Let's Brew - 1896 Ny Carlsberg Export Pilsner

In addition to their standard Pilsner, Ny Carlsberg also brewed an export version.

It’s very similar to the domestic version in terms of gravity and hopping rate. Though there is a difference in the recipe. Quite a difference. Ain addition to pilsner malt, there’s also some “farvepilsner” malt, that is “colour-pilsner” malt. I’ve taken that to be something similar to cara-pils.

In addition, there’s something called “bryggemel” or “barley flour”, which I’ve taken to be barley flour, There’s rather a lot of it: 30% of the total. Which is probably why the farvepilsner malt is in there.

The hops are a combination of Saazer Kreis and East Kent. Which I’ve interpreted as Sazz and Goldings.

I’ve reduced the final gravity from 1020º to allow for the fermentation during the lagering period. 

1896 Ny Carlsberg Export Pilsner
pilsner malt	7.25 lb	60.42%
cara-pils malt	1.25 lb	10.42%
barley flour	3.50 lb	29.17%
Saaz 150 mins	0.75 oz
Goldings 60 mins	0.50 oz
Goldings 30 mins	0.50 oz
OG	1051
FG	1015
ABV	4.76
Apparent attenuation	70.59%
IBU	22
SRM	3.5
Mash double decoction
Boil time	150 minutes
pitching temp	41º F
Yeast	Wyeast 2042 Danish lager

Mash in at 35º C (95º F)	5 minutes
Warm whole mash to 52º C (126º F)	20 minutes
Rest whole mash at 52º C (126º F) (protein rest)	15 minutes
Draw off first mash and without a rest bring to the boil	30 minutes
Boil first mash	10 minutes
The rest of the mash remains at 52º C (126º F)	40 minutes
Mash at 70º C (158º F)	25 minutes
Rest whole mash at 70º C (158º F) (saccharification rest)	30 minutes
Draw off second mash and without a rest bring to the boil	15 minutes
Boil second mash	10 minutes
Mash at 76º C (169º F) and mash out	20 minutes

 

 

 

1970s Pilsator decoction mash

As you read this, I should be sipping a beer in a bar in Copacabana. Flash bastard that I am. Far away from the freezing cold of Amsterdam. 

More fun from behind the iron curtain. In the form of another decoction scheme.

It's been a while since I went on a decoction mash binge. Such a fascinating subject. Who would have guessed that there were so many different methods? And this is another new one to me.

The source is a brewing record image for a Pilsator. I can't remember where I got it, nor which brewery it is. Dead interesting, thougfh.
It's a type of single deoction. But with a twist.

It's mashed in at 50º C, then has rests at 64º C and 74º C. Weirdly, it's cooled back down to 64º C. Thn warmed back up to 76º C. Only then was the wort boiled. But only for ten minutes. Which seems pretty short. It can't have been very much wort that was boiled, as it only raised the temperature of the mash by 2º C.

What's odd about this method? Usually any boils are earlier in the process. And are used to raise the temperature of the mash considerably. For example, from 50º C to 64º C.

1973 DDR Pilsator mashing scheme
operation	time
	start	end	temp. º C	hl
3,500 kg pilsner malt mashed in	06:20	06:40	56	120
drain 1st mash	06:55	07:05		110
raise to 64º C	07:00	07:15
saccharification rest	07:15	07:45	64
raise to 74º C	07:45	07:55
rest 20 min	07:55	08:15	74
move to mash tun	08:15	08:25
cool to 64º C	08:25	08:35	64	140
drain 2nd mash	08:35	08:40		60
saccharification rest	08:40	08:55	76
raise to boil	08:55	09:25
boil	09:25	09:35
move to mash tun	09:35	09:45
saccharification rest	09:45	10:00	76
mash out in lauter tun	10:00	10:25
Source:
a random DDR brewing record I have

A weird parti-gyle

Keeping my blog true to its original purpose, here's another half-digested morsel from my research. Some of the really dull, monotonous research that I need to do. To be able to assemble all those really dull tables in my books.

That research was going through brewing records and extracting the information from it into a spreadsheet. Ingredients, gravities, fermentation temperatures. All the useful stuff. The result is as handy as the process obtaining it is tedious. Too tedious for me to recount here.

While I was doing that boring research, I did come across something unusual. A rather odd parti-gyle. Of a Pilsner and a Mild Ale.

Oh, it's William Younger we're talking about. Their Holyrood brewery, 1883. They were very early in the Lager game. Possibly because of the link with Carl Jacobsen, founder of Ny Carlsberg. He served an apprenticeship at Younger in the 1860s.

It's also odd that they should choose to parti-gyle this pair when almost everything else was being brewed single-gyle. There's nothing odd about the brew. It was mashed and boiled just like all their other beers. The only difference lay in the hops. Which were all Württemberg. While the other beers had a combination of Eat Kent, Hallertau, American and Californian.

The Pils and XXX are pretty much identical. Except the former wasn't dry hopped and was fermented much cooler: 41º F yo 52º F. Compared to 60º F to 70º F for XXX. And the fermentation took longer, 17 days compared to 10 for XXX. Was it fermented with Lager yeast? Yes. But only the Pils, not the XXX.

Interesting, eh?

Let's Brew Wednesday - 1895 Ny Carlsberg Pilsner

A bit of a change of pace here. As we cross the North Sea to Denmark for a  recipe.For a beer which is still around today.

Pilsner was far from being king at Carlsberg in the 19th century. By was the most brews were of Lagerol, which was obviously the big seller. As in much of Europe, the first Lagers brewed in Denmark were in the darker Munich style. When Pilsner was introduced, it was an exclusive drink, aimed at the better off.  Much like IPA in the UK.

This is a very different beer from the current iteration. With a much fight gravity and a much worse degree of attenuation. Which leaves it around the same strength, but with, obviously, way more body. Though the light hopping probably leaves it wit ha similar level of bitterness.

The grist is slightly more complex than you might imagine, with a little Munich malt in addition to the pilsner malt. Giving it a touch more colour. Though it’s still pretty damn pale.

All Saaz hops, with is a nice authentic touch. And which, I’m sure, given the finished beer a delicate hop character.

A couple of months lagering Should get this into a nice state. 

1895 Ny Carlsberg Pilsner
pilsner malt	11.50 lb	97.21%
Munich malt 20L	0.33 lb	2.79%
Saaz 90 mins	0.75 oz
Saaz 60 mins	0.50 oz
Saaz 30 mins	0.50 oz
OG	1052
FG	1019
ABV	4.37
Apparent attenuation	63.46%
IBU	18
SRM	4
Mash double decoction
Boil time	90 minutes
pitching temp	48º F
Yeast	Wyeast 2042 Danish lager

These are the decoction mash details:

Mash in at 35º C (95º F)	5 minutes
Warm whole mash to 52º C (126º F)	20 minutes
Rest whole mash at 52º C (126º F) (protein rest)	15 minutes
Draw off first mash and without a rest bring to the boil	30 minutes
Boil first mash	10 minutes
The rest of the mash remains at 52º C (126º F)	40 minutes
Mash at 70º C (158º F)	25 minutes
Rest whole mash at 70º C (158º F) (saccharification rest)	30 minutes
Draw off second mash and without a rest bring to the boil	15 minutes
Boil second mash	10 minutes
Mash at 76º C (169º F) and mash out	20 minutes

 

More dull stuff avout Heineken in the 1930s

I keep finding reasons to delay finishing "Blitzkrieg!". It is complete. All but the small section on brewing in the Netherlands during the war are done. But I keep finding more information. And requesting the archive digitises more Heineken records.

You can request five documents per month. I used up my monthly ration this week. All on records of the pilot brewery. One in particular I'm keen to take a look in: 1944-46. I've currently no information later than 1943. I'm dead excited. Though patience is requires. Three to six weeks the process takes.

A couple of days later, I learnt Peter Symons had requested some of the same documents. He's been pointing me at various documents from the Heineken archive that he's already had digitised. Between the two of us, we should get through the interesting ones pretty quickly. Then move on to the Amstel stuff.

I can't take too long over this.  Got to be down the pub, well, brewery, quite soon for my Saturday afternoon pints with mates. The highlight of my unemployed week.  I'm not going to bang on too long about this double decoction. I want to line my stomach with some lunch before this afternoon session. Andrew chews his way through pints disturbingly quickly. I always drink faster when I'm with him.

Heineken Pilsener was mashed very differently to their Münchener, which had one more decoction. The heating and boiling of the decoction were shorter. While the saccharification rest at 66º C was far longer. The two just about balanced each other out and the whole process was only 5 minutes shorter, despite there being one fewer decoction.

The shorter boils make sense. They'd have been wary of darkening the wort. Not sure about the reason for longer rest.

That's enough about decoction. I'm thinking about my sandwich. Dolores made meatballs. Always dead good. This batch are particularly nice.

 

Pilsener 11th Jul 1935
step	duration (minutes)
Mash in at 51º C (124º F)	20
Mash in rice at 33º C (91.5º F)	5
Draw off first decoction and raise to 70º C (158º F)	45
Raise decoction to 100º C (212º F)	15
Boil first decoction	15
Rest whole mash at 66º C (151º F)	75
Draw off second decoction and raise to 100º C (212º F)	15
Boil second decoction	15
Mash at 75.5º C and mash out (168º F)	5
Sparge at 75.5º C (168º F) and rest	60
Draw off main wort	55
Draw off second wort	90
Total time	415
Source:
Heineken Brouwjournalen van de proefziederij, 1935 - 1957 held at the Amsterdamse Stadtsarchief, document number 1785-1792, page 19.

Ny Carlsberg grists in 1928-1929

As promised, here are Carlsberg's grists from the 1920s. Which turn out to be more interesting than you might expect.

No shock that the Pilsners were mostly brewed from pilsner malt. Along with some maize. It is a surprise, however, to de "Farve malt" in the two weaker ones. It means "colour malt" and, based on its usage in Porter, seems to be something like black malt. Obviously, it's purpose is to darken the colour a little.

Moving on to the dark Lagers, we hit the first major problem in interpretation. What exactly was lager malt? I'm inclined to go for something like pale Munich malt. It can't just be another name for pilsner malt as the two types are kept very distinct in the records. The small quantity of caramel malt wouldn't account for the seemingly much darker colour.

Note that none of the dark beers contained maize.

The there's the next tricky ingredient: something called "Kulör" in the logs. 18 and 25 litres, respectively for 424 hl of Lager and 377 hl of Export. Clearly it's some sort of liquid caramel, but how dark was it? I could only guess.

Biggest surprise is that the Porter had 20% brown malt. That's so old school. Even in the UK almost no-one used it any more in Stout, except in London.

Ny Carlsberg grists in 1928-1929
Year	Beer	Style	Pilsner malt	Lager malt	caramel malt	brown malt	Farve malt	maize
1929	Ny Pilsner	Pilsner	84.24%				0.70%	15.06%
1928	Pilsner	Pilsner	79.74%				0.16%	20.10%
1928	Lagerol I	Lager		98.08%	1.92%
1929	Gammel Carlsberg Exp	Export		97.94%	2.06%
1928	Exp. Pilsner	Pilsner	70.00%					30.00%
1928	Porter	Porter	70.61%			21.41%	7.99%
Source: Carlsberg brewing record held at the brewery, document number Serie 000000299 000056839.

Ny Carlsberg beers in 1928-1929

I've been too diligent in collecting brewing records. That's how I excuse myself for the mountain of unprocessed ones. Including a hillock of Carlsberg logs. Our perhaps I'm just a lazy git? I'll let you decide.

Ever since I built up a backlog, I give priority to transcribing records which are relevant to a current project. That ruled out anything that wasn't in the time slot 1938 to 1948. After a lifetime and a half of toil, I finally finished off William Younger. I suspect most of it a waste of time. Dead handy for my birthday recipe thing, though. Lots and lots of different dates.

Wandering a bit off the path there. It was years back (May 2015, according to the photos) when I visited the Carlsberg archives. I photographed 20 brewing books from Ny Carlsberg, spanning 1867 to 1934. Quite a lot of stuff. Which would take years to fully process.

There's a good reason I'm looking at them now.  I'm writing a talk on interwar European Lager. Carlsberg is a great example. Getting to use my research here as well makes it a win-win. For me, at any rate. Probably depends on how number-obsessed you are.

One word of warning: the FGs are a guess. I've a couple of analyses of Carlsberg's beers from around this time and they're around 75% apparent, so that's what I've gone with here. It could have been lower for the two dark beers and the porter.

As far as I can make out, Carlsberg brewed six different beers: three Pilsners, a Lagerbier, an Export and a Porter. Not a massive range. If these were German beers, I'd call the middle two Dunkles Lagerbier and Dunkles Export.

The standard Pilsner, which was by far the most-brewed of Carlsberg's range, is weaker than you would expect: under 11º Plato. Checking back through older logs, I saw that it was 12.9º in 1895, 12.6º in 1901, but only 10.9º in 1910. It wasn't WW I, as I suspected, that pushed the gravity down. 

Export Pilsner is simply the same strength as the 1895 standard Pilsner. Looks like Carlsberg lowered the strength of the beer domestically and kept on brewing the old version for export.

Ny Pilsner (New Pilsner) looks like it's fitting into some sort of price class:

"The beers with less than 2.25 per cent alcohol show an even greater increase. The new Pilsener for instance increasing from Kr. 7.5 to 24.25 ore per bottle (about 0.75d. to 2.5d.) and from Kr. 16 to Kr. 60 per hectolitre in cask (or 26s. 3d. to 98s. 6d. per barrel)."
Journal of the Institute of Brewing, Volume 27, Issue 1, January 1921, pages 26 - 27.

This confirms that Ny Pilsner was a tax category:

Average Original Gravities of Danish Beers 1914 - 1920
Year ending September 30th	1915	1916	1917	1916	1919	1920
Lager beer	1052	1051	1048	1045
Pilsener beer	1044	1044	1041.5	1032	1038	1038
Stout, tax class I	1076	1076	1072
Stout, tax class II	1068	1068	1065	1058	1055	1056
Munich beer	1056	1056	1055
Export beer	1052	1050	1049.5
New Pilsener, tax class II	1032	1032	1032	1030	1031	1031
Source: Journal of the Institute of Brewing, Volume 27, Issue 1, January 1921, page 27.

You may have noticed the eccentric colour scale used by Carlsberg. The higher the number, the paler the colour. How mad is that?

Lagerol and Export are both dark, but how dark? I'd guess 12-15 SRM. When we get to the recipe next time, I'll explain exactly why I'm guessing that.

By far the most heavily hopped of the beers, in terms of hops per 100 kg of malt, is Ny Pilsner. Probably to cover up how watery it was. Amongst the other beers, Export Pilsner is a little heavier on the hops. As the strongest beer by quite a way, it's no surprise that Porter has by far the most hops per hectolitre.

In general, the darker beers were boiled longer, the exception being Export Pilsner.

Ny Carlsberg beers in 1928-1929
Year	Beer	Style	OG Plato	FG Plato	ABV	App. Attenua-tion	kg hops/ 100 kg	hops kg/hl	boil time (hours)	colour
1929	Ny Pilsner	Pilsner	6.5	1.6	2.56	75.87%	2.63	0.19	1.75	19
1928	Pilsner	Pilsner	10.6	2.6	4.27	76.24%	1.26	0.18	1.75	19
1928	Lagerol I	Lager	10.6	2.6	4.27	76.24%	1.25	0.18	2	5.5
1929	Gammel Carlsberg Exp	Export	12.8	3.2	5.18	75.94%	1.28	0.21	2	5
1928	Exp. Pilsner	Pilsner	12.9	3.2	5.24	76.13%	1.58	0.28	2.25	20
1928	Porter	Porter	18.9	4.7	7.89	76.48%	1.41	0.41	2.5
Source:
Carlsberg brewing record held at the brewery, document number Serie 000000299 000056839.

 

Branded Lager in 1953

There are indeed a couple of more types I’ve not done yet. Isn’t this fun? Just you and me a pile of dead beer brands. Well, mostly dead.

Because this set contains rather more survivors than the others. Why? Because they were already big international brands. You’ll be wondering which they are. I count seven: Amstel, Carling Black Label, Heineken, Graham’s Golden Lager (now called Skol), Pilsner Urquell, Carlsberg and Tuborg. Though, as you may have noticed many of these are just the name of the brewery rather than a real brand name.

Most of the British-brewed examples come from Lager pioneers, brewers that had a dedicated Lager brew house or only brewed Lager: Ind Coope, Red Tower and Wrexham Lager Brewery. This is an interesting point in the history of British Lager. When it was about to move from being a niche product to a mainstream one. A few years later at the end of the 1950’s many regional brewers started to market their own Lagers, though how many of them were actually bottom-fermented and lagered is anyone’s guess.

Oddly enough, Lager has come full circle. The Lagers from regional brewers have mostly disappeared, replaced either by national brands such as Carling or international brands like Carlsberg and Heineken. So very much like the early 1950’s. Isn’t that a strange turn of events?

Branded Lager in 1953
Brewery	Brand	Type
Amstel	Amstel	Lager
Anglo-Dutch Brewers (Distributors)	Golden Tree	Lager
Brading Breweries Ltd., Canada	Cincinnati Cream	Lager
Canadian Breweries (International)	Carling's Black Label	Lager
Castletown Brewery Ltd.	Anchor	Lager
Dyer Meakin Breweries	Golden Eagle	Lager
Heineken	Heineken's	Lager
Ind Coope & Allsopp	Graham's Golden Lager	Lager
Ind Coope & Allsopp	Jacob's Lager	Lager
Pilsner Breweries	Pilsner Urquell	Lager
Red Tower Lager Brewery	Red Tower	Lager
South Australian Brewery	Regal	Lager
Wurzburger Hofbrau, Bavaria	Wurzburger Hofbrau	Lager
Charles C. R. Walker (Export)	Wyvern Brand	Lager Beer
Carlsberg Byggerierne	Carlsberg	Lager Beers
Backus & Johnston's Brewery	Maltina	Lager Stout
Tuborg Breweries	Tuborg	Pilsener
Wrexham Lager Beer	Ace of Clubs	Pilsener
Bryggeriet Stjerhen	Danish Star	Danish Pilsner
Source:
Brewery Manual 1953-1954, pages 382 - 394.

Only odds and sods left. Those next, then.

Colbitzer beers

Here’s another DDR brewery and its beers. This is so much fun. A way of using all those DDR labels I recently picked up.

Colbitz is in Sachsen-Anhalt, about 10 km North of Magdeburg. The brewery was founded as the Colbitzer Brauerei in 1879 by Friedrich-Christoph Ritter. In 1959 it was partially nationalised and in 1972 fully nationalised. In 1991 it was returned to the family that formerly owned it. The brewery is still active.

There’s a little on their website about the beers brewed in the late 19th-century. I’m pretty sure they’ve got the top- and bottom-fermented beers the wrong way around. It reckons these were top-fermented: helles Lagerbier, Doppelmärzen, Doppelmärzen-Bock and Malzbier. And these bottom-fermented: Weißbier and Braunbier “Puparsch-Knall”.

Jumping forwards more than 100 years, this is their current beer range:

Cannewitzer beers in 2015
Beer	style	OG Plato	ABV
Colbitzer Pils	Pilsner	11.2	4.90%
Colbitzer Bock	Bock	16.8	7.10%
Colbitzer Dunkel	Dunkles	11.25	4.90%
Colbitzer Edel	Helles	11.25	4.90%
Source:
Colbitzer website http://www.colbitzer-heidebrauerei.de

Next are their beers from the DDR period, in the form of labels. Unsurprisingly, Bock and Pilsner are constants:

DDR Beer Styles

I just came across this dead handy document I’d forgotten I had. It’s TGL 7764: the official DDR standard document for beer.

One of the useful bits of information is something on beers styles. A little table documenting the characteristics of each type of beer. It’s rather longer than the table in Kunze and includes some styles I never came across. Things like Lagerbier Dunkel, Lagerbier Spezial and Dunkel.

It doesn’t include ABV, so I’ve calculated it from the OG and rate of attenuation. I’ve used the middle of the gravity range and either the middle of the attenuation range or the minimum value. What it shows is quite a narrow range of ABVs, with the vast majority of styles between 3.5 and 5%.

I’d been wondering about Doppel-Karamelbier. It always specifies Vollbier on the label, but I was fairly certain it was low ABV. The fact no rate of attenuation is specified implies to me that it’s very low. And that it’s one of those weird German styles with a normal OG, but minimal amount of alcohol. Consulting Kunze*, I see that it had an ABC of 0.63% to 1.5%. So hardly fermented at all.

Another odd feature is the number of Pilsner styles: four in total. I’m not sure why Deutsches Pilsator and Deutsches Pilsner Spezial get separate entries as their specifications seem identical. As do Lagerbier Hell and Lagerbier Spezial, Lagerbier Dunkel and Lagerbier Dunkel Spezial.

It’s handy that there’s an indication of bitterness, though I’m not sure how that relates to IBUs. It does indicate the relative bitterness of the types, at least.

You'll notice that every DDR label has TGL 7764 on it somewhere.

Here you go:

DDR beer styles 1987 - 1990
Type	OG Plato	ABV	App. Atten-uation	CO2 Content	Isohumulon Content	EBC colour
	%	%	%	% min.	Mg/l
Dunkel (Einfachbier)	5.7 - 6.2	1.84	55 - 65	0.35	3 - 11	min 79
Alkoholfreies Bier	6.5 - 7.0		10 - 15	0.42	22 - 28	max 12
Weissbier	7.0 - 8.0	2.90	min 75	0.60	nothing specified	9 - 15
Extra	8.5 - 9.0	3.41	min 75	0.45	22 - 34	max 12
Hell	9.5 - 10.0	3.82	min 75	0.40	16 - 26	max 14
Edel-Bräu Hell	10.5 - 11.0	4.23	min 75	0.42	16 - 28	max 14
Dunkel (Vollbier)	10.0 - 10.5	4.02	min 75	0.40	16 - 26	min 79
Doppel-Karamelbier	11.7 - 12.2	0.63 - 1.5	nothing specified	0.42	3 - 10	min 93
Schwarzbier	11.7 - 12.2	4.12	60 - 70	0.42	20 - 34	min 160
Deutsches Pilsner	10.5 - 11.0	4.23	min 75	0.40	22 - 34	max 12
Diabetiker-Pils	10.0 - 10.5			0.42	22 - 34	max 13
Lagerbier Hell	11.5 - 12.0	4.65	min 75	0.42	20 - 34	max 31
Lagerbier Dunkel	11.5 - 12.0	4.65	min 75	0.42	14 - 26	min 40
Lagerbier Spezial	11.5 - 12.0	4.65	min 75	0.42	20 - 34	max 31
Lagerbier Dunkel Spezial	11.5 - 12.0	4.65	min 75	0.42	14 - 26	min 40
Deutsches Pilsator	11.5 - 12.0	4.83	min 78	0.42	26 - 39	max 12
Deutsches Pilsner Spezial	11.5 - 12.0	4.83	min 78	0.42	26 - 39	max 12
Spitzenbier	12.0 - 12.5	4.86	min 73	0.45	28 - 40	max 18
Märzen	13.5 - 14.0	5.13	min 70	0.42	20 - 34	max 110
Weißer Bock oder Bockbier Hell	15.0 - 15.5	5.86	68 - 75	0.40	14 - 26	21 - 43
Dunkler Bock oder Bockbier Dunkel	15.0 - 15.5	5.62	65 - 72	0.40	10 - 25	min 83
Deutscher Porter	17.5 - 18.0	6.10	min 64	0.42	35 - 50	min 160
Source:
TGL 7764

* "Technologie für Brauer und Mälzer" by Wolfgang Kunze, 1975, page 422.