The Extinct Beer Projekt

Since we began at Doemens last week, our classes have included daily lectures on traditional German beer styles. As I mentioned in a previous post, München and Bavaria are home to many of the most famous beer styles of Germany, including helles, dunkel, festbier, and Bavarian wheat beers, and Dr. Sacher, the lead brewing scientist at Doemens, covers all aspects of the character and production of these styles. Representative samples accompany the lectures, of course. Though German brewers tend to stick with a handful of tried-and-true homegrown styles, there is a huge amount of beer diversity in Germany, both historically and today.

What is more, German beer--much more so than English, Belgian, or American—is incredibly regional in nature. There northern and southern versions of every style: Northern German beers tend to be slightly darker and hoppier versions of Southern styles, so a pils from the south might taste like a northern helles. But even beyond such rudimentary geographic divides, there are numerous, distinctive styles that are associated with a particular city. Most beer geeks are well versed in some of these city-style associations: Dusseldorf is home to alt (a hoppy, brown ale), Köln to Kölsch—a light ale with notes of sulphur and fruit, and Bamberg to rauchbier—literally, beer that has a portion of malt smoked over beechwood and tastes of Canadian bacon.

In our most recent styles lecture, however, Sacher delved far into the depths of local beer styles and shared his knowledge of extinct and little-known beer types that I had never heard of. My interest in them has been piqued to say the least, and while I don’t expect there will ever be a substantial market in some of the styles for a commercial craft brewery, I do want do more research, trace their history, learn the way that they were produced, and try to imitate some of them as homebrews once I’m back in the Northwest.

What are some of the styles?

Grätzer is an all-wheat, lower alcohol beer from eastern Germany. It was bright gold and used malt smoked over oak, so it had a flavour that was a mix of smoke and vanilla. Interestingly, it was also highly carbonated and hopped to about 40 IBUs, so in addition to its smoky and aromatic notes, it also had a very crisp bitterness.

Berliner Weisse Bock is a stronger version of the classic sour beer of Berlin. A regular Berliner weisse, which is still brewed today, take a relatively mild wheat beer and sours it by adding lactic acid bacteria. Napoleon was such a fan of Berliner weisse that he named it ‘champagne of the North,’ and it is a very refreshing beer with a sharp acidity and tartness added from the bacterial ‘spoiling.’ Berliner Weisse Bock takes the same idea but runs lactic acid bacteria onto a much stronger base beer; I imagine that this leads to an even sharper tartness (the additional sugars in a bock wort make great food for bacteria) mixed with the sweet malt and bready flavours of a classic bock. In the US, strong sour ales are gaining hold with breweries like Cascade and Russian River producing some really innovative examples, but no one has attempted anything like a sour bock as far as I’m aware.

Speltbier is a ‘wheat beer’ made from spelt, which, as opposed to traditional wheat, comes across as a little harsher and bitter in the palate. A speltbier fermented with a traditional weizen yeast would take the traditional banana and clove flavours of Bavarian wheat beers and cross them with a slightly more complex base grain flavour. Deschutes Pub in Portland actually made a spelt bier in this style last year, and it came out with some great bubblegum flavours and a really unique mouthfeel.

Göse, a specialtz from Leipzig, is not totally extinct, though it is extremely rare. A wheat beer brewed with salt and coriander and allowed to sour a little so that it is refreshing as a summer seasonal.

The even more mysterious styles of brozhan, Hamburger bier, and Bremer weisse only are mentioned in our notes as having existed at one point, so it will require far more research before I can even speculate as to what they taste like or how to brew them. I imagine, excitedly, that I may discover even more historical styles in the process.