Malzbier between the wars

More Schönfeld fun. This time actually getting into a few details of specific types of top-fermenting beers.Kicking off with weedy Einfachbier.

Starting out with the weakest of the lot: Einfachbier.

"A. Dark beers
a) The former Braunbiers; Malzbier
The group of Braunbiers includes all more or less deeply dark-coloured, mostly weakly hopped, low-attenuated beers, whether they are called Einfachbier, or Malzbier, or Weizenbier, or Broihan, or Werdersches Bier or something else.

The lightly brewed beers of 4-7% B were considered to be Einfachbier, they formed the main mass of the top-fermented beers overall."
"Obergärige Biere und ihre Herstellung" by Dr. Franz Schönfeld, 2nd edition, Verlag von Paul Parey, Berlin, 1938, page 133.

That' s a pretty weedy gravity: 1016º to 1028º. Couple that with a poor degree of attenuation, and you have a beer that's barely alcoholic. What's most surprising is how long this type of beer managed to cling on. I believe that there is still the odd one made.

Many of the old North German top-fermenting styles weren't fully fermented out in the brewery, but sold a couple of days in. Th intention being that fermentation would be completed by the customer. This is how Berliner Braunbier and Berliner Weisse was often sold.

"Some of them were sold as Frischbier, which customers collected in buckets and other containers from the brewery, but which was also transported in larger containers by the brewery wagons through town and country, so that it could be sold to the customers by the litre.

It was filled, either without or with the addition of water into bottles, from which it was ready to drink after 1 to 2 days.

This is still done in various ways today, except that the custom has declined to an extraordinary extent compared to the past."
"Obergärige Biere und ihre Herstellung" by Dr. Franz Schönfeld, 2nd edition, Verlag von Paul Parey, Berlin, 1938, page 133.

He says that the practice was dying out. I'm amazed that it had lasted this long.

But it wasn't always sold as Frischbier:

"In some cases they were served ready to drink on draught in taverns, which, however, required that they were fermented in the brewery and usually received an adequate addition of Kräusen. It was a common practice to drink them with a caraway liqueur.

For the production of these light beers, even today, later runnings are used that are also mixed with sugar, used often less to sweeten them than to add easily fermentable sugar to the low-sugar extract of the runnings in order to produce a better fermentation and a better yeast crop. Beers brewed from the lightest runnings were sold under the name “Kofent”."
"Obergärige Biere und ihre Herstellung" by Dr. Franz Schönfeld, 2nd edition, Verlag von Paul Parey, Berlin, 1938, page 133.

 It would make sense that draught versions would be fully fermented in the brewery and then given some life by the addition of Kräusen..

Kofent, which I've also seen spelt Kovent, was the German equivalent of Small Beer.