Stroh's Bock Beer Recipe

[BrewGuy44]

Does anybody have a real good recipe for Stroh's Bock Beer? I've been looking and can't find a good one. I live in Michigan and I Love that beer ever since I was 18 back in 1978 before they put the age back up to 21. Let me know, I really want to make this beer.

 

[BigEd]

Most of the regional and mega brewers who used to offer a bock years ago often just added some coloring to a slightly stronger version of their regular lager.

 

[beergolf]

Most of the regional and mega brewers who used to offer a bock years ago often just added some coloring to a slightly stronger version of their regular lager.

I remember Stroh's Bock from many years ago when I lived near Detroit, and it was definitely much different than their regular brew. If I remeber correcly it was a lot maltier and a little sweeter, with a slight roasty flavor.

Have no Idea of the recipe.

 

[BigEd]

I remember Stroh's Bock from many years ago when I lived near Detroit, and it was definitely much different than their regular brew. If I remeber correcly it was a lot maltier and a little sweeter, with a slight roasty flavor.

Have no Idea of the recipe.

The use of Porterine was popular to create darker beers with an American lager base. I don't know for certain if this is what Stroh's did but it's likely. Some breweries may still have been making all malt versions into the 1950s and '60s although most versions of that type probably disappeared once Prohibition started. Compared to the base beer it would have had more of the flavors you've described although compared to a modern craft brewed version or something authentic from Germany not so much.

 

[misflt]

Old thread, I know, but.... Since I worked at Stroh's on the Keg Line and in packaging on a filler, and in brewing I thought I would chime in and help out with your questions. We did indeed use Porterine. It is just a dark carmel coloring and from what I was told, it was specially made for the proteins to mingle nicely with our regular Stroh's. This I learned in my short stint in brewing. I was summer help, a college program, so, I wasn't privy to their serious secrets, but since I was charged with weighing up ingredients I learned about Porterine.

I worked in packaging and got to know the Q&A guys, they would stop by each line, we had 8 lines in the Winston Salem Stroh's Brewery, they would gather samples just about hourly for testing. This is where I heard about Porterine's special properties pertaining to proteins. I was interested in possibly starting my own Brewery one day, So, I tried to soak up as much info as possible.

I worked on the keg line the final year I worked for Stroh's. We only ran the Keg line on thursday nights. Kegged Stroh Products weren't that popular in the Southeast which is what we really produced our beer for. The local markets of TN, NC, VA, MD, D.C., SC, GA and AL. So, we ran one night, typically 8 hours a week would take care of our Keg needs. Small run time wasn't it?? While on the Keg Line, we did run Bock and Stroh Dark. I was tasked with measuring out the Porterine to add to each keg in the run. Usually no more than 10-15 kegs.

So, there you have it.

 

[JKaranka]

Cool. So I'd assume is the same as the pale lager but with more malt to the adjuncts, similar hopping and brewers caramel for colour? I'll read about porterine. Do you know the srm it had?

 

[JKaranka]

Wow, Porterine was only 940L and based on corn so it must have had a definite flavour contribution.

 

[misflt]

Hey JKar. Upon seeing your post I looked around on the net for porterine and saw a few mentions. I can say this, the 55 gallon drum I pumped it out of didn't say it was porterine, it said Food Grade Corn/Malt Syrup Colorant. The old guys said it was called Porterine. From what I am reading, it is probably the same stuff, just that Porterine is the old brand name from eons ago.

It had a distinct flavor, I tried some once. It wasn't as strong as molasses, but it wasn't as neutral as a dark karo syrup. It was black, real black. We added about 4 cups to a 15 gallon keg, so, that would be about 32oz's. A lil over 2oz's to the gallon.

We used Goldings/Fuggle hops and Cascade/Centennial in our brews almost exclusively. We had a few other more "exotic" hops (Exotic meaning other than our basic varieties) in the cooler, but they were for our Contract beers like Sam Adams and other smaller craft brew's that were just getting popular around the early mid 90's.