Prev: Introduction to Englischer-Köstritzer
I'm going to scale the quantities to 5.5 gallons in the kettle post-boil, but I'll also give Wágner's quantities. He says his procedure will give 27.5 hectoliters (Hl) post-boil, and then 17.86 Hl of beer, after losses to trub and hops in the boil kettle, and yeast in the fermenter. He says it is this high because the beer is so strong. It's a lot of loss by our standards. I'm going to equate the 27.5 Hl value, about 726 gal, to 5.5 gal. This is a factor of about 0.0076.
Grain bill and mash procedure: As Mosher stated, the beers are pale, quite different from schwarzbier. There is nothing about dark-roasted grains in Wágner's text. The barley malt is clearly described as pale yellow (hellgelbes), and the color of the wheat malt is not described. I think it's safe to assume that the wheat malt was not dark, or Wágner would have made something of that.
Interestingly, the barley malt is de-germed. When I first read this I thought, well, too bad, that's not available, so I'm going to use Pilsener malt as Mosher suggested. Since then I noticed the Briess product Maltgems®. Their literature emphasizes that this has had “the majority of husk, fine grit, and flour” removed, but in a blog they write “By removing the majority of husk and acrospires, Briess has created a product that can easily be used to create endosperm brewed beers.” The acrospire is the germ, having started growing, so this is at least largely de-germed. I would think that to get the germ out you have to at least open up the husk, and a significant amount of it could have been removed by the processing. So it's also possible that the nineteenth-century de-germed malt was very similar to Maltgems®. But the old German maltsters could have left the husk in for mashing; it's hard to know. There are, of course, differences, like the malt used by Wágner's brewers was continental malt instead of American. Still, I think it's worth trying Maltgems® for this beer.
Wágner says to use 11.54 Hl of barley malt (891 – 1,146 lb) and 2 ¾ Hl wheat malt, or 212 to 273 lb, if this were the same density as barley malt. Scaling these to a 5.5 gal batch gives 6.8–8.7 lb barley malt and 1.6–2.1 lb wheat malt. This doesn't seem likely to give a strong beer, nor will the grain-to-water ratio from the water numbers given below, so why think this is a strong beer? Several things Wágner says support the idea that it's strong. He emphasizes the high sugar content of the wort in more than one place. He says a lot of wort is lost to hops, trub and the yeast. He later says that after six months the beer will be very rich in sugar. He mentions making a third runnings beer, which suggests that the second and first couldn't have been too weak. Mosher's suggested OG of 1.079 or even higher seems reasonable. It's really unfortunate that Wágner didn't give gravities. I have to wonder whether there is something wrong with his numbers for water or grain. And if those are wrong, what else might be?
In any case, he says 23 ⅓ Hl (616 gal) water is brought to 60–62°C (140–144°F) and the grain is doughed in. This is 4.7 gal scaled down. A rest time is not given. More water is then brought to a boil. The first rest time would be determined by how long this took. Add 30.25 Hl (800 gal) boiling water to the mash, or 6 gal scaled down. After this, apparently without any pause except to mix, take half of the mash and bring it to a boil. Transfer that to the lauter tun and then bring the other half to a boil. Wágner explicitly says that you boil half at time because it won't all fit in the kettle, but I have to wonder if this had an effect, like giving the second half more time to convert. In any case, no boil time is given, and no time to come to a boil is given.
The rest times and temperatures are not given. The first might be a protein rest, though from his numbers I calculate a high temperature for it, like 133°F. There would be some saccharification (see Noonan). I calculate that the boiling water addition would bring the temperature up to something like 170°F. If his grain and/or water quantity numbers are wrong then these rest temperature numbers almost certainly are, too. The mash ratio comes out to 3 – 4 quarts per pound. I find this would give a starting gravity between 1.040 and 1.053. Again, I have to wonder whether there's an error in Wágner's water or grain volumes.
There is no description of lautering. Wágner says to heat some water to clean things, and then “During this time the spent grain separates from the wort, which one thus removes.” It almost sounds like you drain or even scoop the wort from above the spent grain. If that was the procedure, it would leave a lot of wort for the second runnings.
For the ordinary beer Wágner does not say how much water to add to the grain. He also says to transfer some of the post-boil English wort to the kettle to mix with the pre-boil ordinary wort, without specifying how much. He claims that you can get 509 – 542 gallons of beer from it.
Hops: Wágner says Faulkenauer hops are preferred. I found two towns this might be, one in Germany and one in the Czech Republic. Both are fairly close to each other and to Zatec, where Saaz is grown. That doesn't mean the hops were like Saaz, but obviously it's a possibility. The hopping rate is fairly high, 50 lb with a final kettle volume of 726 gallons. Scaled down this is about 6 oz.
Their treatment of the hops is a little odd by modern standards. Wágner says to take about 80 gallons (0.6 gal scaled down) of the first runnings and mix in the hops, which he says will make it cloudy. Then simmer or at least keep hot (it's unclear to me) until the wort turns clear, which he says takes about 1.5 h. Add the rest of the wort, and then insert a “hop rake” to push the hops to the rear of the kettle, where the rake is hooked so the hops are held there during the one-hour boil. The kettle is square or rectangular. For a round kettle he says in a footnote “in such a kettle one must try to separate them from the wort with a sieve, so that they do not get into the coolship with the wort.” So there's some room for choosing how to treat the hops, even if you're trying to follow Wágner's procedure.
For the second-runnings beer, part of the already-boiled English wort is transferred back to the kettle, the same hops are released from behind the rake, and the second runnings are mixed in. This is at least partly to help disperse the high-gravity wort in the hops. This is then brought to a boil. After the first fifteen minutes the hops are again restrained with the hop rake, and the boil continues, for a total of an hour.
Other flavorings: Crushed (chopped?) Italian oranges are added to the English wort for the entire boil. They are called oranges, not orange peel. A footnote says they are optional, but recommended. I'm not sure whether these are bitter or not. I've used sweet orange peel and bitter orange peel with good results each time. (Though I used too much bitter peel in one batch.)
For spices, 22 g ground mace (about 3/4 ounce) and half a crushed nutmeg are added to the srong beer when the yeast is pitched. I worry about sanitation but I've tried it twice anyway and haven't had a problem.
The ordinary beer does not include orange, though it will get some from the English wort, since that is added after the English wort has been boiled. Optionally one can add 7 g (1/4 ounce) mace and 14 g (1/2 ounce) ground coriander, and these are again added when the yeast is pitched.
Scaling down these quantities gives, for the English beer, about 3/4 ounce orange, 1/6 gram mace, and a similarly small amount of nutmeg. A dried nutmeg weighs about 5 – 10 g, so a half of one is about 2.5–5 g, and this scales down to 0.02 – 0.04 g. Really tiny. Wágner says this will give an unmerkliche flavor, which is, too literally, “unnoticeable.” I translated it as “subtle.” It may be this is meant the way we think of spice in Belgian beers, that if you can identify the spices you've added too much.
Following Mosher I suggest using somewhat larger amounts, but still pretty small. This is 1/4 tsp orange peel, 0.13 tsp mace, and 0.07 tsp nutmeg. (Mosher's article says “.7 tsp nutmeg, ground (.3 mL),” The “.7” seems to be a typo, missing a ‘0’.) I think the scaled amount of orange would be okay for orange, but not for dried orange peel. The latter probably gives more flavor for the same weight. I tried using about 2/3 oz bitter peel in one batch, and I would have preferred less. A batch with 1/3 oz bitter peel had obvious orange flavor, but was pleasant.
For the ordinary beer, 7 g mace scales to 0.05 g, and 14 g coriander scales down to 0.1 g. Again following Mosher I'll use somewhat larger amounts: 0.13 tsp mace and 1 tsp coriander.
What was sour? Mosher wrote that the ordinary beer was probably sour because Wágner said to add a handful of malt meal or flour when the yeast is pitched, and malt has lots of lactobacillus on it. However, for both beers Wágner's instructions are: After the wort is cooled to 15°C (59°F) take about a tenth of the wort, mix in the yeast, spices, and a handful of malt flour or meal (Malzmehl), wait for this to ferment actively and then mix it into the rest of the wort. According to Krennmair this pitching procedure, with the exception of the malt flour addition, is known from other sources.
So both beers might have been sour. I think it's possible that they weren't, but it's hard to be sure. My main reason is that the conditions were not very suitable for souring beer. First, the amount of malt flour is tiny, I estimate roughly a sixteenth of a teaspoon in a five-gallon batch. Second, the wort is quite cool when the malt flour is added, 59°F. Third, the beer was pretty highly hopped. The small potential amount of bacteria, lowish temperature, and anti-bacterial action of hops would all make for slow souring, at most. Also, I would think that if sourness were important, Wágner would say something about how long this takes to develop, but there is no mention of sourness at all. By contrast, he does mention this for Berliner Weisse and Gose. He also discusses how long Broyhan will keep before turning sour. For Englisch-Köstritzer he only discusses how long the beer keeps, which he says should be at least six months for the English beer. Still, it isn't 100% clear that they weren't sour.
The beers were barrel-aged. This may be minor. Beer was often distributed in barrels back then. Some were lined with pitch, to prevent wood flavor, and I suspect to reduce leakage. Wágner discusses the use of barrels for these beers in some detail. The English beer was expected to last at least six months in the barrel. For this, he says it should not be lined with pitch, but cleaned or scalded with boiling water and crushed juniper berries. Krennmair wrote that juniper berries remove the wood flavor. I would think they can't just cancel and leave nothing, so it seems possible that it had oak and juniper berry flavors, though neither was likely to be strong. Still, by using juniper berries they were apparently trying to avoid wood flavor, and apparently they were not trying to introduce juniper flavor.
For the ordinary beer, by contrast, Wágner says the barrels should be freshly pitched, but adds that if you don't like pitch flavor you can scald them with boiling water and crushed juniper berries. It's possible that he meant use boiling water and juniper berries on the freshly pitched barrels, but I doubt it. In any case it's clear that some versions of this beer had pitch flavor. To my surprise, food-grade pitch can be purchased today, and in fact it's referred to as brewer's pitch.
Why Englisch? I find this puzzling. The fact that these are ales may contribute to the one being labeled English, but Germany always had ales, so I suspect this is at most part of the reason. It also wouldn't explain why the weaker beer, also an ale, is called ordinary instead of English. It could be that exported English beer tended to be strong ales, perhaps flavored, and so the resemblence to this Köstritz beer would be closer.
Germany had unified shortly before this book, and there were attempts in the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries (I'm not sure) to replace foreign words with German equivalents. I wonder if Englisch as a beer descriptor disappeared for that reason. But that would have nothing to do with how the term first came into use.
I once wondered whether other organisms like Brett might have grown in the barrel. That would fit with Wágner's statement that the barrels for the English beer should only be used for this purpose, and I have the impression that exported English beer was known for this. If so, maybe then there was also bacteria, and the beers really were somewhat sour. Maybe. This still conflicts with Wágner completely ignoring any development of this kind of flavor.
Other sources? Given all the uncertainties, it's worth noting that Wágner says that he is following Muntz. Unfortunately there's no bibliography, so he could have been more helpful than simply referring to “Muntz.” The reference might be somewhere in the preceding 923 pages, but I only searched a few tens of pages. I did find a brewing book by a Muntz online, and this has a first chapter titled “Introduction, with example of the system of the Köstritzer brewery and the causes of defective beers.” That might give one pause, but still it's clear that the book has some information about brewing in Köstritz in the early 19th century.
References
Krennmair, Andreas, Historic German and Austrian Beers for the Homebrewer, 2018, Andreas Krennmair (publisher).
Muntz, Johann Philipp Christian, Das Bierbrauen in allen seinen Zweigen, als Malzen, Gähren, Schroten, Hopfen, 1840, Schröter. Available online.
Noonan, Gregory J., New brewing lager beer: the most comprehensive book for home and microbrewers, 2003, Brewers Publications.
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