the beer likely now filtered and not kreusened.
On the other hand, ripping out handpumps and replacing them with Worthington E or Harp Lager was a bit more radical and alarming.

Ross said...

Thanks for posting this. Really interesting footage.

Is the apparatus at the 9:00 mark called a grant? U Fleku has something similar and they post a lot of pictures of it, but I was never quite sure what it is.

Anonymous said...

Mike,
you can still find wooden served beer at Augustiner Salzburg, a few Augustiner Munchen places, Uerige, ... plus likely a few more. Think Schlenkerla is using wooden ones with steel bubble inside

johanner said...

It always amazes me how quick people worked in that time.