Last week (just scroll down a little), we ended up by talking about Oktoberfest and how it’s a sort of benchmark for the modernization of the Bavarian agrarian system. The impressive thing about Oktoberfest is not that it has been going on for 204 years. The impressive thing is how quickly it was adopted in other parts of the country. While Bavaria may have been out in front, Wurttemberg eventually launched a festival in Stuttgart.

The Canstatter Volksfest started in 1818. This is because the winter was so bad in 1816 that it negated any attempt at growing crops that year. The people of Wurttemberg were starving because there had been snow on the ground until May. The King was basically dependent on grain deliveries from his brother in law in Russia to prevent starvation, riots and uprising. In 1817, they decided that there should be a harvest festival. There should also be a new Agricultural University. These were Monarchs prolonging their reign by making concessions to science and rationality. An educated populous is notoriously bad for a Monarchy, however, one makes concessions when faced with an unruly mob with pitchforks and torches.

This period of privation, incidentally, was one of the reasons for German settlement in Kitchener and Waterloo in the 1820’s. It’s one of the reasons Ontario looks the way it does. In fact, it’s why the second largest Oktoberfest in the world takes place there.

Agricultural science takes a long time to propagate, or at least it did in the early 19th century. Gregor Mendel would not actually establish genetic heredity for another forty years. For the time being German Brewing was like German Cuisine: Taking advantage of scientific modernization, improved technique and vastly improved production to make strides ahead. Another similarity is that for the time being they were largely stuck with “landrace” ingredients.

In an age like we are in with GMO products basically everywhere and Monsanto issuing patents on their designs for plants, it’s a good idea to explain the concept of landrace. Landrace more or less means that the plant or animal variety that you’re using has been there since time immemorial; since before records were kept. There was a time when it wasn’t so easy to transplant crops around and grow them in greenhouse polytubes and glasshouse nurseries. There was a time when you were more or less stuck with what there was on the land when you got there.

Germany had landrace hops. They were actually spoiled for choice on the landrace hops. There are four basic varieties that we’re going to look at: Spalt, Tettnang, Hallertau and Saaz.

(I know what you’re going to say! Isn’t Saaz a Czech hop? It is named after a Czech town called Zatec, but Saaz is the German name for that town. Plzen, which is where you find a lot of all Saaz beers is less than 300 kilometers from Munich. One of the developments they enjoyed was trains. Let it go.)

Hop Variety % Humulene % Myrcene % Caryophyllene % Farnese % Alpha Acids Spalt 21.5 20.0 12.5 12.5 3-5.5 Tettnang 22.5 22.5 8.0 14.0 3-5 Hallertau 40.0 32.0 11.0 0 2.5-5.0 Saaz 42.5 22.5 11.0 13.0 2.5-4.5

Don’t worry. You’re not going to be forced to do math.

In terms of the hops that were landraces in Germany, there are a few things we can tell from this information. The Alpha Acids are pretty low. These days, if you want a bitter beer, you put hops with high alpha acids in at the start of the boil. The Germans would have had difficulty making really bitter beer (by modern standards, anyway) without using a ton of whole leaf hops. The historical hopping rate for Pilsner Urquell was apparently 400-460 grams per hectoliter. That is before hop pellets. That’s a lot of trub at the bottom of the kettle. The beer in the region didn’t really get more bitter than 40 IBU, 45 tops.

If bitterness comes from Alpha Acids, then aroma comes from the oils in the hops. Those are the four columns in the middle. Now, typically aroma doesn’t survive when you add hops early in the boil. The byproducts of Myrcene in particular tend to disappear in a flash when added to the boil. When you dry hop or add hops at flame-out, you get a better result. Think of it like making a stew. If you add fresh herbs at the beginning, they’re going to get overpowered and cooked down. If you add fresh herbs at the end, you can actually taste the freshness of the herbs.

Myrcene’s byproducts are things like menthol, citral, citronellol, geraniol and linalool. More importantly, they are responsible for all of the aromas in your favorite American dry hopped beers. Modern hop varieties have been brew to extract specific byproducts from Myrcene. Take Citra, for example: Grapefruit, Lemon, Lime, Passion Fruit, Lychee. 65% Myrcene!

You’ll notice that the hops in the chart don’t have a lot of Myrcene. Every single one of the German landrace hops are higher in Humulene than Myrcene. The things that you tend to get out of Humulene’s byproducts are earthy, woody, or spicy. Humulene occurs in things like Bay Leaves and Tobacco and other kinds of herbs. Knee level forest floor stuff.

It’s also good to mention Caryophyllene. It mostly comes across as dry wood, spice and pepper. Some new varieties that you will have tried have bred it out completely. Galaxy and Nelson Sauvin are good examples of hops that don’t have Caryophyllene in any reasonable quantity.

What all this means is that the hops that German brewers had access to at the beginning of the 19th century were herbal, spicy, woody, peppery and potentially a little bit floral. It would have been more or less impossible to make a beer that tasted like an orange without adding some oranges. Landrace hops meant that they were stuck with these four varieties of hops.

That is a good thing because all of the other ingredients in Bavaria were also landrace ingredients. Everything that the peasants were using in their food and everything that would be adopted into the idealized festhallen fare we recognize as German food today was suited to the same terroir as the hops.

Let’s think about the herbs that German cuisine used for flavouring at the beginning of the 19th century: parsley, thyme, bay leaves, juniper and caraway seeds. They also had salt and pepper.

Herb Aromatic and Flavour Components Parsley Phellandrene, Myristicin, Myrcene, Menthatriene Thyme Pinene, Cymene, Linalool, Myrcene, Thymol Bay Leaves Cineole, Pinene, Linalool, Methyl Eugenol, Humulene Juniper Pinene, Sabinene, Myrcene, Caraway Seeds Limonene, Pinene, Caryophyllene Black Pepper Sabinene, Pinene, Limonene, Caryophyllene, Piperene

From a beer and food pairing point of view, this explains just a huge amount about how German beer and food culture develops. For the most part, the beer that they’re making is going to be a complement to the food because the hops contain all of the same flavor components as the food from the region.

The brewers and beer drinkers did not know about hydrocarbons and terpenoids and aromatic compounds. At least, they didn’t have those words for them. They knew that what they liked and which things tasted good and that certain things went together. Most of these people would never have travelled much more than 100 miles from their homes. They would not have had context for other cuisines. What they would do over the course of the next century is refine the beer being made based on technological innovation to make the beer and food work better together.

We’ll talk about the refinement and development next time.