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Beer/Brewing history
Collecting messages from the past | “Brian, what are you planning to do with all that beer in the cellar?” While normally this would be a problem with a built-in solution, on this occasion the best answer I can offer my wife is a weak “well… I’ll need to think about it”.
Beer/Brewing history
Definition | In and unto itself, what does the term “craft” really mean? Even independent of its association with beer? In what other areas, fields or professions does it apply? How is the term interpreted in those contexts? These are the questions addressed by a four-person panel of authors: Emma Bell and Scott Taylor, both from the United Kingdom, Gianluigi Mangia from Italy and Maria Laura Toraldo from Switzerland. Their book is called “The Organisation of Craft Work.”
Fermentation/Maturation
National fungus | Sake is an ancient alcoholic beverage made from a mash of steamed rice. However, because rice, unlike barley, lacks enzymes for converting its own starch into fermentable sugars that yeast can metabolize, mashing rice to produce a fermentable extract requires the introduction of exogenous enzymes. This article tells the story of how Japanese alcohol makers have mastered this challenge and, by implication, how today’s brewers can make sake with modern equipment.
Beer/Brewing history
Brewery museum | The National Brewery Museum in Kostelec nad Černými lesy is located on the premises of an exceptionally well-preserved historic malthouse, brewery and horse-powered malting plant. Not only have pieces of functional historic brewing equipment been preserved there but also two significant construction phases of the brewery complex.
Over a pint
For millennia, humans have been turning long chains of insoluble starch derived from grain into a beverage possessing some degree of microbiological stability. So, for a very long time and for much of humanity, this beverage has been a safe source for important nutrients and has likewise served as an agreeable means of social cohesion. The fact that we used our gray matter to figure this out when we knew nothing of biochemistry or microbiology speaks to human ingenuity and is addressed by Richard Wrangham in his book “Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human”.
Beer/Brewing history
Finnish brewing history | This installment in our series takes us to Finland. A country that one tends to associate less with beer and more so with a very difficult language, saunas, happy people, heavy metal music and an extremely successful education system. Finnish brewing history is not as old as that of Central Europe or the British Isles, but it can be clearly traced back to one person who started it all.
Beer/Brewing history
History | The National Brewing Museum in Kostelec nad Černými lesy is housed within the exceptionally authentic premises of a historic malt house, brewery, and horse-powered malt mill. The site preserves not only fully functional historical brewing technologies but also two major construction phases of the brewery complex itself: the original Late Baroque layout dating from 1840 and the conversion of the brewery to steam power at the very end of the nineteenth century.
Beer/Brewing history
Czech beer deity | In this latest installment of “Brewing Giants,” the story takes us back to the Czech Republic for a second look at this quintessential beer-producing nation. While a previous installment focused on Joseph Groll, a Bavarian immigrant and the inventor of pilsner, (BRAUWELT International no. 4, 2023, pp. 250–252), we now go back a little further in time to the turn of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th to revisit a true Czech brewer: Franz Andreas Paupie, spelled in his native language, František Ondřej Poupě. Unfortunately, very little personal information survives from this period apart from a few biographical details.
Beer/Brewing history
Hop research | This installment marks the first time that, in addition to a person, an institution is also being celebrated as one of the “brewing giants”. This is because we have yet to really pay tribute to one of beer’s essential ingredients, or rather the people who work with it: hops. Therefore, I’d like to begin with Max Hayduck, who not only conducted hop research but also provided valuable impetus for doing so very early on. He never got to see the institute he helped inspire, though, because 27 years after Hayduck’s death, the Hop Research Center was founded in Hüll, Bavaria in Germany. Moreover, this institution cannot be attributed to any one single individual. For this reason, we are making an exception in this installment by designating an institute a “giant of brewing history”.
Beer/Brewing history
The founder of microbiology | There are researchers and inventors who essentially had nothing to do with brewing, but whose works and inventions were so fundamental, so universal and so enduring that they are still valid today. And not just for brewers. Pioneers such as von Linde as well as Newcomen and Watt ushered in new eras in the history of industry, and by doing so, also made brewing history. Others, like Pasteur, gave brewers and many others a firm foothold in science. Yet the man presented here, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, preceded all of them.
Over a pint
Some craft brewers have attempted to resurrect coolships or ‘flat coolers’ in beer production. However, their true purpose among craft brewers has largely been misconstrued. It is a vessel seldom encountered in a modern brewery, though it can still be quite expedient if utilized correctly. And yet the only real objections to their implementation are that a brewery cannot recover as much of the energy it has already suffused into the production process, and a proper coolship also happens to take up a lot of space. Modern technology in the form of post-whirlpool evaporation has even attempted to emulate their beneficial effects on the wort prior to chilling.
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