Why was it illegal to brew in the summer in Germany?

Since this is early spring and I guess around the time when Oktoberfest beers were made it got me wondering - does anyone know why it was illegal in Germany in the "olden days" to brew in the summer? I could guess it was a way to fight the increased possiblity of infections due to the warmer weather but that is - like I said - only a guess. I'm sure I could somehow research this question but I thought maybe someone out there knew the answer.

Any German brewing historians out there? Bitte?

Ich hat keine ahnung es war verboten! Never heard of that before...

Marzen is a lager. After it was brewed it used to age in caves or in a "keller" (our word for "cellar").

Weizens are ales. Surely, they depend on a warmer place/season to ferment?

Anyone? Anyone? Beuller? Beuller? Beuller?

Boy HB99 if you don't know it, then nobody in here does. You are our resident Germany expert.

homebrewer_99 said:

Anyone? Anyone? Beuller? Beuller? Beuller?

Click to expand...

voodoo economics?

Thanks you for your vote of confidence, but that one stumped me. I was certain all the breweries brewed year round (except lagers, maybe) until I read that.

One of the brewers I met even gave me a kilo of Hallertau hops for some Weizen and asked me to bring him some HB to share with him. The only problem was I did not brew when I was there. (DOH!!! MY BAD!!! I STILL KICK MYSELF FOR THAT ONE!!! This is possibly one of my biggest regrets in life...) It was too easy to get it down the street. We had 2 breweries less than 1 mile away. And who was I to compete with the experts? I still talked with brewers and such, but I never had the time to brew as I was either deployed or always on the run supporting our soldiers and weapon systems...or on (a much needed) vacation.

I actually looked into 2 brewing schools while there. I had the $$$ and the desire, I just didn't (or thought I didn't) have the time...maybe after I retire my wife will let me go to brewing school in Germany. Maybe I'll ask for it for my birthday...unfortunately, I'll be getting ready to go on another business trip! ARRGHHH!

Please ,God. Let me come back in my next life as Homebrew Bill !:rockin:

You don't want that....

Alembic said:

Since this is early spring and I guess around the time when Oktoberfest beers were made it got me wondering - does anyone know why it was illegal in Germany in the "olden days" to brew in the summer? I could guess it was a way to fight the increased possiblity of infections due to the warmer weather but that is - like I said - only a guess. I'm sure I could somehow research this question but I thought maybe someone out there knew the answer.

Any German brewing historians out there? Bitte?

Click to expand...

I don't think it was verboten. Before refrigeration, it was simply not practical to brew lagers during the summer. Thus lagers were referred to as winter beer and ales were summer beer. Traditionally Maerzens were brewed at the end of the winter where there was still enough snow and ice to cool the fermentation process. The beer was then lagered in caves that were packed with ice harvested from lakes.

Refrigeration changed this. But since there is a taste benefit to beer that is lagered a very long time, it is still done. But I wonder if all of the Oktoberfest beer in Germany is actually brewed in March. It just doesn't seem economical for a brewery to tie up their lagering vessels for 6 months.

I have to ask some German brewers on this as this interests me as well.

Kai

Just so you all don't think I am making this up - I refer to the Northern Brewer catalogue under their kit section for Oktoberfest. It is item #1352. Part of the description reads -

"Typified by breweries such as Paulaner and Spaten in Munich, the world capital of beer, Oktoberfest originates from the time when brewing in the summer was illegal in Germany."

So...... what to you all think?????

There were various restrictions after the passage of the first Purity Laws, but they mainly reflected what could be brewed for that season. Not to forget, laws varied greatly from city to city.

http://www.bayernbrewery.com/brewsletter4-1.htm

In part,

Hefe-Weizenbier, (wheat beer with yeast), is not documented until the year 1573 at one of the royal hofbr�uhauses run by the Manhart family in Munich. At those br�uhauses, Wheatbeer was only allowed to be brewed at night, while the standard Braunbier was brewed during the day. In the summer only Wheatbeer was allowed to be brewed during the day. On the summer, only Wheatbeer was allowed to be brewed and Braunbier could not be brewed until late fall. The reason for this rule was based on the natures of these two beers. Braunbier was a lager that was cold-fermented at 42 F with bottom-fermenting yeast and at that tome, this process used up most of the cooling capacity of the ice cellar. Weizenbier was a top-fermenting beer that actually needed higher temperatures of about 70-72 F.

Alembic said:

Just so you all don't think I am making this up - I refer to the Northern Brewer catalogue under their kit section for Oktoberfest. It is item #1352. Part of the description reads -

"Typified by breweries such as Paulaner and Spaten in Munich, the world capital of beer, Oktoberfest originates from the time when brewing in the summer was illegal in Germany."

So...... what to you all think?????

Click to expand...

I'd never heard of it before and checked a few books too. I think it's Northern Brewer getting a little 'confused' in it's catalogue. Their 'illegal summer brewing' may have been accidently linked as part of the 'Purity law' - rather than the seasonal idea of German brewing?

I was also told this when I was in Austria but for the life of me I can't remember way it was against the law.

vanman250

I can certainly imagine that laws like this existed. They would have protected the consumer from crappy lager beer that has been brewed at higher temperatures. The protection from crappy beer was also one of the reasons for the original purity law.

Kai

Kaiser said:

I can certainly imagine that laws like this existed. They would have protected the consumer from crappy lager beer that has been brewed at higher temperatures. The protection from crappy beer was also one of the reasons for the original purity law.Kai

Click to expand...

So true.

OK. I have some more info on the subject. It's actually earlier than what David mentioned and no where near what Alembic said (where did you get that info??)

"In 1553, Albrecht V, Duke of Bavaria outlawed summer brewing (the wedding that initiated the Oktoberfest was in 1841, I believe - one year before Pils was invented) altogether. He decreed that brewers were allowed to make beer only between St. Michael's Day (Sep 29) and St. George's Day (Apr 23). Just the slightly sour-tasting, warm-and top-fermented wheat beers were still permitted to be brewed year-round. The summer brewing was rescinded in 1850."

and:

"The original, post Reinheitsgebot, cold-fermented, malted-barley-based, brown lager - which survives to this day as trhe Bavarian Dunkel - represents the first step in the development from haphazard, medieval Bavarian brews toward the lighter-colored, cleaner, crisper beers we know today."

Source: Bavarian Helles - Horst Dornbusch, pp 31-32, Classic Beer Style Series, # 17.

To HB 99,

To answer your question of where I got the info to ask this question I refer you to post #9 of this thread.

Thanks,

The Industrial Revolution started to take their effect on beer at the beginning of the 19th century. Two extremely important inventions revolutionized beer brewing. The first was James Watt's steam engine and the second invention was artificial cooling by Carl von Linde. It had long been known that the making of good beer required certain temperatures. Some of these temperatures occurred naturally only in winter. From the time of von Linde's invention on, brewing was a year round enterprise..

This is all I could find that referring to not brewing in the summer.

vanman250

Alembic said:

To HB 99, To answer your question of where I got the info to ask this question I refer you to post #9 of this thread. Thanks,

Click to expand...

Hmmmm? That's OK, Bro! I must have been corn-fused!

Plus, what Vanman said...

HB 99,

No problem at all. When I read the NB description I thought I had to pose the question on the forum because as you all pointed out, it seems unlikely that it would have been actually illegal to brew beer Germany.

cheers!

Wow, talk about regurgitating an old thread! I thought this was such common knowledge I can't believe it is even being discussed.

The law being referred to in this thread is a Bavarian law from 1553 (more than 300 years prior to German unification). The famous Bavarian 1516 Rheinheitsgebot (purity law) dictated the short list of ingredients that would be allowed in any/all Bavarian beer. However summer beers tended to continue to be of poor quality - due to the ignorance of microbiology and unsanitary brewing conditions during warm weather. Therefore in 1553 the Bavarian Duke Albrecht V simply outlawed all beer brewing during the summer; if they didn't know WHY summer beer was bad, they could at least stop making it. The unintended consequences of this law were two-fold; first, overnight all Bavarian beer became lagers - because only cold temperature lager-making yeasts remain active during the winter months. Second, the last beers brewed in the spring were brewed strong with a higher ABV in order that they had a longer shelf life. These beers, made with cold hardy yeasts, were "lagered" or stored, in cool caves and cellars so that they stayed fresh throughout the summer months. They were called Märzen beers after März - which is the German name for "March". It remained illegal to brew beer during the summer in Bavaria until 1850.

So does the name "lager" come from the cold storage? Or from the cold-hardy yeasts that made winter brew that had to last six months? It is a chicken and egg question

Also note - as people pointed out above, wheat beers were an exception - not only to the brewing law, but to the rheinheitsgebot. Wheat beer brewing was limited to just one royal house, though the rights bounced around a bit.

https://beerandbrewing.com/dictionary/JE21QkzMmR/

In German, lager also means storage, as in storing in a warehouse. Many breweries still store beer underground in cellars and/or caves in the sides of hills.

Erlangen has a beer festival on a hill that has a single road snaking all over it. They serve beer from "beer caves" as well as the restaurants along the way. There is one place I really enjoyed. It was higher up the hill with a terraced biergarten overlooking the band stand on the other side of the road. Nice set up.

A lot of people are under the misconception that Märzen beer was brewed specifically for Oktoberfest, when in fact, it was drunk at Oktoberfest because that is the only beer they had available

(Oktoberfest, as a festival, only existing from 1810)

Another little known fact... Oktoberfest in Bavaria starts in mid-September and runs through the first Sunday in October. It probably should be named "Septemberfest"

That's probably why its name is not Oktoberfest at all but "die Wies'n". Oktoberfest only exists for American tourists...

Vale71 said:

That's probably why its name is not Oktoberfest at all but "die Wies'n". Oktoberfest only exists for American tourists...

Click to expand...

I used to live in Germany. Trust me, it's Oktoberfest. Die Wiesen refers to the fest grounds in Munich, or more generally to various festivals in the area, all of which use the term "die Wiesen" if you are local. Yes, in Munich it can colloquially be used to refer to Oktoberfest, in the same way we would say "the Fest" if we lived in Milwaukee during Summerfest. But it is not an official name, nor is it "only for tourists"