10 Oct Some New Suggestions to Complement Indiana’s German Beer Heritage
By Mark Lasbury for Indianan on Tap
The history of people is the history of beer. People come in all sizes, styles and flavors, and so does beer. Depending on the environment and the resources at hand, beers from different places have developed into distinct or overlapping styles, just as people from different regions have developed different cultures, tongues, and traditions Different ethnic groups have distinct styles of beer associated with them. Bavarian lagers are characteristic their region, as are Czech and German pilsners. Belgian yeast strain characteristics and Western European fruits, herbs and flowers have led to the Belgian styles that I love so much. I could go on and on – and I usually do.
As people move from one place to another, they take important portions of their culture with them. The resources may be different in their new home, but the know how and centuries of learning come with them and they make due. The United States is perhaps the greatest example of this in history. Groups of immigrants from every corner of the Earth have settled here, bringing their traditions, languages, cultural proclivities – and of course, their beer.
Indiana is blessed with not only a good number of breweries and brewpubs, but good quality from those establishments. We have brewers that are willing to take chances, but put quality before making something that is different just for the sake of being different. This is the environment needed to do historically obscure beer styles correctly. Photo credit: HeartandSoulDesign via Etsy.
We are blessed in Indiana to have brewers that embrace all the different styles of beer and appreciate the contributions of different ethnic groups to beer world. My Untappd list states that I have tried over 90 distinct beers styles, and most of those have come at Indiana breweries and taprooms. Ninety is a pretty good sampling of what the world’s cultures have to offer as far as beer goes, but it got me to wondering what historical beers styles are out there that breweries aren’t making, and just where those styles originated. I began to look up obscure beer styles and found that for almost every ethnic group I could think of, there was a distinct style of beer associated with them, whether current or historical and out of production.
This in turn led me to ponder whether there might not be a geographical/ethnic tie-in to Indiana for these beers. Many of the cities and towns of our state have particular ethnic heritages. Certainly every town has residents whose ancestors hail from all points of the globe, but certain groups of peoples have had a tendency to end up in particular places. For example, in the middle 1990s, 25% of Indianapolis residents could still trace their ancestry back to some part of Germany.
Cities such as Indianapolis, Jasper, Goshen, and Evansville have many German festivals, and beers that reflect the Teutonic heritage of their locale could only add to the sense of place and home. Plus, I would get to travel around and sample some very interesting beers. To this end, I have put together below a list of interesting or little known German beer styles, as well as some breweries that could experiment in these styles:
Indianapolis
Indianapolis has a significant German heritage, the 1840s and 1850s brought many immigrants to do stone work, build and run railroads, construction, and especially as firemen. Germans integrated into every part of Indianapolis life, although they also worked to preserve their culture and educational systems. Hence the turnvereins and gymnasiums, as well as the Athenaeum downtown. That beautiful building was designed by Bernard Vonnegut, the grandfather of writer Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. German families of Indianapolis, like the beer-brewing and State Park-establishing Liebers, the Pharmaceutical companies of the Mueller and the Haag, the Schramm family of insurance fame and grocer family Schnull have contributed much to the past and present of the city.
. Tow Yard Brewing in Indianapolis was a winery prior to being a brewery, but long ago the same building was the home of a successful German family-owned drug company, Mooney-Mueller. With Lucas Oil stadium just a short walk away, it is now a popular stop before and after Colts games. Photo credits: Indianapolis Business Journal and Tow Yard Brewing.
The urban breweries of Indianapolis are tied to the history of the city and are therefore tied to the town’s German heritage. A perfect example is Tow Yard Brewing that now resides in the 501 Madison Building. For 34 years their building housed the Mooney-Mueller Drug Company owned by German families. The history of their location demands that Tow Yard try an old German style – I suggest the Dampfbier.
“Dampf” means “steam” in German, so one could say that this was the original steam beer, showing up hundreds of years before Anchor Steam. Despite the name, steam isn’t involved in making a dampfbier. The style originated in the forests of Bavaria. It was made mostly in the summer time with little hops, so the combination of the copious amounts of barley malt, the top fermenting Weiss yeast, and the warmer temperatures of the summer led to a huge amount of foam on the surface of the vat. As the bubbles broke, the flying mist made it appear that the beer was steaming – hence the name. The Weiss yeast was plentiful in the area, but Bavaria was a poor region, so wheat was considered to precious to brew with, hence it is an all barley malt beer fermented with yeast usually reserved for wheat beers.
The high fermentation temperature (often over 70˚F) lends itself to a phenolic aftertaste for a malty beer, and it is only slightly hoppy. These are all things I like in a beer. The medium body and deep golden color make for an eminently drinkable summer beer, and very similar in character and style to a California Common – like Anchor Steam.
Jasper
Our family (my wife Walter, the kids and I), have been to Jasper often – sometimes on our way to or from Holiday World, sometimes just for the food at the Schnitzelbank Restaurant, and a couple of times for the Strassenfest German street festival. Jasper has a rich history of German influence, even though the town was originally settled by a family from Kentucky who had been Abe Lincoln’s neighbors. Despite their primacy, the town actually became a town in 1846 when a group of eighty-five German immigrants, all from the town of Pfaffenweiler, arrived and established a working city. Appropriately, Pfaffenweiler is now a sister city to Jasper, and the partnership is celebrated each year at the Strassenfest.
Both the Schnitz Brewery & Pub and Basket Case Brewing Company are located in Jasper, so they are almost a perfect fit to brew a Kottbusser beer. I don’t have a preference as to who brews it, but I think it could very cool if they both produced one and we could have a battle of the kottbussers – maybe during the Strassenfest — hmmmm, I think I’m on to something there. The obscure Kottbusser style was all but lost to history before it was revived by the American craft beer community. Named for the town of Cottbuss (wouldn’t it have been cool if it had come from Pfaffenweiler), the kottbusser beer is a very atypical German beer – which is part of the reason I want to try one.
The German Reinheitsgebot purity law stated that only water, malts, hops, and yeast could be included in beer, but the Kottbusser includes things like oats, honey and molasses. And these sugar sources are in addition to a healthy amount of barley and wheat malts. It drinks like a maltier, smoother, altbier (I love a north German altbier) and making it maltier and smoother is just going to make me want it more. The Grimm Brothers Brewhouse (Loveland, CO) does a Kottbusser beer, and the description goes so far as to day that the Kottbusser was outlawed as a beer style when the Reinheitsgebot was enacted in 1516 , but I want one – I’m such a rebel. Against the Grain did one as well (2013) and so has Off Color Brewing (Scurry, Chicago, year round). See what I mean about America reviving this style? Indiana needs to get into the game.
Evansville
Almost eight and a half million German immigrants had settled in the US by 1890, many of them ending up in Evansville, of all places. The rural farmland reminded them of Germany and they came to farm and build. By 1900, 40% of Evansville residents (Vanderburgh County) were of German ancestry. The local German newspaper had a daily circulation of over 5000 in the early 1900s.
This is an Indiana guy with what appears to be a hot Rock, but it wasn’t what I was going for when discussing making a stein beer in an Indiana brewery. Still, any reason to show a guy named for our state – alas, now I remember that he was named after the dog. Photo credit: unnecessaryumlaut.com.
I don’t know if the founding Germans in Evansville were wacky, but the brewers there now sure are. That’s why I have decided to suggest that Carson’s, Turoni’s and/or Tin Man make a steinbier. “Stein” translates from German as “stone” and this relates back to the days when the kettles for making beer were made of wood. You couldn’t use direct heat for the boil, so brewers would superheat rocks and drop them into the wort and hops. This gave the beer a special taste for a variety of reasons. The stones (always use metamorphic rocks that won’t explode on you) impart a mineral taste to the beer while the extreme temperature of the rocks would immediately roast some of the malt and caramelize some sugar. The rocks would literally become caramel coated.
After they cooled down, the stein bier makers would toss the rock into the fermenter so the yeast could metabolize the caramelized sugar on the rocks. This added even more complexity to the beer. Are you curious yet as to how this might taste? Most early steinbiers were ales, but later (and the few that are done now) are almost always lagers. I don’t care if Evansville brewers choose to do it as an ale or a lager – I’m easy. Maybe Tin Man could do a lager (maybe at the new Kokomo location?) and Carson’s could do the ale.
Oldenburg/Batesville
Many German immigrants landed in Cincinnati during the early and middle 1800s. Some of those, like the Eastern Europeans that left Chicago for northwest Indiana, found that the farmland in southeastern Indiana was cheaper than living in the big city. The original Dutch settler in the Batesville area sold his land to the railroad company and line was constructed between Lawrenceburg and Indianapolis. Towns sprang up along the route, and the forests around the home of Joshua Bates (hence Batesville) were good for making furniture and, of all things, coffins. In came the Germans from Cincinnati to fill the carpentry and building jobs and Ripley County flourished, including Oldenburg – a town that was settled by German immigrants even earlier, back in the 1830s.
Oldenburg is a historic village in Indiana with strong ties to its German heritage. Doesn’t it look like just landed here from Bavaria. So why doesn’t Oldenburg have a brewery? Photo credit: twadelleriverhouse.com/concierge.html.
Oldenburg and Batesville have both embraced their German heritage with festivals, architecture and place names. It seems to me that the brewery in this region, ‘Lil Charlies, should tackle one of the have them try one of the most obscure and most German beer styles – the Sticke Alt. I hope they make one for us, but they won’t be able to tell us how they did it – “sticke” means “secret” in colloquial German.
Alt bier is a very old beer style in German, it predates the introduction of lagering, so these are top fermenting beers. Germany became so intrigued with lager yeast that beers made with top fermenters were referred to “old” (alt in German) beers, meaning the old style of fermentation. The brewery is not supposed to reveal the recipe for the beer (mostly because it was made by just tossing unmeasured ingredients together), but the real secret to this alt is why, in Germany, they are only tapped on the third Tuesday of January and the third Tuesday of October.
What can be learned about the sticke alt from tasting the North America editions (Unchained #20 from Summit and 100 Barrel series #57 from Harpoon) is that it is a darker, stronger (5.5-6.5% ABV) version of a northern German alt (usually 4.7-4.9% ABV). It is well hopped with a firm balance to hoppiness by a nutty malt flavor, but each one may be a bit different. Modern versions are often a secret version of one of their beers that with a secret added ingredient, served up as a reward to special patrons. If ‘Lil Charlie’s wants to get crazy, they could brew up dopplesticke, which can go off at 8.5-9.9% alcohol. Walter would be more than happy with either version, just don’t make us wait for January or October to tap it.
Next time we will take a trip around the state, matching obscure ethnic beer styles with cities and breweries in areas where that represent that ethnicity well.
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