Westphalian and Hessian Lagerbier 1879 - 1893

Had my obsessive side passed you by, the current flood of Lager might have surprised. A regular reader would expect the unrelenting tsunami of tables. If such a beast as a regular reader exists.

Let's begin with doubt. I'm not sure what these analyses teach us. Just as well that's not my main reason for publishing them. It's mostly to do with identifying the regional groupings.

In the source, there's a heading to identify beers of a certain region. I don't have that luxury. Each beer is a row in a spreadsheet that I sort into all sorts of different orders. You can forget headers. The rows get shuffled all over the place.

Sorry to bother you with this. Me finding handy places to park stuff I don't want to lose.

When you have as much crap as I do - writings, research material, photos - you have to keep in some sort of order. To be able to find it back. That's why my self-published books exist. So I can keep track of what I've written.

Now I've got that out of the way, on with the beers. First those from Westphalia. As you can see, they're mostly from Dortmund.

Westphalian Lagerbiers 1879 - 1893
Year	Brewer		Beer	Style	Acidity	OG	FG	OG Plato	ABV	App. Atten-uation
1879	Unknown	Dortmund	Dortmunder	Lagerbier		1049.1	1015.1	12.21	4.40	69.25%
1884	Unknown	Marienborn bei Sigen	Lagerbier 2 bis 3 Monat alt	Lagerbier	0.184	1051.0	1011.3	12.66	5.16	77.84%
1884	Barmer Aktien-Brauerei	Barmen-Rittershausen	Lagerbier	Lagerbier	0.161	1053.0	1019	13.13	4.40	64.15%
1887	Westfalia-Brauerei	Münster	Lagerbier Dunkel	Dunkles	0.317	1053.0	1015	13.13	4.94	71.70%
1893	Löwenbräu	Dortmund	Lagerbier	Lagerbier	0.27	1055.0	1012.0	13.60	5.60	78.18%
1884	Gebr. Meininghaus	Dortmund	Lagerbier	Lagerbier	0.02	1056.0	1013.8	13.84	5.49	75.36%
1887	Westfalia-Brauerei	Münster	Lagerbier Hell	Helles	0.302	1056.8	1013	14.03	5.70	77.11%
1884	Victoria-Brauerei	Dortmund	nach bömisches Art	Lagerbier	0.118	1059.0	1017.5	14.54	5.39	70.34%
1884	Victoria-Brauerei	Dortmund	goldfarbig Lagerbier	Helles	0.152	1062.3	1019	15.31	5.62	69.50%
	Average				0.191	1055.0	1015.1	13.61	5.19	72.60%
Source:
Chemie der menschlichen Nahrungs- und Genussmittel by Joseph König, 1903, pages 1102 - 1156

My guess would be that most were pale in colour. The one described as "nach böhmisches Art" almost certainly is.

In terms of gravity, they mostly look right for Export, though the source describes them as Lagerbier. I'd expect 13º to 14º Plato, which is what most of them are, with the average 13.6º Plato. At 72%, the attenuation is better than for most of the Lagerbiers we've looked at. Odd, because you'd expect attenuation to be worse in the stronger Export. The high gravity and relatively high level of attenuation mean that the average ABV is the highest so far, 5.19%

At almost 0.2%, the level of lactic acid is again rather high. Two samples have acidity over 0.3%. That's the sort of level you'd expect in a Stock Ale or aged Stout. I'm still trying to get my head around levels like that being in Lager.

Now the Hessian Lagerbiers. They're sort of from Hessen. Or they were back in the 1890's. But today Schmalkalden is in Thuringia. I must confess that I didn't notice. Dolores pointed it out to me when I asked if she knew where it was. She does, because she grew up not that far away. It's weird that so many samples are from Schmalkalden. It's not a huge town - the population now is only 20,000. Yet from the much larger Kassel, there's only one.

Hessian Lagerbiers in 1893
Year	Brewer	town	Style	Acidity	OG	FG	OG Plato	ABV	App. Atten-uation
1893	Bühner	Schmalkalden	Lagerbier	0.211	1044.5	1012	11.11	4.21	73.03%
1893	H. Wiegand	Schmalkalden	Lagerbier	0.137	1045.1	1013.2	11.26	4.14	70.73%
1893	Messerschmidt	Schmalkalden	Lagerbier	0.262	1045.4	1012.5	11.33	4.26	72.47%
1893	Kaufmann	Schmalkalden	Lagerbier	0.271	1045.5	1012.0	11.35	4.35	73.63%
1893	C. Wolff	Schmalkalden	Lagerbier	0.137	1045.9	1014	11.45	4.14	69.50%
1893	Falk	Schmalkalden	Lagerbier	0.218	1046.0	1013.3	11.47	4.24	71.09%
1893	Cramer	Schmalkalden	Lagerbier	0.232	1046.3	1013.7	11.54	4.23	70.41%
1893	Wwe. Köhler	Schmalkalden	Lagerbier	0.152	1047.1	1014	11.74	4.29	70.28%
1893	Ritter Sauer	Hersfeld	Lagerbier		1048.1	1011.3	11.97	4.79	76.51%
1893	G. Wolff	Schmalkalden	Lagerbier	0.270	1048.3	1011.0	12.02	4.85	77.23%
1893	Hessische Aktien-Brauerei	Cassel	Lagerbier	0.185	1048.3	1012	12.02	4.71	75.16%
1893	Rückert-Siemen	Schmalkalden	Lagerbier	0.179	1050.0	1018	12.42	4.14	64.00%
1893	Lederer	Marburg	Lagerbier	0.14	1051.4	1015.5	12.76	4.65	69.84%
1893	Wwe. Lesser	Schmalkalden	Lagerbier	0.232	1051.5	1014.2	12.78	4.84	72.43%
1893	A. Wiegand	Schmalkalden	Lagerbier	0.148	1051.7	1009.8	12.83	5.46	81.04%
1893	W. Engelhardt	Hersfeld	Lagerbier	0.179	1052.6	1015.7	13.04	4.79	70.15%
1893	Missomelius	Marburg	Lagerbier	0.21	1057.0	1013.2	14.07	5.70	76.84%
1893	Kühn	Schmalkalden	Lagerbier	0.137	1060.3	1017	14.84	5.63	71.81%
1893	Missomelius	Marburg	Lagerbier	0.097	1060.6	1015.0	14.91	5.94	75.25%
	Average			0.189	1049.8	1013.5	12.36	4.70	72.70%
Source:
Chemie der menschlichen Nahrungs- und Genussmittel by Joseph König, 1903, pages 1102 - 1156

The Hessian Lagerbiers have a much lower average gravity than the Westphalian ones - more than 5 points lower. Though they share a similar degree of attenuation, about 72%. Though the average seems about right for Lagerbier, some at the bottom end are a bit weak and the top two far too strong. Again, the average acidity is on the high side.

The table fun just doesn't end today. I've put together a table to compare the average values for Lagerbiers from different areas.

Bohemian, German and Austrian Lagerbiers
Beer	OG	FG	OG Plato	ABV	App. Atten-uation	lactic acid %
Bohemian Dark Lagers 1890 - 1895	1044.4	1014.2	11.09	3.91	68.13%	0.172
Bohemian Lagerbier 1876	1046.2	1013.3	11.51	4.26	71.25%	0.130
Bohemian Pilsener 1880-1890	1049.0	1013.6	12.18	4.59	72.09%	0.212
Bohemian Pale Lagerbier 1880-1890	1049.2	1014.9	12.22	4.44	70.06%	0.140
Hessian Lagerbiers in 1893	1049.8	1013.5	12.36	4.70	72.70%	0.189
Dresden Lagerbiers 1878 - 1880	1052.0	1013.4	12.90	5.01	74.37%
Lower Austrian Lagerbier 1876	1053.3	1017.0	13.20	4.70	68.17%	0.140
Hannover region Lagerbier 1878 - 1891	1053.4	1015.6	13.22	4.90	70.81%	0.134
Nürnberg Winterbier 1887	1053.6	1016.4	13.28	4.82	69.30%	0.232
Westphalian Lagerbiers 1879 - 1893	1055.0	1015.1	13.61	5.19	72.60%	0.191

You can see that the Hessian ones slot in just above the Bohemian ones. They're quite a bit weaker than any of the other German ones. While Westphalian Lagerbiers are, on average, the strongest. Not sure what the table tells us, other than that gravities were low in Bohemia.

Not sure what's next. Erfurt, maybe.