The Knights of
the Brown Bottle

Your Monthly Newsletter  May 1999 Vol.3 Issue 5

Serving the dallas - fort worth - mid-cities home brewing community

 
 
 

Inside This Issue:
pg.2	Beer Styles
pg.4	RECIPE – Bock
pg.5	Kreische Brewery
pg.7	Around The World…
pg10	From the Editor
	and more...

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

1999 Officer Nominations
were called for at the April meeting.

The following positions will be voted on by secret ballot at the May meeting. If you would like to nominate someone by absentee ballot please email Byron Eastwood at: eastwood@intrinsix.com.

Competition Chairman

Richard Graham

Treasurer
Jim Case

Secretary

Karl Williams, Mike Porter

Vice President

Tom Brooks, David May

President

JB Flowers, Larry Jarvis

Webmaster -appointed

Newsletter -appointed

The Knights of the Brown Bottle Homebrew Clubis a group of people interested in brewing and enjoying quality beer. The regular club meetings are held monthly at 7:30 p.m. on the second Wednesday of each month at:

Dr. Jeckyll’s Home Brew Supply
2304 W. Park Row #18
Pantego, Tx.
817-274-7405

Visit the Knight’s Webpage at: http://hbd.org/kobb/

President : Steve Wesstrom
VicePresident: Larry Jarvis
Secretary: J.B. Flowers
Treasurer: Jim Case
Competition Chairman: "just Dave" Girard
Newsletter Editor: Byron Eastwood
 

Original Bock: the beer the doctor ordered

By Michael Jackson

Just when you thought it was safe to leave the beer garden and go home for a well-deserved snooze, I have to inform you that there is no peace for the bockbier drinker. Having disposed of those pre-Easter bocks from Bavaria, the true devotee must now head north to sample the originator of the style, which dedicates its speciality to the month of May.

Consider the most likely derivation of the word Bock. When the Bavarians came to grips with such strong beer, they at first called it Einbock, or something similar. That was their southern-accented way of pronouncing Einbeck, the first town in Germany to win a reputation for extremely strong beers, and still a proud producer. I was there recently, and greatly enjoyed tasting the town's beers. Einbeck, in Lower Saxony, is close to Brunswick, Hamelin (of the Pied Piper) and Hanover.

There were times in German history when Bavaria and Saxony were rival southern and northern kingdoms or duchies, spreading so far that they had a common border (today, they are kept apart by a slice of Hesse). When a Bavarian aristocrat's daughter married a Duke of Brunswick, the guests are said to have been served Bockbier. That is one of several stories explaining how the Bavarians gained a taste for this strong Northern beer. At one stage, the Duke of Bavaria, anxious to have a beer of this style, employed a brewer from Brunswick. Landlocked Bavaria has always been strongly rooted in country life and agriculture and Northern Germany more given to trade through rivers and ports linking it with the Baltic and North Seas. That is why the Northerners were the first to win Einbeck's label showing Martin

Luther, a famous imbiber, a widespread reputation for their beer. The beer was widely known before the Reformation and was famously consumed by Martin Luther during his deliberations, but it could be argued that in the centuries since Catholicism has kept the Southerners conservative and close to the soil, while Protestantism served the trading ethic of the Northerners, near to the sea.

To either side of Einbeck lie the Harz mountains and Solling hills, their streams providing plentiful (soft) water for brewing. Einbeck is at the point where a smaller river meets the Leine.

Its broad valley widens out further into a plain to the north, with barley still cultivated around Hildesheim, between Brunswick and Hanover. In the early days of Einbeck brewing, hops are said also to have been cultivated in this area.

Farther north still, are the ports of Roetock, Lubeck, Hamburg and Bremen. Einbeck became the brewing centre of the Hanseatic League founded by these and other port cities as an attempt at a European trading union, a medieval forerunner of the European Community.

No doubt Einbeck made its beers to a very high gravity so that they could protect themselves on their journeys by continuing to ferment. In the style of the time, the first Einbecker brews may well have been made from wheat as well as barley, and no doubt top-fermented. Today, we would call that a Weizenbock. Modern Einbecker Bock beers are strong lagers, made wholly from barley malt. Like Chicago, London and many other cities, Einbeck was at one stage destroyed by fire. Its conflagration was in the 1500s, but the houses built immediately afterwards still bear the evidence that almost every citizen was a brewer. People dried their own malt and hops in lofts with vents that look like dormer windows. These vents are still visible on every other house in the town centre. I have heard of this method of wind-drying malt, instead of kilning it, also being used in Louvain, Belgium, in living memory. The Chinese wind-dry ducks as a means of preservation.

An odder feature of Einbeck, of which evidence also survives, was the use of a travelling brew-kettle, owned by the city and taken to each house in turn. Once the beer had been brewed, the citizens carried out their own fermentation.

I have always had some difficulty in believing this story, but I am told that is why the houses have such unusually high arched entrances - to admit the kettle. When the warmer weather came to Einbeck each year, the brewing had to cease because the temperature was too high for fermentations. So a spring fair was held. At this event, a draw took place to determine the order at which the mobile kettle would visit householders during the next brewing season. The beer served at the fair is said to have been the original May Bock. Einbeck's great power as a brewing city began to diminish in the 1600s, with the growth of rivals, political change and wars. A public brewery was built in 1794, and this was replaced in 1844 by a more modern model, powered by steam. In 1880, the city sold shares in this to raise money for public works.

This brewery was rebuilt, on the same site, between 1967 and 1975. The brewery is known as Einbecker Brauhaus. It still uses the city's initial "E", with a crown, as its insignia. A controlling interest is now held by Brau and Bruimen, the national group built around Dortmunder Union and Schultheiss of Berlin. Close to the main street is the Einbecker Brauhaus. Among its own, earlier, half-timbered buildings, the brewery rises, its tower clad in a sympathetic terra-cotta colour, and bearing a slogan that claims the style. It translates as: "Without Einbeck, there would be no Bock beer". Inside, a decorative arched door of 1620 is maintained, even though it faces on to a wall. A mosaic depicting medieval beer-making stands behind the 1976 brewhouse, made of stainless steel but in traditional shapes.

As is typical in Germany, only two-row summer barley is used. A double decoction mash is employed and a slow-pressure boil, with two additions of hops (Northern Brewer, Perle, Hersbrucker) as both extract and pellets. The house yeast ferments very thoroughly, and the beer is krausened. Guest are received by arrangement in the old cellars, which contain many items from the town's brewing history. It is possible to sample the brewery's products while sitting inside a retired lagering vessel and admiring stained-glass depictions of beer lore.

The brewery makes three Bock beers, all at an original gravity of 1065.2, with 6.5 per cent alcohol by volume. All are intended to have an aroma leaning toward a soft maltiness rather than the hop. The maltiness is intended to be aromatic rather than sweet, syrupy or full, and the hop bitterness to be evident.

All bear the legend Ur-("original") Bock, and are further identified with the descriptions Hell ("pale"), Dunkel ("dark") and Mai (May).

The pale lives down to the description in its golden colour, and has a fresh maltiness in aroma and palate, with a light hop character eventually developing to become pronounced and long in a late finish (38 units of bitterness). The dark has a tawny brown colour, with a smooth, dry, quite intense malt character, balanced by the hop in the finish. These two beers are said to be lagered for eight to 10 weeks. The Maibock has a bronze colour, a softer malt character, and a fractionally less assertive hoppy dryness. It has only six weeks lagering, with the intention that it should have a more lively, refreshing ("rougher"?) character.

It is released at the end of March, and the last bottles leave the brewery in early to mid May.

Curiously, there is no festival set around the Maibock. Perhaps today's Northerners are too Protestant for such frivolity. I did, though, have a hearty lunch of brain sausages in the brewery tap. The sausages are called Bregen in German, and the brewery tap, on the town square, is Brodhaus. It was originally the meeting place of the Bakers' Guild. What was that the monks said about Bockbier being liquid bread?

MAY 1, 1993 What's Brewing Magazine

Recipe of the Month

Specifics

Recipe type: All Grain
Batch Size: 5 gallons
Starting Gravity: 1.068
Finishing Gravity: 1.017
Time in Boil: 70 minutes
Primary Fermentation: 7 day @ 48F
Secondary Fermentation: 21 days @ 34F

Ingredients:

10.75 lbs. 2-row Klages Malt
2 lbs. Munich Malt 10L
2.25 lbs. Crystal 60L
4 oz. Chocolate Malt
1.5 oz. Tettnanger hop pellets (60 minutes)
0.5 oz. Tettnanger hop pellets (10 minutes)
0.5 tsp Irish Moss
Wyeast 2206 Bavarian Lager yeast starter

Procedure:

Add 3.75 +/- gallons of 172F water to heat mash to 152F and stabilize, hold for 60 minutes. Add 2.25 gallons of boiling water to raise mash temp. to 170F and hold for 15 minutes. Sparge with 2 gallons of water at 170F. Boil for 10 minutes and add first hops. Boil an additional 50 minutes and add second hops. Cool quickly and top up fermenter to 5.25 gallons with boiled and cooled water. Pitch yeast starter, ferment for 7 days @ 48-50F, rack into secondary and continue ferment at 32-36F for 3 more weeks.

Monument Hill and Kreische Brewery State Historical Parks
 

(Inside the Kreische Beer Hall around 1880)

The Kreische Brewery is an important and unique early Texas industrial site. Heinrich Kreische, a master stone mason, immigrated to Texas in 1846 and purchased property overlooking the Colorado River near La Grange in 1849. For his wife and six children, Kreische built a large three-story, stone and wooden home on the bluff, completing it in 1857, after several years of construction. During the 1860s, Kreische changed his occupation to that of a brewer. His brewery was one of the first commercial breweries in Texas. He took advantage of a steep slope and used gravity to harness cold spring waters to cool channeled air drafts to keep the fermentation area cool. By 1879, Kreische's brewery ranked third in production in the state. In 1882, Kreische was killed in an accident.

Two years later the brewery, then operated by his sons, went out of business, due largely to competition from beers mass-produced in San Antonio, St. Louis, and elsewhere Heinrich Kreische's considerable stone mason skills remain evident in the stabilized brewery ruins and the Kreische house. The house is built into the side of a slope, with two stories of stone and a large wooden attic. Members of the Kreische family lived in the house until 1952. The restored house is largely intact with few modern modifications. Exhibits in the park headquarters interpret the Kreische family, brewery, and home. Monument Hill was the original State Historical Area.

In 1977, the state agency bought the 36 adjacent acres from the Kreische Family that included an imposing, two-story stone house (circa 1855), a smokehouse, a barn and awe-inspiring remains of what in 1879 was the third largest brewery in

While Monument Hill is open to visitors 8 a.m.-5 p.m. daily, the Kreische Home (1:30-4 p.m. first Sunday) and Kreische Brewery (2 p.m. and 3:30 p.m. Sat. and Sun.) are accessible by guided tour only. It takes only a few minutes at either site to appreciate the ingenuity and craftsmanship of Heinrich Kreische.

The gabled house of coursed rubble sandstone, board-and-batten and fachwerk construction reflects Kreische's skills and attention to detail. The whitewashed stucco home with barrel ceilings, flagstone floors and arched doorways stands essentially as it did at Kreische's death in 1882. Bedecked in holiday splendor, the home is particularly enjoyable during Christmastime.

But as fascinating as the Kreische Home is, it is the stablized ruins of the three-story brewery straddling a spring-fed ravine just down the hill from the house that is the park's coup de grace. Standing below the imposing, multi-tiered remnants of what was one of Texas's first commercial breweries, one can almost see the robust Kreische pausing at the bottom of a hill with a wagonload of hand-quarried sandstone used to build the cleverly engineered structure.

. 

(Aerial view of the Brewery remains today)
 

"The remarkable thing is that he built these walls right on the creek bed and then pulled down the rock and dirt and graded the whole area,"said park manager Dale Martin. "He collected spring-fed waters and drained them through sediment tanks built into the creekbed, funneling the water into the brewery for beer-making, cooling and cleaning purposes."

The stonemason-turned-brewmaster marketed his Bavarian-style lager using the phrase "Frisch Auf!" (Freshen Up!), selling his beer primarily in wooden, quarter barrels to taverns and in his own beer hall in downtown LaGrange. He also retailed his lager at a beer garden on the bluff frequented by a schuetzenvein, or shooting club, whose members peer out from a vintage photo hanging in the visitor center. Be be sure to check out the scale model of the brewery, the displays detailing Kreische's brewing method and other memorabilia.

(The brewery after Kreische’s death )

For additional information, contact the park at
 

414 State Loop 92
La Grange TX 78945-5733
409/968-5658
 
 
 
 
 

The 1999 Celtic Brew-Off and Texas Scottish Festival are right around the corner! Have you bottled your entries?

Brew-Off Entry Deadline –  May 8^th

Judging – May15th at J.Gilligans

In Arlington

Around

The World…

(of beer)

from the Real Beer Page Mail, The Free Monthly Brew News Digest for the Online

Beer Enthusiast.

BREWERY'S COMMITMENT TO ENVIRONMENT NOT JUST HOT AIR

New Belgium Brewing Co. of Fort Collins, Colo. became the largest private consumer of wind power last week with its commitment to buy the equivalent of the brewery's electricity use from wind power. This will make New Belgium the first wind-powered brewery in America. A 660-kW wind turbine will be built next fall at the Platte River Power Authority wind site near Medicine Bow, Wyo. to support New Belgium's subscription to the program. The turbine will produce about 1.8 million kWh of electricity per year, which is about the amount of electricity that New Belgium will consume in the coming year. New Belgium owners Kim Jordan and Jeff Lebesch did not make this financial commitment alone. Rather, the choice of wind power was presented to the entire New Belgium staff and, although its additional cost would diminish the size of their bonuses (which are paid out on costs-per-barrel), the 70-person vote was unanimously in favor.

http://www.newbelgium.com

A GOOD YEAR FOR ANHEUSER-BUSCH BOSS

Anheuser-Busch chairman and president, August Busch III, earned a bonus of $1.75 million in 1998, more than double the amount he received the previous year. Busch's 1998 salary of $1,107,750 was unchanged from the previous year, when he received a bonus of $691,000.

BOSTON BEER BOOSTS PROFITS THOUGH SALES SLIP

The Boston Beer Company's sold less beer in 1998, but boosted profits. The brewery reports it sold 1,227,000 barrels of beer in 1998, compared to 1,352,000 in 1997. However earnings per share were .39 in 1998 -- and would have been .44 without a one-time special charge -- compared to .37 in 1997. "Despite the turmoil in the craft segment of the beer market and a modest erosion in volume, our leading market position and aggressive programs combined to produce very satisfactory operating results in 1998," said Jim Koch, president and founder.

MILLER ICES MCKENZIE BROTHERS

In the light of flat sales, Miller has decided to cancel its McKenzie Brothers TV spots for Molson, a brand the company manages in the U.S. Miller's new ad efforts will focus on product shots, while radio spots will feature CCAN, a fictional Canadian radio station. Molson's U.S. sales were flat during the two-year campaign featuring Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas as the Brothers McK. Molson's import rival, Labatt Blue, on the other hand, grew by double digits in 1998, making it the number three best-selling import and the best-selling Canadian import.

NEW MEXICO LAWMAKERS SHOOT FOR .05% LEGAL BLOOD ALCOHOL

Two New Mexico lawmakers have introduced legislation that would lower the threshold for determining when a driver is legally drunk to become the lowest in the nation. The proposed law would reduce the state's legal blood alcohol content from .08 to .05%. "This hopefully would create the kind of awareness we created with earlier drunk driving decisions," said Sen. Cisco McSorley, Albuquerque-D, one of the sponsors of the bill. Sixteen states have adopted a legal intoxication limit of .08% blood alcohol content, with the remaining 34 states setting the limit at .10%. Mothers Against Drunk Driving, an organization that lobbies for stricter drunken driving laws, does not support legislation to reduce the legal threshold for drunken driving below .08%, said Brandy Anderson of MADD. Anderson said scientific research has failed to prove that all drivers are impaired at blood alcohol contents of less than .08%.

A GOOD BEER'S NAME COMES UNDER FIRE

Back Bay Brewing Co. in Boston has long taking a whimsical and local approach when naming its beers. That became news in February when a local television story noticed that the pub was serving Boston Stranger Stout, a beer brewer Todd Mott has made once a year for three years. It was named after Albert deSalvo, a.k.a. The Boston Strangler, the serial killer who stalked the Boston-Cambridge for two years in the early 1960s, killing at least 13 women. (He was murdered in his prison cell in 1973.) Edward Brooke, state attorney general at the time of the murders, expressed dismay: "It's not something you want to be reminded of when you're drinking beer." The TV story was then repeated by national news sources. Don't be surprised if the beer has a new name when it is served next year.

NOW THAT'S ONE BUCKIN' TATTOO

The folks at Great Northern Brewing Co. in Whitefish, Mont., didn't anticipate how seriously some people would take the Black Star Beer Tattoo Contest. The competition was to see who would show up Valentine's Day with the biggest tattoo of the brewery's cowboy/buckin' bronco logo. To inspire contestants, the brewery gave away a Harley-Davidson motorcycle. The turnout for the first contest in 1998 was modest and the largest tattoo measured 20-plus inches. This year, that would have placed seventh. In fact, two tattoos at 30-plus inches finished almost two feet behind winner Ken Marvin of Federal Way, Wash., whose wrap-around tattoo covers 50.25 inches. It starts at the top of his back, wraps around his right side onto his chest, and down his leg to mid-calf. Pictures of the tattoo and more from the event are at:

http://www.blackstarbeer.com

WASHINGTON BREWER TRIUMPHS IN NATIONAL BREWING CHAMPIONSHIP

By all accounts, the first Masters Championship of Amateur Brewing (MCAB), held last month in Houston, was a rip-roaring success, both as a homebrew competition and as a technical conference. John Childs of Lynwood, Wash., captured Best of Show with his American Pale Ale and thus won a Seibel Short Course at the Seibel Institute in Chicago.

Brewers interesting in participating in MCAB II, which will be hosted by the St. Louis Brews, must pass through one of the MACB qualifying events. A list of those competitions, as well as the complete results of MCAB I are at:

http://hbd.org/mcab
 

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Mission Statement

The mission of the Knights of the Brown Bottle and this newsletter is to serve as a forum to promote public awareness and appreciation of the quality and variety of homebrewed beer through the collection and dissemination of information regarding the art and science of homebrewing, and to promote the responsible use of beer as an alcohol - containing beverage.

The club newsletter is published monthly and highlights the events and meetings of the club, local beer events and technical information that will help everyone brew better beer. Items for publication are welcomed and encouraged. They should be directed to Byron Eastwood.

Byron’s e-mail: eastwood@intrinsix.com

"How much beer is in German intelligence?"

-- Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
 
 

(submitted by Warren Mosely)
 

From the Editor

It’s been four yars since I first became a member of the Knights of the Brown Bottle and it only seems like yesterday. And, though I have sincerely enjoyed creating and publishing the club newsletter for the past two years, it will be a pleasure to step aside and let someone else deal with it for a while. I have learned more about beer and it’s intricate history and science than I ever once intended. There is, however, a virtual unending wealth of information left to the next editor that has yet to be uncovered. I leave it to him with the best wishes for an enjoyable experience in this strange little corner of our vast hobby.

This being my last newsletter before new officers take over and the new editor is appointed, I have printed as many of the more unique graphics and articles that have come my way over the years( but never made their way into an issue) as possible. Hopefully, in the coming years, there will be more information than one person can keep up with and two or more people will be required.

Lastly, I am taking artistic license in this final editorial to get something off my chest. If I could see one thing change about our club in the coming year it would be for the officers and members to re-think our purpose. I believe that the decrease in our membership is directly due to our abandoning the promotion of brewing techniques, demonstrations and brewing related discussion at the club meetings for the seemingly more important desire to prepare for, and win competitions. Any one besides me wonder why we get our ass kicked at the Bluebonnet every year? I attribute it to the fact that mere quantity of entries does not constitute a winning beer. We should learn to become better brewers and seek to learn more about what we brew, freely passing that information on to anyone that wants it, and in time, the Best of Show Beers would follow. There are more new brewers in the club than ever before and it is the responsibility of the senior members to take them under our wing and show them what someone else was willing to teach to us.

If the Knights of the Brown Bottle is a Club dedicated to "the quality and variety of homebrewed beer through the collection and dissemination of information regarding the art and science of homebrewing" then shouldn’t our meetings be made up primarily of that subject?

If we’re not going to change our mode of operation we should at least change our mission statement to reflect the truth.

See Ya,

Byron