Lost Breweries of Egerland

Along the north western edges of modern day Czechia lie the Ore Mountains, known in Czech as Krušné hory, and in German as Erzgebirge. The mountains themselves straddle the border between Czechia and Germany, and as the name makes patently obvious mining was for centuries the primary industry.  It is actually from the town of Jáchymov that we get the word "dollar" as a name for many currencies, though obviously from it's German name Joachimsthal - the silver that was mined here was minted into the standard coin for trade throughout Europe, the Joachimsthaler, which was shortened to just "taler", and eventually became "dollar". For centuries the mountains and their hinterland to the east formed a region known as Egerland, known in Czech as Chebsko.

As early as the 11th century, German speakers were invited to Bohemia to work the mines that generated some of the most industrialised areas of the Austro-Hungarian empire, with glass works, lace making, and textiles also prevalent. Where you have industry you have workers in need of a pint, and so you have breweries to meet that need. All of which brings me to the year 1913, when one "F. Zodel", the business manager of the Eger Chamber of Commerce wrote an article for Der Böhmische Bierbrauer, giving an update on the state of brewing the Eger region. Eger is today called Cheb, and lies almost as far west as you can go in modern Czechia.

In the article, Mr (I assume) Zodel lists the brewing totals for the extant breweries in the region for the 1911/1912 season, though the German word is "kampagne", which sounds so much more workmanlike. The list consists of 37 breweries, all of whom produced over 10,000 hectolitres/8400 barrels of beer that season:

These 37 breweries produced nearly 1.3 million hectolitres/1.1 barrels. Being something of a nerd, I know, shocking, right? I decided to plot the towns these breweries were in, yay for Google Maps!

As you can see, a decent sized local brewery could be found throughout the Ore Mountains in 1913. The red pins are towns where the brewery had closed down the year before the season being reported upon, and the eagle eyed amongst you will probably spot the couple of green pins, those are breweries mentioned in the list that are still operating, Žatecký Pivovar, and Pivovar Chodovar. Unfortunately, Zodel's report doesn't list the 53 other breweries in the area that produced an additional 200,000 hectolitres/167,000 barrels, or the 8 breweries with a production of less than 1000 hectolitres/840 barrels. Imagine that map, with nearly 100 breweries on it. 100 breweries in an area of just short of 1000km2/390 square miles, and between them a production total in the 1911/12 season of 1.5 million hectolitres/1.3 million barrels.

While this all sounds impressive, the 1911/1912 season was 2.3% less than the 1910/1911 season, mainly as a result of 6 breweries closing down, caused apparently by a cold and rainy summer and the impacts on the barley harvest, as well as increased prices for hops. Zodel notes that the breweries in his district were sourcing most of their ingredients from the region itself, making it a truly local beer culture.

However, as Zodel looks to the upcoming brewing season, he strikes a downbeat note, claiming that it "is highly probable that a further significant decline in beer production will occur in the current operating season", citing the ongoing war in the Balkans, a shortage of ready cash, and the rising cost of living, claiming that any "restriction in the lifestyle of the working class and the middle class consequently leads first and foremost to a decrease in beer consumption". Sounds all too familiar really.

While his report doesn't give specifics as to what kinds of beer were being produced in Egerland, Zodel does mention that the cost of a hectolitre of "draft beer (schankbier) or the so-called double beer (Doppelbier)" is about 16 Crowns, though he doesn't mention the price of a half litre of such beer in the pubs.

In modern Czechia, the area we are looking at is mostly part of the Karlovy Vary district, which had as of 2024 a population just under 300,000 people, compared to one of 470,000 in 1910 though it peaked in 1930 at over half a million. The area that today has just a handful of breweries, and as I noted earlier it appears only 2 of the companies mentioned by Mr Zodel in 1913 are still extant, once had a large, local, beer culture. 

Yet, today, in many of the towns and villages of modern Chebsko, I am sure you are more likely to find Gambrinus on tap than you are Chodovar, and I find that deeply sad.

Homebrew - Victorian Style

There is something delightfully pompous, perhaps a little insane, about book titles in the Victorian era that always reminds me of the "Connections" TV series presented by James Burke. In episode 2 there is a segment about Victorian weather science in the Highlands, that describes the effect of science on the people of Victorian Britain, in that it:

"made them all lunatic in the same way".

An example of a daft book title is this magnificent tome from 1852...

Can you get much more condescending than the head chef to the Royal Family should advise the working classes on how to cook? Admittedly I bought the book precisely for the title and out of curiosity about what the servants of the upper echelons though regular folks should, could, or even would be willing and able to cook. Francatelli even gives a list of equipment that said "working classes" require for the recipes and techniques in his book, which would cost £6 12s 4d in pre-decimal currency, that's about £700/$930/€800 today, and includes such things as a potato steamer for 2 Shillings, a 2 quart tin saucepan for 1s 6d, and a 12 gallon copper "for washing or brewing" to be had at the princely sum of £1 10s or £160/$213/€185 in today's money.

A 12 gallon copper for brewing you say, don't forget that in 1852 the Imperial gallon had been standardised for nearly 30 years as being 4.6(ish) litres, as opposed to the old gallons being 3.8 litres, and still in use in the USA. A 12 gallon copper would hold 54.5 litres. Also included in the list of essentials is a "mash-tub" for another 10 Shillings (£50/$66/€60) and two "cooling tubs" again for 10 Shillings, though Franctelli does allow the downtrodden masses to use "an old wine or beer cask, cut in halves" as this "would be cheaper, and answer the same purpose". Seemingly used casks were to be had for a mere 6 Shillings (£32/$42/€37).

All of this detail would suggest then that the book has a recipe for brewing your own beer, and thankfully it does not disappoint, as number 130 is handily titled "How to Brew Your Own Beer", though confusingly our chef friend recommends a 30 gallon copper and a we actually have a size for the mash tub, 54 gallons, which is 245.5 litres. The other equipment recommended is:

"another tub of smaller size, called an underback; a bucket or pail, a wooden hand-bowl, a large wooden funnel, a mash-stirrer, four scraped long stoutsticks, a good-sized loose-wrought wicker basket for straining the beer, and another small bowl-shaped wicker basket, called a tapwaist, to fasten inside the mash-tub".

A recipe though, a recipe? I hear you cry as you so dearly want to go and make some Victorian style homebrew. Hold your drays sunshine, first things first, water. In a world without universal in home plumbing, what is a homebrewer to do? Well, apparently not to use spring water for a start as "its hardness...is unfit for brewing", remember that at this time geology was very much in its infancy. Ok then, no spring water. Rain water perhaps? Sure, if it is collected in clean vessels, but Francatelli recommends "water fetched from a brook or river" being "free from all calcareous admixture", basically water lacking in calcium carbonate, because the "consequent softness gives them the greater power to extract all the goodness and strength from the malt and hops". Ok, soft water it is then, though if you are an industrial labourer in the cities of Britain leading the Industrial Revolution, I am not convinced you'd be dipping into the Thames, the Trent, or the Clyde for your brewing water.

Eventually, we do get to a recipe, of sorts.

"In order to ensure having good wholesome beer, it is necessary to calculate your brewing at the rate of two bushels of malt and two pounds of hops to fifty-four gallons of water".

More maths...an Imperial bushel is 36.4 litres, a litre is a kilogram, therefore an Imperial bushel is about 36.4kgs, or 80.2lbs, we need two of those for making 54 Imperial gallons, so 160.4lbs of malt and 2 pounds of hops, whole leaf of course, since T-90 pellets weren't a thing yet. After a lot of head scratching and double checking my work, I think this means we would be looking at a starting gravity of about 1.067, and potentially an ABV of 6.4% - assuming the use of pale malt.

What about the hopping? Well for a start, no named variety is mentioned in the book, and if I understand the process correctly, the Victorian homebrewer would have practiced "first wort hopping" as we call it today, viz:

"put your hops into the underback tub, and let the wort run out upon them".

The first mash lasted three hours, and while the runnings were in the underback with the hops, a second mash of 2 hours took place. Eventually giving the brewer sufficient wort to require 2 boils, with the hops split between them. The boil lasts for 90 minutes, and again assuming my numbers are correct we would end up with about 35 IBUs - making the assumption that something like Fuggles were used at about 4% alpha acids.

According to Francatelli, this will eventually "produce three kilderkins of good beer".

Now, I have yet to try and make a beer based on this text, but I do intend to try at some point, though sourcing period appropriate ingredients may be a stumbling block, especially as Francatelli doesn't say what kind of malt his working class readers should use - my hunch is that given diastatic brown malt was still a thing, it might have been that given that Francatelli doesn't mention starting gravities or alcohol content at all, but elsewhere is focused on price of ingredients, and brown malt was cheaper than pale from a monetary stand point.

If I ever figure this out, it would be fun to try and create a recipe and maybe brew it with one of my local breweries...all that is for another day though.

Singing The Pub's Praises

I never imagined that I would stumble across a song whilst digging through the online version of Der Böhmische Bierbrauer, but low and behold that's exactly what I found.

I was just searching for any information in the journal about pubs and drinking establisments as opposed to the beer brewing industry, so my search term was "kneipe". Weirdly, one of my core memories of learning German as a kid is being 13 years old and asking the teacher what the German for "pub" was, and nearly 37 years later it is stuck in my brain.

The song though is called "Lob der Kneipe", or "Praise of the Pub" and should be sung to the tune of "Das war der Zwerg Perkeö ..." or "Ich weiss nicht, was soll es bedeuten." I think the tune is the same regardless of the name, at least to my ears, and so here is an example...

Ah but the lyrics, the lyrics...

And here they are in English...

The pub is my life,
The pub is my downfall;
Can there be anything more beautiful
In this valley of misery?
Yes, I live in the pub
As a human being and as a student,
And I strive for the pub
Until my blessed end.

When the beer foams in the glasses
Brown and light,
How divine it dreams are.
Time passes so quickly!
You drink and slurp and drink
One glass after another empty,
You wave happily to the bartender
Over and over again.

And songs ring out happily,
Full of youthful joy,
The soul wants to struggle
From the oppressed breast.
Clouds of smoke drift
Through the sacred space,
And sparks of speech fly.
For me, only vain foam!

But when the witching hour
starts to strike,
the table closes
for the happiest of feasts.
How wonderful is such a stay
with unadulterated liquid!
It cannot be described
such an excess of happiness.

Let us raise our glasses
therefore full of enthusiasm:
The pub should live.
It keeps us all young!
Booze, that is the real thing.
The element of life,
from the cradle to the grave,
to a blessed end!

Obviously, speaking only for myself here, but what a lovely song...

So...You Want to Be A Brewer?

No...don't worry, this isn't a post about being a homebrewer with vague fantasies of upscaling my 5 gallon batches of beer to something that could become a lifestyle business. Nope, I have, sometimes reluctantly, accepted that I will never own my own brewery, for various reasons. So, I will content myself with the occasional brewing project with professionals - if anyone in Virginia is interested, drop me a line, it's been a while since I had a recipe on tap somewhere.

However, there were 66 intrepid souls in 1906 setting out on their education to become brewers through the "Ersten öffentlich Braufachschule in Prag", or "First Public Brewing School of Prague". The earliest reference to the school in Der Böhmische Bierbrauer dates from 1893 and locates the school, according to this advert, at "Wenzelsplatz Nr 54"...

Today that would be known as Václavské náměstí 54, the present day location of a building called Palác Fénix, which was itself built in the late 1920s and thus replaced the buildings in which the brewing school operated. The 1830s building had likewise been built on top of buildings from the 14th century.

By 1906 the school had moved to Mariengasse Nr. 4, or just across the street on what is today Opletalova - ironically on the very street I lived on from 2006 until I left Prague in 2009, and given that the pub I watched Liverpool in for 10 years was on the street opposite Opletalova, I regularly walked past both locations.

It would be in that location then that our 66 friends studied brewing in Prague, and in that school year there were some changes to the curriculum...

It was in 1906 that the school broadened its study program to include lectures in trade law, given by one JUDr. Josef Bohuslav (JUDr is a doctor of both civil and criminal law). As well as studying commercial law, students discovered that their study load had been increased in other subjects - apparently it was felt that not enough time had been allotted to mechanical engineering, and so an hour extra for extra subject had been added.

In the course of the week, our students would study:

• 10 hours of brewing and raw material theory, with František Chodounský (interestingly the guy that claims Pilsner Urquell got their indirect heat kilns from "Brauers Sauer" - I will be digging more into him in the future). 
• 2 hours of administrative theory, again with František Chodounský
• 10 hours of chemistry and lab work, with Dr Heinrich Friedrich
• 4 hours of financial law with a Mr Brokeš
• 4 hours of commercial law with JUDr Bohuslav
• 8 hours of mechanical engineering and steam boiler maintencance with Ing. Josef Pokorný (fun fact, when I taught English in Prague I had a student called Josef Pokorný, he may even have been an engineer)
• 4 hours of exchange law and book-keeping with Dr Haasz

A total of 42 hours a week between the middle of November and the end of June 1907, about seven and a half months, with just shy of half of the hours being the production and fermentation of wort.

The need for mechanical engineering and steam boiler maintenance stirs memories of the first time I attended a brewday at Devils Backbone, when Jason brewed the very first batch of Trukker Ur-Pils, a triple decocted Czech style pilsner that was superb. At one point in the mash, the decoction kettle wasn't heating up as expected, so Jason got under the gantry with a big ass wrench and gave the pipes a smack or several, and hey presto the heating got going again.

Of the 66 students, most came from the lands of the Bohemian crown, but also several from further afield such as Bulgaria, Russia, Poland, Germany, Galicia, and Styria.

I'd be interested to hear how this course of study stacks up with what brewers pursuing professional training here in the US, as well as abroad, had to study in addition to the actual making beer part of brewing.

The Importance of Being Josef?

It was one of those things that you just stumble upon as you are looking something specific. In one of my vaguely regular bimbles around the Austrian National Library's newspaper archive looking for interesting tidbits about brewing and beer in the former Austro-Hungarian empire I decided to do a quick search in Der Böhmische Bierbrauer for Josef Groll...

As you are likely aware, Josef Groll was the first brewmaster at Bürgerliches Brauhaus Pilsen, the brewing company that today is generally known by the brand Pilsner Urquell. It was the beer that he brewed in 1842 that revolutionised the beer world and became the blueprint for countless imitations of varying degrees.

For such an august personality in the history of brewing, I was a little surprised to find just a single mention of him in the official organ of the Bohemian brewing industry between 1891 and 1918, using the search term "Josef Groll". Even allowing for just his surname only 5 results were returned, of which just 2 are definitively about the first brewer of Pilsner beer. While it is true that the archive doesn't have issues from 1874 to 1890, I was still surprised to see so few references to our friend from Vilshofen.

The earliest of this pair of references comes from 1892, in a fairly extensive article marking the 50th anniversary of the founding of the first batch of Pilsner Urquell being brewed. The actual company that would eventually create the largest revolution in brewing was established in 1839. The whole article is interesting as it makes no mention of several pieces of folklore that have become key to the popularly believed mythos of Pilsner Urquell. There is no mention of the citizens of Plzeň smashing up barrels of beer on the town hall steps, the reality was rather less prosaic and more economical...

Until 1839 the private and monastic brewers of Plzeň were making top fermented beers, using "primitive" equipment, but change was in the air in Western Bohemia, which butts up to Bavaria...lager was gaining ground. Not wanting to left behind in the popularity stakes, the leading citizens of Plzeň got together to build a brewery specifically for the brewing of bottom fermented beer, with building beginning in 1840.

At this point, it is worth skipping forward to the reference to Groll from 1897 as it relates directly to the building of the brewery. One of the things central to the mythos of Pilsner Urquell is that it was the "original" golden lager (I use inverted commas there because unless modern Vienna lager is significantly paler than in 1841, and that modern Pilsner Urquell is the same colour as in 1842, then the colour difference is not that drastic). To achieve a paler beer than had previously been seen in Plzeň, English style malting technology was installed. English malting methods were at least known in Germany in 1785 and may have been making in-roads into Bavarian brewing around the same time as Groll came to Bohemia. Andreas over at Daft Ejit has written more extensively about this.

While the use of English malting technology was essential to the creation of Pilsner Urquell, the second reference to Josef Groll in Der Böhmische Bierbrauer would suggest that they were not the first Bohemian brewery to adopt this method of malting barley. If I understand the text above correctly, Pilsner Urquell purchased their malting equipment, which we know to have used the English air drying method, from a brewery called Sauer in Haida, modern day Nový Bor. That claim by itself begs the question, what was being brewed by Sauer in Nový Bor? So far my further research hasn't brought any interesting nuggets to light about that, but I will keep on going. In relation to Josef Groll himself though, the text there basically says that he was "completely at the mercy of the kiln that had been installed", which points to the reality of those times that the reputation of a brewery was heavily reliant on the quality of the malt, which they malted themselves rather than sourcing from the multi-national maltsters supplying everyone these days.

Coming back to the article celebrating the 50th anniversary of Pilsner Urquell, the first brewday on October 5th 1842 produced approximately 36 hectolitres of beer, that's 30 US beer barrels for reference, which was presented to the world on St Martin's Day, November 11th, just 37 days apart. In the rest of the 1842-43 brewing season Groll produced 3,657 hectolitres/3116 barrels, and by the time he left the brewery in 1845, Pilsner Urquell was already brewing 5,510 hectolitres/4695 barrels. By the time the celebratory article was written, Pilsner Urquell was producing 462,540 hectolitres/394,161 barrels per year, under the watchful eye of Josef Binder, the fourth head brewer.

In those 50 years, Pilsner Urquell went from this

to this.

If you look very carefully at the latter picture, you can make out the 50th anniversary gate that is such an iconic landmark at the brewery.

Another fact about the actual beer being produced in Plzeň also caught my eye - that there were 2 types of beer being brewed at Pilsner Urquell, the famed 12° lager and an 11° schankbier, which may have at some point become a 10° version that was known within living memory.

The schankbier, the German equivalent of "výčepní", would be sent out to beer halls to be stored for 2 or 3 weeks before being ready to be drunk, while the lagerbier left the brewery ready to be tapped on arrival, and was mainly consumed during the summer months.

Such a lack of reference to Josef Groll in Der Böhmische Bierbrauer, by comparison the search term "Dreher" results in 162 references, "sedlmayer" 13, and "porter" 82, it makes me wonder if we overplay the role of the "founding" brewmaster in the subsequent success of a brewery? 

Even Groll's immediate successor, another Bavarian, Sebastian Baumgärtner, only lasted 5 years, and increased production to 10,865 hectolitres/9111 barrels by the end of his tenure. It was under the leadership of the third Bavarian to be headbrewer, Jacob Blöchl, that the brewery surged to be the powerhouse we understand it to be today. After 29 years production was up to 224,520 hectolitres/188,291 barrels.

All of this makes me wonder if we overstate the importance of Groll, and I keep coming back to the question, what was Sauer brewing up in Nový Bor with the air drying malting technology in use?

Beginnings of Budvar...

Ah...the romance of the "original" Budweiser, yeah, you know, the original that was created 100 years after the previous original Budweiser and some 30 years after the original American Budweiser. If you didn't know already that Budvar are the youngest of the three breweries that bicker over the name "Budweiser" well you do now, so there are no excuses.

Now, while I have been unable to find a date for this rather natty sign I saw in a restaurant in Český Krumlov many years ago, it quite clearly makes the claim that the beer from Bürgerlichen Bräuhaus Budweis is the "Budwesier Urquell" or "Budweiser from the Original Source", in the same vein as Pilsner Urquell. So, the timeline is established, please stop calling Budvar the "original" Budweiser.

This post isn't really about who is the "original", it's about events in the year 1894 - yes you guessed it, I've been reading Der Böhmische Bierbrauer again, specifically the issue from February 1st of that year. In the "Miscellaneous" section of that particular issue there is a report about a meeting that took place on Sunday, 21st January 1894, location undisclosed, to discuss the possibility of building a new brewery in Budweis.

The attendees of the meeting elected one Dr A Zátka, who was a representative in the Bohemian Diet, or "Landtags", to preside over the meeting. Dr Zátka was an advocate for the new brewery, and from the notes in the piece from Der Böhmische Bierbrauer, many of the speakers at the meeting were in favour of creating this new brewery. A phrase though that jumped out at me was that the new brewery was described as being "das böhmische Unternehmen", or "the Bohemian company". From the context both of the text and historically as we know Budvar was founded as an explicitly Czech enterprise, as distinct from the "Deutschböhmen" or German Bohemians, so it was interesting to see it called out in a contemporaneous source.

Seemingly, there was confidence that such an enterprise would thrive, given that beer production had increased in the years prior to the meeting. Our friends at Bürgerlichen Bräuhaus Budweis and other local breweries had brewed an additional 100,000 hectolitres (85k Bbl), with production ramping up a further 100,000 hectolitres. It was boom time for beer in South Bohemia in the 1890s and the founders of Budvar clearly wanted a slice of that pie.

Obviously though, as anyone who has even considered starting a brewery, money would be needed to get started. According to a letter read out at the meeting from an engineer called Mr Jahn (possibly a partner in the brewery machine company Novák & Jahn, a regular advertiser in Der Böhmische Bierbrauer) the initial brewery would have an annual capacity of 30,000 hectolitres (25.5k Bbl) and cost 250,000 Florins. Thankfully for this time period we don't have to wade into the mess of Central European currencies, and based on the money table in the 1905 edition of Baedeker's "Austria-Hungary Handbook for Travelers", we can say that the initial brewery was priced out at about $52,000 at the time, approximately $1.7 million in 2024.

With this proposal in front of them, the attendees of the meeting agreed to "build a Bohemian brewery" with those already subscribed required to pay 1% of their subscription to cover preparatory costs. They also established a provisional committee to over see the work, with Dr Zátka being elected to likewise lead the committee. 

The road to Budvar had taken it's first step...

Rauchbier Revival?

Tis January, so 2 things must be true, I am taking the month off the booze, and I am diving into the Austrian National Library's online newspaper archives looking at the sometimes weird, but often wonderful world of brewing in Central Europe prior to World War 1.

I really don't take a structured approach to my, ahem, "research", usually preferring to just to enter a keyword or phrase, select the publication I want to look at, and start scanning through images. Just a side note, I find these kind of publications so enlightening about the brewing, and broader, world at the time, as opposed to reading technical brewing treatises. In particular I love trade ads in journals like Der Böhmisches Bierbrauer, Gambrinus Brauerei und Hopfen Zeitung, or Saazer Hopfenzeitung und Lokaler Anzeiger as they give you a picture of the ingredients, machinery, and assorted allied products being made and sold in Central Europe.

Anyway, purely on a whim, I decided to see what I would get if I typed "rauch" into the advanced search, pre-filtering to Der Böhmisches Bierbrauer. There were 115 results returned, and so I decided to sort further by searching on "rauchbier" specifically, which gave me this single result from October 26th 1909:

The headline in bold there declares there is a "Re-emergence of "self-malting"", going on, quoting an article from Bamberg in the "Allgemeine Anzeige für Brauer und Mälzer" which, assuming the translation is reasonable accurate goes on to say:

"The depressed situation of the small breweries is now leading them to return to the old arrangement of malting themselves. Over the years, people have gotten used to getting the malt ready from the malt factory. Today's cheap (?) barley price offers the hand for a return to the old system and so the old Bavarian smoked beer will soon appear again. Whether this will prove successful remains to be seen in the future."

If this report is correct, smaller breweries in Bavaria were going back to malting their own grains because the cost of the raw materials was sufficiently low to make this economical again, rather than buying their malt from the likes of Weyermann, whose maltings is massive pile right next to the railway station in Bamberg.

What jumped out most to me though was that the relative low cost of barley could lead to the return of "the old Bavarian smoked beer". This raises the question then, did rauchbier die out in Bavaria in the latter 19th century and only revive when breweries starting taking back the ability to make their own malt, as, for example, Schlenkerla continue to do so to this day?

Another question this raises is, were malting companies such as Weyermann not providing rauchmalz and thus the beer died out? Was there customer demand for rauchbier to the extent that any other malting company at the time was providing rauchmalz?

As ever, more questions than answers at this point, but if we can take this report at face value, it looks possible that rauchbier as we know it today could so easily have gone the way of grodziskie, broyhan, and Braunschweiger mumme, but for the alleged fact that barley was cheap in the years running up to World War 1.

The Simple Life of the Emperor

The year is 1879.

The famous Blackpool Illuminations are turned on for the first time.

John Henry Newman is raised to the position of cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church, having converted from Anglicanism in 1845.

Fulham F.C. is founded.

In Vienna, Emperor Franz Joseph has been on the imperial throne for 31 years, having acceded in 1848, just 18 years old after the abdication of his uncle Ferdinand, and his father Franz Karl's renunciation of the throne.

I don't usually write about the lives of European royalty, but as I was researching something utterly unrelated on the French national newspaper archives website, RetroNews, I bumped into this little snippet.

La Patrie, the newspaper from which the above snippet it taken, was a conservative Bonapartist newspaper that was in print from 1841 to 1937, and on April 28th 1879 they published this brief guide to a day in the life of the Austrian Emperor.

Rising at 5 in the morning every day, starting the day with a cup of coffee and a cigar made with Virginian tobacco, La Patrie describes him as being "the greatest worker in the entire monarchy". Other than his morning coffee and cigar, the only thing we know, from this snippet, about his dining habits is that lunch was "very simple: black bread and Pilsner beer are on the table every day".

In 1870 Pilsner Urquell had become an official supplier to the Viennese Imperial Court, by which time the daily trainload of Pilsner Urquell to Vienna was well established. In 1885 the Emperor himself made the opposite journey to visit the brewery that was shaking up brewing across Europe. He is quoted as having said:

"it is rather odd that no brewery has been able to duplicate the singular and delicious taste of Pilsner beer".

While it has long been known that Pilsner Urquell was a popular brew in Vienna, one thing that caught my eye in the snippet was the idea that the ruler of largest empire in mainland Europe had his lunch table set every day with "black bread" as well as his Pilsner beer. It would be easy to assume that this bread, on which Franz Joseph chewed every day, would be some kind of pumpernickel, and so here I ended up going down the rabbit hole of what "black bread" would mean in an Austrian context.

Translating the French "pain noir" into the German "schwarzbrot" pointed me in the right direction as it would appear "schwarzbrot" is a traditional Austrian bread made primarily from wholegrain rye flour, and with a rye based sourdough starter. Hmmmm...this is starting to sound familiar you know. As I dug further, I came across a type of schwarzbrot called "hausbrot", which according to this post from The Bread She Bakes, is a classic Austrian bread made with mostly rye flour, some wheat or spelt flour, a sourdough starter, yeast, and "Austrian bread spices", a mixture of caraway, fennel, coriander, and anise. Hmmmm...this really is starting to sound very familiar.

One of the things I love about central Europe is the continuity of foods as you go from the Baltic to the Balkans, whether it's the staples of pork, cabbage, and dumplings or a seeded rye bread. There are regional variations of course, and it always makes me chuckle at everybody in the region claiming that their variation is the original.

I really can't think of anything more emblematic of central Europe than the image of the Emperor sitting down each lunchtime to the kind of bread and beer enjoyed by all classes within his empire. According to the piece in La Patrie, this simple life:

"without the slightest ostentation, entirely devoted to the happiness of his people, naturally explains the trust, respect and loyalty which are everywhere and so rightly shown to him."

Whether or not that is true I don't have any clue, but at least he had good taste in beer and bread.

Dortmunder?

I mentioned in my previous post that I had once come across the concept of "Dortmunder malt" at some point in the dim and distant past, but couldn't remember where I saw it. With that particular point of interest once again piqued, I decided to bimble around various online sources and see what I could find out about this elusive type of malt, which if you recall was as pale as Pilsner malt whilst being fully modified in the Bavarian manner, which according to the Illustriertes Brauerei Lexikon by Max Delbrück in 1925 makes it part of the "langmalz" family of malt.

"Langmalz", according to Delbrück, undergoes extensive modification over a  longer period of time on the malting floor. Apparently it is possible for "langmalz" to be "too good" if it becomes overly modified. Such over-modification can apparently causes problems with head retention and the body of the beer, especially in "the production of pale beers". The last sentence of this section also notes that "langmalz" is used in the distillery, though here is means malt where the leaf germ is at least twice the length of the grain and at least 20 days old.

With the horrors there of the dangers of over-modification, best to just under modify and decoct right?

So we have a pretty decent idea of what Dortmunder Malt was, but malt doesn't just magic itself out of thin air, it is of course the product of an industrial process, meaning it needs inputs, in this case barley. As I learnt when I spent time with Murphy & Rude malting for my article in Pellicle, not all barley is suited to the malting process. It would appear that Dortmunder malt had a very specific need when it came to the barley from which it was made.

The description above confirms again the process for making Dortmunder malt, extended low kilning resulting in a pale, fully modified malt, but the barley itself needs to be high quality, low-protein barley of the type you would find in Saxony, Silesia, Bohemia, and Moravia, basically modern Czechia and the appropriate bordering regions in Germany and Poland. Given that in the late 19th century Emanuel Proskowetz was busily improving the Old-Haná barley to give the world the "Proskowetz Haná" strain and from there came Kneifl, Valtice, and Diamant, it is no surprise that the maltsters of Dortmund sourced their grain from the other side of Europe.

Taking such malt, the brewers of Dortmund produced a beer that was "highly fermented, alcohol rich, vinous, delicate", and yet very pale when compared to the strength of the beer. Brewed to 14° Plato, the Dortmunder analysed in Der Böhmische Bierbrauer in 1896 had a colour rating, last column in the table, of 6 while Bohemian pilsners brewed at just under 12° Plato ranged from 5.5 to 6.5.

So, a 14° beer yielded the same colour as a 12°, meaning Dortmunder malt was paler than Pilsner malt, but something else was a play in Dortmund, water chemistry.

In the Bayerisches Brauer-Journal of 1908 it was noted that Dortmunder Bier had a "heartiness, fullness, and mildness" that would be unimaginable but for the high concentration of gypsum in Dortmund's brewing water, making it essentially the polar opposite of the soft water of Plzeň, and the writer even name checks Burton upon Trent in England as having a comparative gypsum concentration to the brewing water. Water that is high in gypsum extracts less colour from the malt than softer waters, while increasing extract yield and increasing the perception of bitterness in the beer. So important to Dortmunder was this water chemistry that the writer confidently declare that any "attempt to brew a Dortmund beer from Dortmund malt with Munich or Plzeň water would fail miserably".

This all makes me wonder if any of the beers produced today that lay claim to the moniker "Dortmunder" would be accepted as such by late 19th century and early 20th century authorities? Is there in production today a "Dortmunder malz" as opposed to the near ubiquitous, in lager, Pilsner malt? Weyermann in Bamberg produce an "Extra Pale Premium Pilsner" malt, is that basically a rebranded Dortmunder style malt? Do any of the "Dortmunders" on the market today use the necessary amount of gypsum in their brewing water to create the very pale beer the city became famous for? Have we confused additional strength for sweetness and darkness that would seem to be out of kilter with the original?

More questions, more archive diving...

The Dortmund Question

My last post was ostensibly about how Bohemian brewers felt about North German breweries co-opting the name "pilsener" to describe their pale lagers. The article from Der Böhmischer Bierbrauer that I reference in the post includes several references to quotes by Professor Wilhelm Windisch, one time chief of the VLB in Berlin, where he praises the qualities of Dortmund beer, whilst musing why German brewers felt it necessary to co-opt a foreign brew.

We all kind of know the general outline of history when it comes to pale lager, Josef Groll creates Pilsner Urquell in 1842, which is just a hair paler than Anton Dreher's Vienna Lager, and thus kicks off a pan-continental craze for pale bottom fermented beers. By the end of the 19th century, the list of "styles" that have come about as a result of Groll's introduction of English malting technology to Central Europe included Helles, Biere d'Alsace, North German Pilsner, Polish Mocne, and of course Dortmunder. All of the styles followed the same basic template, pale malt and the local hops, from Strisselspalt in Alsace, though Hallertau and Tettnang in Germany, up to Poland's Lublin.

In our hop centric minds in the early 21st century, we make the assumption that the main driver of differentiation in all these beers was the presence of local hops, relegating malt to essentially the role of hop delivery system. However the role of malt in the development of beer styles seems to get somewhat overlooked, as if all pale central European beers can be brewed with pilsner malt and whatever hops are appropriate. Historically that seems not to have been the case.

I wish I could remember where I first came across the term "Dortmunder malt" but alas the old grey matter is, well, getting older. However, I did find, not in the newspaper archives of the Austrian National Library I am sure you are relieved to hear, a book called the "Handbuch der Enzymologie, Vol II" on Google Books. On page 1236 of the book there is a fascinating breakdown of the different base malts in use in Germany at the time, I believe the book dates from the 1940s rather than the 1545 Google claims. In this section we get a description of the "dark" Munich malt, the "pale" Bohemian and Dortmunder malts, and the "golden" Vienna malt that is a middle ground between the others.

According to the writer, the fact that Bohemian and Dortmunder malts are pale is the only thing they have in common. He goes on to explain how Pilsner malt is modified "just enough" (major shout here to Andreas Krennmair for helping me with the translation of "Auflösung" meaning "modification" in a malting context) while Dortmunder malt is fully modified just like Bavarian malts. As you probably know, modification with regards to malt refers to:

"the extent to which the endosperm breaks down...releasing nutrients for yeast growth and making the starch available for enzyme degradation during mashing"*

In addition to be more fully modified that Bohemian malt, Dortmunder is also to be treated more gently that Pilsner malt, with the kilning process not reaching temperatures of more than 75°C/167°F. The writer describes the kilning process of Pilsner malt as being "pre-drying at 35-40°, rising to 55° until the water content reaches 8%, then kilning up to 100°", kilning also only takes 3 to 4 hours.

Apparently if you subject Dortmund malt to the same process it would become far too dark. Essentially Dortmunder malt needs to be carefully tended when compared to Pilsner malt so as to stay pale whilst achieving a full modification like Munich malt.

It would appear then that, at least in the 1940s, Dortmunder beer was brewed using specifically Dortmunder malt rather than the modern approach where "Pilsner" malt is the base. However, as early as 1913 Der Böhmische Bierbrauer was referring to "so-called" Dortmunder malt as a "minor type" of base malt, whilst describing it as "lightly kilned". It would seem that it was the use of Dortmunder malt that prevented the style from becoming the dominant German beer.

In an article from 1899 in the brewing journal "Gambrinus Brauerei- und Hopfen- Zeitung", the writer discusses why people were moving away from Dortmunder towards Bohemian beers. The writer confirms again that Dortmunder malt is kilned at low temperatures and thus very pale. He goes on to state that such low kilned malt has an "empty taste", and such a paucity of flavour causes the breweries to stick to brewing a 14° beer, which the writer defines as being "ein alkoholreiches Bier" - an alcohol rich beer - inferring then that Dortmunder was strong because that was it's main redeeming feature. The writer finishes his section on Dortmunder beer by comparing the beer with the Bohemian 10° beers that were "doing so well on the market" by stating they are "good beers, that hold their foam well, and don't taste empty at all".

At the end of the day, the average consumer wanted something that was flavourful, looked good, and wasn't "alkoholreiches", and thus Dortmunder was relegated to an also ran of the pale lager world, with Dortmunder malt eventually dropping out of production altogether it would seem.

* quote from "The Brewer's Handbook" by Ted Goldammer - https://www.beer-brewing.com/beer_brewing/beer_brewing_barley_malts/malt_modification.htm

1895 - The Year of Pilsener?

It was only within about 50 years of its creation in 1842 that pale lagers from Plzeň were under attack in the learned press of the day. We all know the story of how Josef Groll's golden lager swept continental Europe, inspiring imitations in Munich, Dortmund, Strasbourg, Leuven, Glasgow. You name a major brewing city in Europe in and around 1895 and you likely have a pale lager, vaguely in the style of "pilsner", being brewed, though of course there were hold outs like London, Burton, and Dublin.

Recently though in one of my trawls through the newspaper archive of the Austrian National Library, it really is a fascinating resource that I keep coming back to, I learnt that certain beers being brewed in the recently established German Empire were considered better than the Bohemian original, in particular the "pilsener" lagers of northern Germany and the Dortmunder.

According to one Doctor Wilhelm Windisch, writing in "Wochenschrift für Brauerei", Pilsner and Dortmunder are both "light beers" but of "very different types", and Dr Windisch poses the question "which is the nobler of the two"? Windisch then goes on to sing the praises of the Dortmunder, saying (and here I am relying on the veracity of the quotation in Der Böhmisches Bierbrauer in August 1895 above) that Dortmunder is "always clean". The German here is "es stets blank", "blank" can translate into English as "bare", "shiny", or "pure", though a Czech possibility is the word "čistý", which in English can translate as "clean". Given the context of later in the quote about a yeasty flavour, I think Dr Windisch is talking about the classic clean flavour that we associate with lagers in general.

Dr Windisch goes on that Dortmunder has "a better hop taste than the Pilsener" arguing that in pale lagers from Plzeň "the taste of hop oil is sometimes very strong". His final accusation as to the inferiority of Pilsner, from Plzeň, when compared to Dortmunder is that it has "almost without exception...a peculiar yeasty taste" which he then claims "is not fresh, but a peculiarly old one, like the one imparted to beer by dying or dead yeast". From this he would seem to be claiming that in the Bohemian pilsners of the 1890s you could taste the autolysis of the yeast as it dies.

Moving on from comparing Dortmunder and Bohemian Pilsner, Windisch further extols the virtues of the "Pilsener" style being brewed in Northern Germany, noting that they are "light in colour and...they have a more pronounced hop taste". He points out that this additional hop flavour is due to in part to using more hops in the boil and a slightly different hopping schedule in Northern Germany than in Bohemia. Windisch then goes on to drop the mic, by declaring that Northern German:

"so-called "Pilsener" beers are much more similar to Dortmund beer, and we really didn't need to borrow a beer type from abroad, especially since Dortmund beer has long since acquired an excellent reputation"

leaving us with this question:

"as far as wholesomeness and digestibility are concerned, the question still needs to be decided, whether our light, clear, and not excessively hopped so-called "Pilsener" beer or the Dortmund-style beer isn't even "healthier" than the cloudy, yeasty, strongly hopped Pilsner beer"?

Despite this, Windisch notes that the "importation of Pilsener and other Bohemian beers is steadily increasing and has become very important". As a result of this growing competition from the east,  Munich breweries were forced into action, particularly Spaten and their the recently created helles lager that he notes is "similar to Pilsener beer". So conservative though were Munich drinkers that it had been market tested far from the Bavarian heartlands at the Café Ronacher in Hamburg's Savoy Hotel. As a result of the success of the trial, Spaten started full scale production of their pale lager. The coming of pale lager to Munich, whilst seemingly ignored by the Munich beer press, was declared "notable progress" in the popular press, and in the mind of Windisch himself "a beer-political event of the very first order".

Having quoted Dr Windisch at length, the author of this article in Der Böhmisches Bierbrauer gives short shrift and is quite acerbic in his response claim that:

"you have to get used to the fact that "Pilsner" is making more friends in North Germany because of its excellent properties, is spreading as a result of North German breweries borrowing this popular beer type from Bohemia! The fact that the people of Munich are now also brewing a light beer in the "Pilsner" style doesn't come as a surprise either; already in the 16th Century people set a good example there, in that a brewing method that originated in Bohemia - to produce weisses Weizenbier - was made native in Munich, as can be seen from the brewing regulations of 1616."

Boom from the Bohemian, who signs off as "Ein echter Pilsener". He is basically saying, yes Mr Windisch it is no surprise that people are jumping on the "Pilsener" bandwagon because it is popular, and points out that we have seen this in beer history before, when Bavaria copied the Bohemian "bilé pivo" (white beer/weissbier) and made it is own.

What I found particularly interesting about this little article, which feels like an editorial, was not the history as presented by Dr Windisch, though yes that was fascinating, but rather the response of the "echter Pilsener". Rather than engage with the learned professor on the merits of Bohemian brewed pilsners when compared with those of norther Germany, Dortmund, and Munich he choses the route of rather nationalistic bombast. His argument is essentially, "we're popular and that's why people use the name pilsener", a brewer's "yah boo sucks to you" response basically.

Though putting this in context a little, at this point, if I have understand the other German language stuff I have been reading lately, the definition of what constituted a "pilsner" or "pilsener" in the German Empire, as opposed to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, had not been settled. As late as 1909 the "Böhmische Brauhaus" in Berlin was using the term "Pilsator" for their pale Bohemian style lager. What we are seeing here is the beginning of a battle that in some ways rages on to this day, what exactly even is a "pilsner"?

Through a Glass Darkly

According to one Dr Schulze, writing in 1890, "you shouldn't drink beer out of beer glasses". Schulze went on to state that the traditional German bierkrug was far superior as it protects the liquid from the deleterious effects of sunlight. This fact might seem fairly obvious to us here in the first quarter of the 21st century, but in late 19th century central Europe, this was cause for much concern and investigation.

It was in the decades following the creation of Pilsner Urquell, and the subsequent revolution in brewing as from the North Sea to the Black Sea, from the Baltics to the Balkans brewers turned their attention to mimicking Josef Groll's golden lager, that glass became a more common sight on the table of drinking dens across Europe. The industralisation of glassmaking, which resulted in a more affordable vessel, coupled with the sparkling bright transparent nature of the new fangled lagers, made being able to see you beer as you drank all the rage.

However, looks came at a price. If you didn't drink quick enough then the sunlight streaming through your golden pint, then your beer would start to "decompose" and the beer loses its condition "extremely quickly".

Step into the breach then one Wilhelm/Vilem Havlík, master brewer at the Kročehlav brewery near Kladno, about 19 miles/30km from Prague. According to an article in Der Böhmisches Bierbrauer from February 15, 1893, yes I have been browsing around the newspaper archive of the Austrian National Library again, Havlík invented "new, practical beer glasses".

The article claims that a "polish beer glass, in which the rays of light collect at certain points, is the least suitable beer container, since the harmful effects of the light are increased". The article goes on to suggest filling a ceramic krug and a transparent beer glass with beer, leaving them for 15 minutes before tasting. The ceramic is "still fresh and appetising", while the beer in the glass has "lost aroma and sharpness".

If I understand the article correctly, Havlík's glass was entirely opaque, other than for a clear base that would allow the drinker to check the clarity of the beer. The patent submitted by Havlík notes that the glass is entirely lead free and as such replaced the recommendation of a Director Schnitze to drink from gold or silver cups.

A fun element of the design is that these glasses had a "rough, etched plate or strip" upon which the drinker can write their name or some other note whilst at the pub to keep the same glass for the duration of their stay. Finishing off the piece, the editors of Der Böhmisches Bierbrauer hoped that the new glass would soon be available in drinking dens throughout Bohemia.

I couldn't find any definite examples of such glasses as I searching, whether on Ebay or Google, so if anyone knows of any out there it would be fascinating to see. However, it is clear (pun maybe intended), that the idea had very little long term impact as transparent glassware is the norm, though it does also show how little things change across the years, as even in the 1890s people were coming up with new and improved glassware.

Of the Cupolas of Bierstadt

I am currently in Denver for work, having arrived on Sunday evening and staying here for a week before heading home to Virginia in time for the twins 5th birthday.

Even though I admitted recently to being an abysmal beer tourist, in the sense that I very rarely plan travel around breweries to visit, when I travel for work I do my research and pick out some places that I want to try. Given that Colorado is known for its lager brewing, I had plenty of options, but I knew straight off the bat that Sunday night would be Bierstadt.

In the week before I flew out social media was full of pictures of Bierstadt's legendary Slow Pour Pils beer as it seemed that everyone and his mate that attended the Great American Beer Festival had made a beeline there.

I was pretty wiped out by the time I got to Bierstadt on Sunday, and my palate may not have been in the best of shape, having had a couple of airport porters, a brown ale, and when I got to Denver a couple of excellent Mexican lagers from Reverence Brewing. If you are ever in Denver you should go there, it's a fantastic place that feels like a community bar that happens to have damned good beer.

Having grabbed a seat at the upstairs bar, I ordered the obligatory Slow Pour Pils, and a Helles to drink while I was waiting...

The thing that hit me most about both beers was just how insanely clear they are, almost in a fuck you juxtaposition to the hazy IPA world. I wasn't taking notes, preferring to just mess around with my camera in the very cool art deco/industrial fusion surroundings. Knowing that I had some spare time on the Monday, I decided that I would head back once work was done for the day, and also so I could think a bit more about the Slow Pour Pils, as Evan Rail had asked for my thoughts on Instagram.

With work commitments out of the way, at least until a late dinner, I headed back over to do some more considered evaluations, and also make sure I had a palate more up to the task at hand - as in I remembered to drink plenty of water. Again I went to the upstairs bar, and ordered myself a pils, pulled out my phone and shock, horror, I took notes about a beer I was drinking in a bar! So here we go...

• Sight - pale gold, huge rocky white head (duh), crystal clear
• Smell - crackers, crushed water biscuits, very subtle floral hop aroma
• Taste - classic pilsner malt graininess, almost flinty mineral note, grassy hops with a hint of wildflower
• Sweet - 2/5
• Bitter - 1.5/5

Advertised as a Northern German pilsner, I was expecting more bitterness upfront, maybe the slow pour kicks some of it out of the beer? The mouthfeel was softer than I expected, which makes the beer feel sweeter. I realise the slow pour part of things is the star here, but I was left wondering how it would taste hladinka style in a mug, especially unfiltered - can't remember where I read it is filtered, but I am sure I did. It is though a thoroughly delicious beer, if I didn't have plans for another couple of breweries...I'd likely be back.

I didn't take notes about the helles, I just sat and enjoyed a lovely iteration of one of my favourite styles, I did though make sure to try the first märzen of the trip, and it was likewise excellent, though poured from a can as they were done with draft, and it scored a very respectable 32/40 in my points system, which places it currently joint third, along with the likes of Port City and Olde Mecklenberg.

The thing I had hoped to do while I was at Bierstadt was to get a peek at their brewhouse...and I wasn't really paying attention as I walked to the bar when I noticed a copper dome. The brewhouse is right there for all the see, and what a thing of beauty it is.

From what I understand the brewhouse was originally housed in the local brewery in Ammerndorf, a small village just outside Nürnberg, and was built in 1932. Bierstadt shipped it to Colorado and essentially rebuilt it exactly as it had been in Bavaria. To my mind, this kind of thing is what makes a "craft" brewing business truly artisanal. I may have geeked out looking at those glorious copper domes.

I am not sure when I will ever make it back to Denver, but whenever I am here I know I will go to Bierstadt, not just to enjoy the triple decocted beers, though the Pils is double decocted, but to look at that rescued brewhouse and be glad it is still churning out great lagers.

Central European Tap Dance

Look at this glorious glass of beer...

If you've been keeping abreast of my mini-series about Schilling Beer Company in New Hampshire, you will hopefully recall that this is their magnificent Malý 8° lager, had on tap at the brewery's tasting room in Littleton. What I didn't mention in that particular post was the method of dispense, and fairly obviously, this particular beer was poured using a Lukr tap, also known as a side pour tap, sometimes also known as a slow pour tap. Whatever you want to call it, this was poured from a tap that is currently all the rage amongst the lager brewing and drinking community in the craft beer world, and is often touted as being the "traditional" method in Czechia.

I still remember the first time I saw a Lukr tap in the wild back in Czechia. It was around 2009 and Mrs V and I had gone to Purkmistr, a brewery and hotel on the outskirts of Plzeň, for a long weekend. Said tap was, for whatever reason, in the room that the hotel used for serving breakfast. I don't recall if they were in use in the restaurant or bar, but I noted them because they were so different from the taps I had seen in pretty much every pub I went to at the time. Almost every pub I frequented had standard taps like those at Pivovarský klub or U Slovanské lipy...

From what folks back in Czechia have told me, the Lukr tap really took off when the concept of the tankovna pub blew up as well, around 2008. The whole concept of it being "traditional" never really sat that well with me, purely based on personal experience, and then I came across a picture in Der Böhmische Bierbrauer on the Austrian National Library website.

Look at those taps in this illustration. Ok, minus the more modern look, they are most distinctly "side pour" taps. Being side pour rather than the modern standard format, they would have relied on a ball valve to control the flow of beer from the tap to the drinking vessel. Then I came across this illustration, again from Der Böhmische Bierbrauer:

A tap system that bore an uncanny similarity to the one I had seen in Purkmistr, clearly there was something here...oh I didn't mention these illustrations yet:

Each of these illustrations came from an edition of Der Böhmische Bierbrauer which contained an article about the new innovation for pouring beer, attaching a CO2 tank to the barrel that would push the beer to the tap. The article had the glorious title of "The Practical Use of Carbonic Acid for Serving Beer" and appeared in Der Böhmische Bierbrauer in 1894. Before the use of CO2, it was traditional for beer to be poured either via gravity or pulled through the line by a hand pump.

Intrigued, I dug further, finding images of such historic side pour taps in use in Germany in the 1930s - sorry folks I am not paying $20 a piece for a stock images of beer being poured in Mannheim at a radish festival, so have a link instead. Eventually I came across the Historische Bierzapf-Säulen website and learnt that the idea for using CO2 to dispense beer from a tap was patented in 1877 by a high school teacher and chemist Wilhelm Carl Raydt, originally from Lingen in modern day Lower Saxony. The new method of pouring beer apparently took off in northern Germany and the industrial cities, but met resistance in traditional Bavaria, which for many decades stuck with the anstich method of tapping beer.

The Historische Bierzapf-Säulen site is a beer history nerd's wet dream. The oldest illustration on the site that shows a side pour tap in use is from the 1880s, and purports to show the Berlin pub "In der Katschemme". There is even a Pilsner Urquell pub in Hamburg in one of the pictures from 1900. The guy behind the website, who clearly has a love of historical beer taps, and the beautifully decorative towers that were once part and parcel of taprooms in central Europe is also the owner of Storchenbräu in Pfaffenhausen, about 100km/62 miles west of Munich.

From what I can ascertain, side pour taps were in use in Germany until the 1960s, and if film evidence from the former Czechoslovakia is correct, there also, being replaced by the more modern flow control taps we are used to seeing in central European pubs today. Though they did seem to still be in use in at least one Zoigl pub in around 2012, and judging by the design of the tap, it is not a Lukr made tap.

Central Europe, broadly modern day Germany, Austria, Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, and Hungary, is full of stories like this, where there are parallel foods, drinks, and ways of doing things that each group of people claim as "traditional". Of course, until the First World War, most of the region lay within either the German Empire or the Austro-Hungarian Empire, so such commonality is to be expected. To give a small example, recently Mrs V and I went to dinner with some friends. The husband is Serbian, the wife is German - weird fun fact, they met in Lavka in Prague, and lived there for a period that overlapped with Mrs V and I, though we only met them here in Virginia. Dinner that night was a traditional Serbian meal called "podvarak", basically pork shoulder slow cooked in the oven on a bed of sauerkraut. The Czech national dish is "vepřo-knedlo-zelo", slow roasted pork shoulder, dumplings, and cabbage. In Germany there is "sauerkraut und Schwein", erm....slow cooked pork with sauerkraut, often served with potato dumplings. Where modern borders create breaks and barriers, reality is a continuity of shared history and experience.

To come back then to the side pour tap, what we are seeing is a revival of a central European way of doing things that was lost in the rush to modernity that was the 1960s. The uniqueness of the Lukr tap is in an innovation within the tap itself, which I can find no evidence for in the old texts, a filter screen that in layman's terms, turns the tap into a shower head, much like the sparkler does on a beer engine, thus creating the voluminous wet foam that the tap is rightly renowned for.