Received: from srvr20.engin.umich.edu (root at srvr20.engin.umich.edu [141.213.75.22]) by srvr5.engin.umich.edu (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id BAA11804 for ; Sat, 5 Feb 2000 01:05:52 -0500 (EST) Received: from synchro.com (cccox.ne.mediaone.net [24.218.136.73]) by srvr20.engin.umich.edu (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with SMTP id BAA24885 for ; Sat, 5 Feb 2000 01:05:51 -0500 (EST) From: "JudgeNet - the beer judge digest" To: "Digest Recipients" Reply-To: "JudgeNet - the beer judge digest" Subject: Digest for the period 02/04/00 - 02/05/00 Message-ID: Date: Sat, 05 Feb 2000 01:04:29 -0500 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/digest; boundary="Next_Part_SYNC746514EE43" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Hops: 1 Status: RO --Next_Part_SYNC746514EE43 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Table of contents ------------------------------------------------------ Alt thread in JudgeNet (Roger Deschner) --Next_Part_SYNC746514EE43 Content-Type: message/rfc822 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-Path: Received: from UICVM.UIC.EDU ([128.248.2.49]) by synchro.com with SMTP (Mailtraq/1.1.4.1073) id SYNC745414E9A6 for judge at SYNCHRO.COM; Fri, 04 Feb 2000 14:24:08 -0500 Received: by UICVM.UIC.EDU (IBM VM SMTP V2R4a) via spool with SMTP id 7593 ; Fri, 04 Feb 2000 13:23:52 CST Received: from UICVM (NJE origin U52983 at UICVM) by UICVM.UIC.EDU (LMail V1.2a/1.8a) with BSMTP id 5244; Fri, 4 Feb 2000 13:23:52 -0600 Date: Fri, 4 Feb 2000 12:00:42 CST From: "Roger Deschner " Reply-To: "JudgeNet - the beer judge digest" Errors-To: judge-owner at synchro.com Sender: judge at synchro.com To: JudgeNet - the beer judge digest Subject: Alt thread in JudgeNet Message-ID: X-Hops: 3 X-POST-MessageClass: 10; Mailing List Message I was warned about this thread which unfolded this past week while I was on a ski trip. Zum Uerige uses a malt bill with a majority of ordinary 2-row Pils malt. But it is a narrow majority. There is quite a bit of other malts, such as Vienna and Munich malts. The Black Patent so frequently listed is used only to adjust the color to no darker than the mid-teens. I think the exact malt bill varies depending on availability, price, etc., but in general it is a lot of 2-row Pils. The label (now, in 2000) does not lie. ------------------------------- BUT! -------------------------------- In 1997 (I think) the crop of their trademark, peppery, Spalt hops failed. It was totally unavailable, at anything short of robbery prices. They had to figure out a way to do without it for a year. I think they did a good bit of experimentation with the malt bill to compensate for the different hopping they used. They even dry-hopped I am told. The following year, the Spalt crop was OK, and they returned to their original recipe. I was last in Dusseldorf in May, 1999, and it was definitely the classic recipe. So, yes, there have been two (or more) different versions of Zum Uerige Altbier brewed in the last couple of years, but as of 1999, they had returned to their classic recipe. I think this is one of the causes of the present controversy. I brewed one batch of Altbier with the mostly-Munich recipe I've seen. Amazingly, it wasn't much different from the majority-2row recipe. It *IS* fully attenuated. The English-speaking assistant brewmaster who gave me a tour in 1995 emphasized that full attenuation is an overriding concern. Their yeast is a warm, top-fermenting strain, so to keep it working as they cold condition it, they do as much as they can to baby it and keep it from pooping out. This is primarily accomplished by limiting the temperature drop of beer just racked to the cold secondary to no more than 1 degree C per day. The sophisticated equipment they use to effect this is a "wimpy cooling system". (his exact words) "This allows the use of a malt bill which would normally produce a full-bodied beer, but achieves high attenuation anyway, with residual malt flavors." They're more picky about achieving full attenuation than they are as to the exact yeast strain, although I have brewed with their strain (thanks to Al Korzonas, Dan McConnell, and Tony Babinec) and it was excellent. It can't be too far from Wyeast 1007. Infection? They just don't worry about it much. When you get a beer up to 50 IBUs using all noble varieties, it resists infection well. This is another area where "Alt" means the old way - actually using hops as a disinfectant. Their square, open fermenter, and cool-ship in the attic open to outside air (looking a lot like the famous cool-ship in the attic at Cantillon, where infection is the goal), seem to invite infection, but those swing-top bottles will be fine. They actually cite this as an advantage of their high hopping levels. The mash procedure is a 3-step upward-infusion mash with stops (from my Z.U. tour notes) 48c (118f) 62c (144f) 72c (162f) 78c (172f) mash out This is very similar to the 3-step German mash described by Randy Mosher in his book "Brewer's Companion". See also the recipe in my Zymurgy article from Winter 1994, reprinted in 1997 in a "best of" collection. I recently helped brew the recipe from my article on a much larger scale, as a test batch at Lakefront Brewery in Milwaukee, and it came out much like Im Fuschen Alt. (available only at Tracks Tap in Milwaukee.) One Dusseldorf brewer, Schumacher, still does a triple decoction. Their beer varies a bit, but when it's on, it's one of the greats. The German government is trying to get all brewers to stop using decoction, since it is apparently fairly wasteful of energy, and the infusion mashes can produce good results using modern commercial malts. Schumacher resists, and I'm glad they do, just for the sake of tradition. Also, the energy-czar bureacrats in the gummint have to have one decoction brewery left, so they can say, "See, it really doesn't make much difference." This is an argument which rages on in various forums, and which I am not going to settle here. There's no magic to Zum Uerige. If *I* can make a decent immitation given the limitations of my brewing skills and my apartment kitchen, anybody can. The But so few are willing to listen how, or to pass the first prerequisite of traveling to Dusseldorf and tasting it in its native setting. It's just a rather quirky procedure, an obsession with full attenuation, and a bunch of zealous hopheads running the place. If you can read German, visit Zum Uerige online at http://www.uerige.de. Even if you can't read German, the pictures are pretty. Unfortunately, the web site is rather short on recipe specifics. Roger Deschner University of Illinois at Chicago rogerd at uic.edu Aliases: USUICZ3P at IBMMAIL u52983 at uicvm.uic.edu ================== "Civilization was CAUSED by beer." ================== --Next_Part_SYNC746514EE43-- Received: from srvr20.engin.umich.edu (root at srvr20.engin.umich.edu [141.213.75.22]) by srvr5.engin.umich.edu (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id BAA11804 for ; Sat, 5 Feb 2000 01:05:52 -0500 (EST) Received: from synchro.com (cccox.ne.mediaone.net [24.218.136.73]) by srvr20.engin.umich.edu (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with SMTP id BAA24885 for ; Sat, 5 Feb 2000 01:05:51 -0500 (EST) From: "JudgeNet - the beer judge digest" To: "Digest Recipients" Reply-To: "JudgeNet - the beer judge digest" Subject: Digest for the period 02/04/00 - 02/05/00 Message-ID: Date: Sat, 05 Feb 2000 01:04:29 -0500 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/digest; boundary="Next_Part_SYNC746514EE43" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Hops: 1 Status: RO --Next_Part_SYNC746514EE43 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Table of contents ------------------------------------------------------ Alt thread in JudgeNet (Roger Deschner) --Next_Part_SYNC746514EE43 Content-Type: message/rfc822 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-Path: Received: from UICVM.UIC.EDU ([128.248.2.49]) by synchro.com with SMTP (Mailtraq/1.1.4.1073) id SYNC745414E9A6 for judge at SYNCHRO.COM; Fri, 04 Feb 2000 14:24:08 -0500 Received: by UICVM.UIC.EDU (IBM VM SMTP V2R4a) via spool with SMTP id 7593 ; Fri, 04 Feb 2000 13:23:52 CST Received: from UICVM (NJE origin U52983 at UICVM) by UICVM.UIC.EDU (LMail V1.2a/1.8a) with BSMTP id 5244; Fri, 4 Feb 2000 13:23:52 -0600 Date: Fri, 4 Feb 2000 12:00:42 CST From: "Roger Deschner " Reply-To: "JudgeNet - the beer judge digest" Errors-To: judge-owner at synchro.com Sender: judge at synchro.com To: JudgeNet - the beer judge digest Subject: Alt thread in JudgeNet Message-ID: X-Hops: 3 X-POST-MessageClass: 10; Mailing List Message I was warned about this thread which unfolded this past week while I was on a ski trip. Zum Uerige uses a malt bill with a majority of ordinary 2-row Pils malt. But it is a narrow majority. There is quite a bit of other malts, such as Vienna and Munich malts. The Black Patent so frequently listed is used only to adjust the color to no darker than the mid-teens. I think the exact malt bill varies depending on availability, price, etc., but in general it is a lot of 2-row Pils. The label (now, in 2000) does not lie. ------------------------------- BUT! -------------------------------- In 1997 (I think) the crop of their trademark, peppery, Spalt hops failed. It was totally unavailable, at anything short of robbery prices. They had to figure out a way to do without it for a year. I think they did a good bit of experimentation with the malt bill to compensate for the different hopping they used. They even dry-hopped I am told. The following year, the Spalt crop was OK, and they returned to their original recipe. I was last in Dusseldorf in May, 1999, and it was definitely the classic recipe. So, yes, there have been two (or more) different versions of Zum Uerige Altbier brewed in the last couple of years, but as of 1999, they had returned to their classic recipe. I think this is one of the causes of the present controversy. I brewed one batch of Altbier with the mostly-Munich recipe I've seen. Amazingly, it wasn't much different from the majority-2row recipe. It *IS* fully attenuated. The English-speaking assistant brewmaster who gave me a tour in 1995 emphasized that full attenuation is an overriding concern. Their yeast is a warm, top-fermenting strain, so to keep it working as they cold condition it, they do as much as they can to baby it and keep it from pooping out. This is primarily accomplished by limiting the temperature drop of beer just racked to the cold secondary to no more than 1 degree C per day. The sophisticated equipment they use to effect this is a "wimpy cooling system". (his exact words) "This allows the use of a malt bill which would normally produce a full-bodied beer, but achieves high attenuation anyway, with residual malt flavors." They're more picky about achieving full attenuation than they are as to the exact yeast strain, although I have brewed with their strain (thanks to Al Korzonas, Dan McConnell, and Tony Babinec) and it was excellent. It can't be too far from Wyeast 1007. Infection? They just don't worry about it much. When you get a beer up to 50 IBUs using all noble varieties, it resists infection well. This is another area where "Alt" means the old way - actually using hops as a disinfectant. Their square, open fermenter, and cool-ship in the attic open to outside air (looking a lot like the famous cool-ship in the attic at Cantillon, where infection is the goal), seem to invite infection, but those swing-top bottles will be fine. They actually cite this as an advantage of their high hopping levels. The mash procedure is a 3-step upward-infusion mash with stops (from my Z.U. tour notes) 48c (118f) 62c (144f) 72c (162f) 78c (172f) mash out This is very similar to the 3-step German mash described by Randy Mosher in his book "Brewer's Companion". See also the recipe in my Zymurgy article from Winter 1994, reprinted in 1997 in a "best of" collection. I recently helped brew the recipe from my article on a much larger scale, as a test batch at Lakefront Brewery in Milwaukee, and it came out much like Im Fuschen Alt. (available only at Tracks Tap in Milwaukee.) One Dusseldorf brewer, Schumacher, still does a triple decoction. Their beer varies a bit, but when it's on, it's one of the greats. The German government is trying to get all brewers to stop using decoction, since it is apparently fairly wasteful of energy, and the infusion mashes can produce good results using modern commercial malts. Schumacher resists, and I'm glad they do, just for the sake of tradition. Also, the energy-czar bureacrats in the gummint have to have one decoction brewery left, so they can say, "See, it really doesn't make much difference." This is an argument which rages on in various forums, and which I am not going to settle here. There's no magic to Zum Uerige. If *I* can make a decent immitation given the limitations of my brewing skills and my apartment kitchen, anybody can. The But so few are willing to listen how, or to pass the first prerequisite of traveling to Dusseldorf and tasting it in its native setting. It's just a rather quirky procedure, an obsession with full attenuation, and a bunch of zealous hopheads running the place. If you can read German, visit Zum Uerige online at http://www.uerige.de. Even if you can't read German, the pictures are pretty. Unfortunately, the web site is rather short on recipe specifics. Roger Deschner University of Illinois at Chicago rogerd at uic.edu Aliases: USUICZ3P at IBMMAIL u52983 at uicvm.uic.edu ================== "Civilization was CAUSED by beer." ================== --Next_Part_SYNC746514EE43--