If there’s a drink that’s almost as old as civilisation itself, it’s beer. Even today, it far outstrips any other alcoholic drink in sheer volume consumed each year.
Through the millennia (no exaggeration), it has served- and continues to serve- as the mainstay “beverage” in food and beverage. The story of something that’s older than recorded history makes for fascinating reading.
While we enjoy a good history, we find it’s better with a beer in hand. So, inspired by local German beer and restaurant chain Brotzeit launching a new, and much expanded beer menu, we thought we’d share a few snippets about our favourite Teutonic beverages.
#1: Germany has made beer for literal millennia, kinda
Beer is as old as civilisation itself, but in the old days, what might be considered “beer” would be utterly unrecognisable to us today. In Germany, early tribes brewed ales even around 800 B.C.
Archaeologists have unearthed burial mounds in Bavaria which contained not just human remains, but also crocks of beer. These earthen jars still contained traces of bread—the raw material for beer production in those times. History is silent on whether the archaeologists tasted any of the ancient beer.
It’s not clear when actual grain became used in the making of beer, but by Roman times, the Latin conquerors would describe the early ales as “barley wines”. They would also describe it as unspeakably awful, having been flavoured with such appetising ingredients as oak bark, aspen leaves, or the contents of an ox’s gall bladder.
We told you that those beers would be utterly unrecognisable.
#2: Hops actually made beer good, who knew
Things improved by the Dark Ages, and beer would be flavoured with “gruit”, an old German word for for “wild herbs”. The ingredients are disturbingly similar to a gin- yarrow, bog myrtle, juniper, or whatever they could find, really. Naturally, this made the flavour of the beer dependent on what you could pluck from your backyard.
However, by the 800s, the hop had emerged. However, the shift from gruit to the newly discovered ingredient took perhaps 300 years (we guess). Naturally, everyone has their own favourite variety of hop, and in Germany, these are the “noble”varieties- Hallertau, Tettnang, Spalt, and Saaz, which tend to be floral and gentle.
Of course, tradition doesn’t stop enterprise, and the Schneider Weisse Tap X Nelson Sauvin ($29++ for a 500ml bottle) uses hops from Nelson Bay, New Zealand. Nelson is famous for its white wines- Sauvignon Blancs and Chardonnays. This white wine flavour translates into the hops, and thus, the beer as well.
This Nelson Sauvin has a very fruity nose- green apples, citrus are immediately discernible. There is strong acidity, grass flavours and a mild hoppiness at the end.
Think of it as Sauvignon Blanc and Weissbier’s love child.
#3: Lager is German
Beer can be divided, broadly speaking, into ales and lagers. Ales are top fermenting, while lagers are bottom fermenting. It might seem like some form of pedantry, but it has enormous impact on the production methods of beer.
The two styles use different strains of yeast for fermentation, and the ale yeasts do better in warmer climates, while the lager yeasts do better in cold climates. Ales tend to be deeper, richer and more powerful, while lagers are crisp and clean-tasting.
It might surprise you to learn that lagers were created in Bavaria in the nineteenth century, after the discovery of the New World. The term lager is actually German in origin, from the term lagern or “to store”. The Bavarians experimented with the newly discovered Saccharomyces Pastorianus yeast, which could tolerate storage in the frigid Bavarian Alps. The beers would be left to mature in icy caves and cellars during the summer months, which clarified and mellowed the beer, and gave it a surfeit of bubbles.
If that sounds suspiciously like a glass of golden German beer, then you’re quite on the mark.
Bavaria has hard water, full of minerals which will emphasise the bitterness of hops. The lighter Bavarian beers, therefore, do not use a heavy hop loading, and emphasise the flavours of barley malt.
We saw this in the Wieninger PD 1813 Naturtrüb Zwickl ($9++ for 0.3l). An organic, unfiltered beer made near the German-Austrian border, it is an elegant, easy drinking beer. Dry, light, with flavours of grassy herbs, lemon rind, we think it provides a good example of a lager, though we’d prefer a more complex, nuanced, flavour.
If you’re spoiling for another light beer, the Löwenbräu Original Lager ($10 for 0.3l) is also available on tap at Brotzeit. We have fond memories of it from our time in Munich, but truth be told, we haven’t tasted this lager in Singapore, so we’ll withhold judgement.
#4: It does matter if its black or white, at least a little
In Bavaria, the most common beer styles include the blonde Helles, which we already talked about, and the dark Dunkel.
The difference? It’s more nurture than nature. All beer barley has to be malted- which means encouraging it to germinate- sprout- and convert its starches into sugar, then stopping it from actually growing into a plant by exposing it to hot air from a kiln. How much the barley is roasted will determine whether it becomes Helles or Dunkel; the latter is exposed to much more heat, and for longer.
However, neither Helles nor Dunkel will be particularly pregnant with dark, roasted flavours. Why? It is a question of the brewers’ preferences. Even the darkest German beers will not have the inky darkness of a stout.
The Weininger Dunkles Lager Naturtrüb ($9++ for 0.3l) ($9++ for 0.3l), was much more to our liking than its blonde cousin. It is a full of darker, caramel notes that make it sweet and malty, but still light and elegant. The beer was dry hopped, giving it an abundance of floral and herbal notes, and lending a pleasant soft bitterness to the end.
#5: Wheat beer has much to do with politics
We’ve talked about hops, yeast and water, so talking about grain seems to be appropriate. Barley remains the most popular grain, but we find ourselves more taken with beer made from wheat.
Traditionally, barley would be made into beer, and wheat into bread. Thanks to grain shortages in the middle ages, this view was shared by both brewers and many governments, including that of Bavaria. This culminated in the enactment of the Reinheitsgebot, a law that was in effect from 1516 up to 1987! The law dictated that only barley, hops, and water could be used to make beer. All breweries making wheat beer were thus shuttered, save one run by the Degenberg family.
The Degenbergs were powerful, influential, and had a right to brew wheat-beer, granted by the Dukes of Bavaria themselves. Thus, for the sake of political expediency, the Degenbergs alone were allowed to continue, but not unmolested. Naturally, this still caused a lot of bad blood between the ducal family and their vassals. Fortunately for the dukes, the last of the Degenberg family, Baron Hans Sigmund, died heirless in 1602, so the right to brew wheat beer reverted to ducal authority.
Suddenly, now that they had the monopoly, the dukes decided that wheat beer wasn’t so bad after all. Duke Maximilian I, built a new wheat beer brewery in Munich beside the lager brewery built by his father. We have actually visited this site ourselves, not least because the famous Munich Hofbräuhaus, now stands upon it.
Hofbräu still sells wheat beer today. In fact, the beer is available at Brotzeit in the form of the Hofbräu München Münchner Weisse ($10 for 0.3l). It’s a scrumptious beer, thick and sweet, with grain, honey and lemon forming the dominant flavours. We absolutely recommend trying it.
#6: Weissbier has risen, fallen, and risen again
The ducal monopoly on wheat beer (weissbier, or weizen, in German) continued for nigh on 200 years, where the fortunes waxed at first. The Duke decreed that every taphouse and inn needed to serve the frothy, hazy weissbier along with their brown lager, or lose their alcohol licenses.
This, of course, fattened the ducal pockets, but the good times were not to last.
In the 1800s, interest in wheat beer waned, while people were mad for brown lagers and the newfangled pilsners. Things were so dire that by 1812, there were only two full-time weizenbier breweries left.
However, salvation was to be found in the form a brewer named Georg Schneider. In 1855, he acquired a brewery in Munich, and in 1872, managed to end the (now royal) monopoly on weissbier. The brewery he set up continued to make the wheat beer through the centuries. Those were lean centuries, however, and wheat beer has only recently experienced a rebirth thanks to renewed interest. For most of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, it was not even a blip on the radar.
Schneider still makes their weizen today, and we suppose two centuries of experience has honed their expertise to a razor-sharp edge. The Schneider Weisse Tap 7- Meine Original ($12.50 for 0.3l) is a deep amber nectar with powerful notes of flowers, cloves, lemons, banana, hazelnuts and stone fruit. It’s got a thick, heavy mouthfeel, but manages to stay fizzy and refreshing. This is quite possibly the pinnacle of the style.
#7: Frozen beer is not bad beer, not always
From Weissbier, we go back to ales. Bock is a style of brown ale that originated in Einbeck, Saxony, but today is most closely linked with Munich. Bocks are malty, rich and have minimal hops added, making them both mellow and quite sweet. This is particularly so for the most extreme of the bocks, the eisbock.
The story of eisbock is apocryphal, but legend recounts that it was discovered by accident around 1890. The story goes that an apprentice at a brewery, in a fit of forgetfulness, neglected to store casks of fermented bock in the cellar. Instead, it was left in the yard, exposed to the elements.
It being Germany, that particular night turned out to be freezing in the literal sense, and both casks and contents were lumps of ice in the morning. The barrels were ruined, to say nothing of the beer. All that was left were splinters, ice, and little pockets of brownish liquid. Of course, there was nothing to do but to drink the brown residue.
Well, it turns out that the residue was pretty delicious! As eiswein is to wine, eisbock is to beer. The removal of water concentrated the remaining flavours and alcohol level. The Schneider Weisse Aventinus Eisbock ($18++ per bottle) is a powerful brew of dark malty, dark cherries, chocolate, stewed apricots, figs and plums. An excellent dessert beer that goes surprisingly well with chocolate cake.
#8: Not all German beers are mellow
You would be forgiven for not having heard of Bamberg, but it is to Germany as Islay is to Scotland. The rauchbiers that come out of the city are distinct in much the same way- they are smoky. Germany is not gifted with an abundance of peat bogs, so the smoky flavour comes from burning beechwood logs to dry the barley during malting.
Suffice to say, if you like peated whisky, it is quite likely that you will like rauchbier. If you’re just dabbling, you can try the Schlenkerla Helles Rauchbier ($14++ per bottle). As one should expect, it is almost like a literal inferno in the bottle, with an intense smoky flavour. However, digging deeper has its rewards, yielding some sweet orange peel and stone fruit flavours.
#9: Germany’s history manifests in its beers
A cursory glance at the history of Germany, would remind you that the country is a relatively recent construct. For most of its history, Germany was a patchwork of feuding fiefdoms, archbishoprics and principalities. While this often meant spilling blood, it also manifested in spilling a different sort of liquid: beer. This rivalry continues to this day, and you might not be surprised to hear that ordering “beer” in one city means something entirely different in another.
Case in point: order a beer in Düsseldorf and you get a glass of altbier. Do the same thing in Cologne, and you will get kölsch. Try ordering altbier in Cologne, and you will be showed unceremoniously out the door. The same applies if you order kölsch in Düsseldorf. We’re only half kidding.
The difference between the two beers is also stark. While altbier is amber-coloured, bitter, and caramel-flavoured, kölsches is pale gold, light, floral and full of green fruits. Which you choose is up to you, but we wouldn’t tell the other guys about what you’re drinking.
The beers we discussed in our post are available at Brotzeit. For more information, you can check out their website here.
