Rheinisches Bitterbier

 It's becoming an obsession, really it is.

Ever since Andreas Krennmair suggested the name "Rheinisches Bitterbier" as a name/style for my most recent homebrew, I have been digging around trying to learn more about it. I actually managed to polish off the entire keg with a couple of friends over the weekend, and the final beer looked like this:

I have to admit that I was marginally surprised at just how dark it was, but it was certainly a lovely moreish beer. Towards the end of the keg, the sweetness of the Munich malt had mellowed out a bit, so when I inevitably rebrew it in the autumn, I will lager it as I had previously intended.

Back though to the term "Rheinisches Bitterbier". I mentioned in my previous post that in the early part of the 20th century, the style was listed with "Westfälisches altbier". My research so far has failed to shine much light on the Westphalian Altbier, though I have been able to find some further details about the Rheinisches Bitterbier in some of the German books in Google Books.

According to "Untersuchung von Nahrungs, Genussmitteln und Gebrauchsgegenständen":

Admittedly with the help of Google Translate, my German is o for a general gist, but I wanted to be a little more certain, Rheinisches Bitterbier and Westfälisches altbier are described as:

"These low gravity beers are made like bottom-fermented beers through a vat and barrel fermentation, with a strong addition of hops. They contain 3.64-5.5% extract, 3-4.8% alcohol by volume, and 0.165-0.515% lactic acid"

A confession, the text in red is taking straight from Google translate, and I am not entirely sure by what is meant, though I am assuming they just mean primary and secondary fermentation occurring in separate vessels? What I can say for sure is that we are talking about well hopped, top-fermented, low gravity beer.

Clearly the text above draws heavily on the work of Dr Josef König, who in the 1920 edition of his book "Chemie der menschlichen Nahrungs- und Genussmittel" wrote:

Here König gives another couple of interesting details, including a starting gravity of "9%" which I think would be the equivalent of 9° Plato, or 1.036 in specific gravity. There is also more about the hopping of Bitterbier, "unter starkem Hopfenzusatz bzw von gebrühtem Hopfen zum Lagerfass bei den bitterbieren" meaning that the beer is strong hopped in both the kettle and the lager tank...dry hopping basically.

When it comes to colour and taste perception we turn to volume 4 of "Encyklopädie der technischen Chemie" by Wilhelm Foerst, published in 1953:

My rough translation of this would be:

"Rhenish bitter beer is a top-fermented regular strength beer with a golden yellow color, which is fermented at a fairly low temperature, then lagered at around 6 degrees in the storage cellar and filtered. There is a lot of hops in the brewhouse and hops are also added to the storage barrel ("hop stopper"). This gives it a very aromatic taste."

So here we have a beer that looks very much like a modern Kölsch and is very hop forward, with strong kettle hopping and drying hopping to make a very flavourful beer.

I think then that the beer I brewed would not qualify as a Rheinisches Bitterbier as understood in most of the 20th century.

Interesting from my perspective is that Westfälisches altbier seems to have disappeared from from the books I was digging into, so more research required for sure.

Westfälisches Altbier, oder?

 For the first time in a while I kegged a homebrew at the weekend.

I don't get to brew anywhere near as much as I would like, or as much as I used to, so the kegerator has been loaded with commercial beer for the last few months. Right now though, there is a 5 gallon keg of my own stuff happily conditioning, hopefully for imbibing this weekend.

My brewing these days is mostly in the old "extract and specialty grains" format, though I won plenty of medals with this method and so am not too worried about not doing all grain for the time being. This particular batch though is all extract, because the only malt I wanted was Munich, and Northern Brewer sell just the right size containers of liquid Munich malt extract to give me a starting gravity of 11° (1.044).

In the hopes of minimising potential staleness from the malt extract that had been in the house a couple of  months, I bought fresh Hallertauer Mittelfrüh to hop with, a fresh packet of Wyeast 1007 German Ale, and spent a few hours over a boiling brewpot.

I like Mittelfrüh for the soft sweet spiciness that you get, and all the other classic noble hop characteristics, things like fresh hay, wild flowers, and an earthiness that I am hoping will cut nicely through the Munich malt's toffee sweetness. I added enough to give me about 34 IBUs according to my brewing software, nearly half of which were in the bittering addition.

With the yeast, I always prefer an altbier yeast to a kölsch when doing something vaguely Germanic and top fermented. I don't have the kit to do lager fermentation in the summer, but find that 1007 reacts nicely to my 64°F basement, and finishes dry and clean, kind of like a lager, even without extended cold cellaring. Plus, Kölsch yeasts have a fruitiness that I find distracting.

The beer I kegged up looks like this...

I expect the final conditioned beer to be a bit paler, more in the deep golden/light orange world than the slightly turbid light brown of the sample.

On Twitter, Andreas Krennmair suggested the term "Rheinisches Bitterbier" based on his research which used it as an umbrella term for Düsseldorf Altbier and Kölsch. I did my own spot of digging around into the term and discovered that it was also put together with "Westfälisches altbier" according to Dr Joseph König. His descriptions of these beers are in his section on "German Top Fermented Beers", though he says the Rheinische Bitterbiers are made in the same manner as bottom fermenting beer, at least if my dodgy German isn't failing me horribly here.

König doesn't actually mention the styles that make up Rheinisches Bitterbier, but Andreas' research has them there, though in separating out "Westfälisches altbier" my interest was further piqued, for family reasons. My great-great-great grandfather was reputedly from Germany, at least according to UK census returns from 1871 - 1901, with further research from other parts of the family saying he was originally from Minden in Westphalia. Also in Westphalia is the city of Münster, home of the Pinkus brewery, who brew an altbier that is decidedly lighter in colour than those you find from Düsseldorf, so I wonder if that was the norm in Westphalia?

So from a quick and easy homebrew project, I have stumbled upon some beer history to try and dig in to, and perhaps we need more Westfälisches altbier in the world?