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?

The Original Pilsner?

You all know the story, legendary brewer tinkers with the ingredients and methodology to create a new, paler beer which takes off and is soon being imitated by brewers throughout the land, and eventually overseas as well. However, I am not talking here about Josef Groll and the creation of what would become known as Pilsner Urquell. Rather, I am talking about Samuel Allsopp and Burton Ale.

As I mentioned in Monday's post, and again thanks to Martyn Cornell for this information, Burton Ale was once a nut brown, super strong ale which was shipped to the Baltic region and Russian Empire. This trade formed the basis of business for brewers such as Allsopp and Bass until 1822 when Tsar Alexander I's government instituted tariffs on the importation of beer into the Empire which made the trade too expensive to be profitable for the brewers of Burton. Left with large amounts of sweet strong brown ale on their hands, men like Allsopp needed to find new markets for their wares. In a scenario strangely similar to what would happen in Plzeň exactly 20 years later, in October 1822 Samuel Allsopp produced a new version of Burton Ale, which was less sweet and with a more pronounced hop bitterness than it's predecessor. According to a recipe from the middle of the 19th Century, Burton Ale had also become a pale beer, made with 100% pale malt and hopped only slightly less than the IPA that Allsopp would send to India in 1823.

By the time Burton Ale was being described as one of the four major types of beer being sold in Britain, it had become a 'style', for want of a better word, that had transcended its parochial origins to be imitated by many. In the ancient county of Middlesex, Chiswick brewers Fuller, Smith and Turner were producing a pale Burton style Ale from at least 1845 and would have a beer bearing the name 'Burton', whether pale or dark, until 1969. In Scotland, the Edinburgh brewery William Younger's introduced a range of numbered ales, which bear a marked resemblance to Burton Ales, in the 1850s and according to Ron Pattinson, what became known as 'Scotch Ale' is Burton Ale by another name (which makes you wonder where this bullshit about Scottish beer 'traditionally' not being heavily hopped came from?). Even in the US, brewers such as Amsdell's and Ballantine were making their own versions of Burton Ale. By the time I was born though, in the mid 1970s, Burton Ale, in any form, was pretty much gone, a victim of mankind's slavish attachment to fashion, and perhaps the inexorable march of pale lager inspired by the work of Josef Groll?

I guess it is only natural to find parallels between the development of various types of beer, the interesting thing is to see how they ride out the peregrinations of fashion. Clearly Burton Ale didn't have the staying power of Pilsner, and who is to say whether or not modern IPA will still be here in 20 years time? History is so much more interesting than hagiography and myth, especially when it comes to beer.