How was EU beer served before kegs?

[sstacey]

A lot has been written about how English beer was cellared and served in the days before kegs, much thanks to CAMRA for keeping the history alive.

But I have almost no idea how beer was stored and served in northern Europe, around Germany and the Netherlands. Was it stored in small casks (to use it quickly before spoilage) and served by gravity? I have only ever seen English hand pumps, despite being invented by a Dutch guy. Does anyone know the history? I imagine gravity fed lager is delicious.

 

[real_beer]

A lot has been written about how English beer was cellared and served in the days before kegs, much thanks to CAMRA for keeping the history alive.

But I have almost no idea how beer was stored and served in northern Europe, around Germany and the Netherlands. Was it stored in small casks (to use it quickly before spoilage) and served by gravity? I have only ever seen English hand pumps, despite being invented by a Dutch guy. Does anyone know the history? I imagine gravity fed lager is delicious.

The only thing I know about German beer serving is that it seems to have always been done by very attractive full bosomed serving wenches, maybe this was tactic by the landlords to distract people from seeing how the beer was put in the glass in the first place. This is obviously only my childish thoughts on the matter but seriously it's a great question you raise and I'd be very interested to learn more about it too. A very good new original topic thread, good one SPS :beer:

 

[wereprawn]

http://pilsnerurquell.com/uk/article/wooden-barrel-events

 

[MHB]

Barrels, but with a pitch lining. If you haven't come across pitch its a lot like road tar, black and can be melted, when it sets its glassy water proof and gas tight.
Well pitched barrels don't let the beer get anywhere near the wood so you don't get as many infections and can keep the fizz in.
Another link from the same group as wereprawn posted http://pilsnerurquell.com/uk/article/pitching-barrels
It strikes me as a bit odd that since Roman Imperial times we have been brewing beer and putting it in lined wooded barrels - going to great lengths to keep the beer away from the wood - along comes the American craft movement and what do you know we are putting beer in unlined barrels like wine makers do.
Mark

 

[TimT]

Drunk fresh, usually, if it was light beer (table beer or small beer). And by drunk fresh, I mean, maybe a day or so after fermentation begins.

Considering these beers were usually served around the house maybe the tendency was to take scoops out of them every morning until they were done.

Aged for a very long time in barrels if it was higher gravity beer (strong beer).

Beers couldn't always be carbed - the basic idea, sugar added to a fermented beer giving it an extra zing must have been known quite early, but if you weren't able to bottle it (my understanding is they could be expensive) there was little point. But there was another way of carbing it - the practice of gyling, adding fresh wort to an older beer. The yeast went to work and the beer carbed up a bit more, but would presumably retain some of the sweetness of the fresh wort.

 

[TimT]

I had a little experiment going on in my house last month where I had table beer for breakfast several mornings running. Just kept it in a pot on the kitchen bench and took scoops out of it every morning. I intended to keep it running for a while, and do some experiments with gyling, but I haven't got around to that yet. I probably should have drunk it even fresher (I started drinking it almost three days in).

 

[Benn]

I had a little experiment going on in my house last month where I had table beer for breakfast several mornings running.

Need a housemate?

 

[Bribie G]

I've drunk German Beer from wooden casks but served at the bar via fonts under gas pressure. In the mid 1970s I was staying in a small town in Bavaria and out the back of a pub, looking for the Gents, I strayed into a yard with heaps of empties, some modern kegs and others wooden barrels.

Wooden barrels (pitch lined as MHB points out) could hold pressure quite well and until the 1960s were the main storage for draught beer in Europe, the USA and here in Australia.
However they were simply the container, not intended for conditioning of the brew.




XXXX is still available direct from the wood in a couple of QLD pubs to this day. Very nice too, unpasteurised and not as fizzy as the keg version.
Until about 6 years ago XXXX used to put out a bottled and canned version of the old wooden barrel brew, note the double tap on the barrel which would have been used by barmen and ladies in the rush hour.



Before the modern giant-can-o-baked-beans keg shape, most Australian kegs were actually just metal copies of casks, complete with spile hole and tap hole, and at my wedding in Bundaberg in 1978 we had one up on a trestle at the reception and it served just fine on gravity. Most country hall dances, weddings, and many a BBQ featured a metal cask of XXXX on gravity. If you trawl through our own AHB site you'll come across some that are still around as mash tuns or boilers.

Back to Europe I think Kolsch is still served direct off barrels, and the first Oktoberfest brew is tapped off a barrel.. but they seem to have a different tap location with the barrel upright. I'd guess that was the main method of serving until the late 19th century when gas became universal.



Interestingly PIlsner Urquell have gone to bright tank with electric pump in their bigger outlets, I'd guess the beer as served would be more like the old style before use of CO2

 

[MHB]

The beer tank is becoming very popular around Europe (and NZ), it is more about the economics of kegs than anything else.
Last time I did some research on kegs the worlds lowest Vol in kegs to Vol produced was held by Fiji Bitter at about 2.5:1, mind you its a smallish Island and I suspect they "encourage" the local police to jump up and down on your testicles a bit if they catch you appropriating or misusing their kegs.
Here (from memory) it was 4.5-5:1 and the rate of loss was a matter of concern to the breweries.

The tanks are filled up from a truck like a small petrol tanker, so no kegs and no kegs coming back to the brewery which you have to pay someone to collect, service, clean and refill.

There are experiments in progress where the beer is delivered as an over gravity "syrup" in a bag and box arrangement, diluted with cold carbonated water on the way to the tap - basically a big post mix type of arrangement, something to look forward to?
I suspect we will see some thing similar here over the next couple of years.

Mark

 

[sstacey]

Hi Everyone, thanks for the really good posts and all the information. Really interesting.

If served from wooden barrels by gravity, presumably the german beers were served at a higher temperature than is typical today? The English developed the nice system of keeping the beer in the cool cellar while pumping it up to the bar, but it seems that continental lagers either needed fast turn over or would have been consumed relatively warm in the summer (if the cask sat upstairs at the bar). Is this correct?

 

[MHB]

I don't know that there is a yes/no answer, some times and places would have been different and it depends how far back in history you want to look.
Lager, Clear Glassware and Modern refrigeration all came into vogue fairly contemporaneously, there is probably a large element of them being interdependent to.
Before refrigeration Lager was brewed in the cooler months then it was stored (Lagan - store) in deep cold caves, It was probably kept in cellars and its worth remembering that there have been Ice Cellars since classic times, were people cropped ice from lakes and stored it for warmer weather.

Lager as is in cold fermenting was known as far back as the 14th Centaury, but it wasn't really discovered as a separate type of yeast and a way to make a unique style of beer until the middle of the 19th centaury. The first patent for a commercial ice making machine was registered is 1856, Josef Groll released the first commercially made Pilsner (lager) (Pilsner Urquell) in 1842.

As you can see it was a pretty interesting time for beer - probably as entertaining as the "craft beer" revolution that is in full swing right now.
Go bask past 1800 and we are talking about Ale - most of it infected with Lacto and Brett and a bunch of wild yeast, yes people complained in the newspapers when brewers started cleaning it up - thought the body and complexity had been taken out of the beer.

I am a bit of a beer history buff, and yes Josef Groll is my brewing hero (well theirs Pasteur and Hansen and ...)
No doubt the introduction of the new brewing techniques and lager strains didn't happen everywhere at once so how beer was made, stored and served would have ben going through a lot of transition though the second half of the 1800's until well into the 20th centenary and its still changing.
Mark

 

[fraser_john]

<snip> bag and box arrangement, diluted with cold carbonated water on the way to the tap - basically a big post mix type of arrangement, something to look forward to?<snip>

Sounds positively awful

 

[wynnum1]

What about glazed clay pots how long have they been around .

 

[Bribie G]

Tank beer was universal in the North and Midlands in the UK from the 50s to the 80s, because most of the pubs were owned by a few big breweries such as Scottish and Newcastle, Vaux / Lorimers etc it made perfect sense to send road tankers out to the pubs a couple of times a week and pipe the beer into the bright tanks in the cellars.

Here's an interesting article:

Where I lived in Newcastle Upon Tyne nearly every pub was a tank pub, I grew up across the road from a pub (the Peregrine) and remember it being built when I was 9, and the cellar tanks being delivered and fitted, then a few times a week the tanker would roll up and chuck the hoses down the trapdoor.

Tank beer was fresh, unpasteurised and not too fizzy, a sort of half way house between real ale and keg.
Interesting to see that UK breweries such as Meantime are hopping back into it.

 

[TimT]

Wynnum, interesting you should say that. Apparently amphora brewing is making a comeback. The results sound intriguing.

The tall, narrow body of the pot is an advantage for fermentation. When yeast get to work converting sugar into alcohol, it creates a convection-like current that mesmerizes homebrewers when they peer into their carboys. This cyclical movement is encouraged by the design of our pots, thousands of years in the making...

We see evidence that our clay amphoras add minerals to the beer, increasing its body. We also have more control of micro-aeration as we experiment with different ways of kilning the pots. And we find that the beer captures the local terroir flavors from the clay vessels themselves....

Makes me want to make an amphora for myself!

 

[jlm]

OT-ing back to the tank brew........weren't CUB doing that with Carton Draught at a handful of venues around MELB? I'm sure I read something about super fresh CD out of a tank a year or so back?

 

[manticle]

Funnily enough, it tastes a lot like carlton draught.

 

[jlm]

The hell you say. Did the idea take off though?

 

[manticle]

Beer deluxe had a big wanky tank and pipe thing which is where I tried it.

I'm not opposed to the occasional commercial pale lager but the cd fresh tank thing is a big attempt to wankify it.

That tank was there for a while (probably still is) but I never saw it anywhere else.

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

Beer deluxe had a big wanky hipster tank and pipe thing which is where I tried it.

I'm not opposed to the occasional commercial pale lager but the cd fresh tank thing is a big attempt to wankify it. bring in hipsters

That tank was there for a while (probably still is) but I never saw it anywhere else.