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Recipe: Bamberger Lagerbier 1818

Based on an early 19th century recipe, this might well have been the kind of thing locals would’ve drunk fresh from the keller. It includes an older technique called hopfenrösten, which means the brewers boiled the hops separately in a small amount of wort.

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Photo: Joe Stange
Photo: Joe Stange

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From Andreas Krennmair’s Historic German and Austrian Beers for the Home Brewer—more on that book here—we’ve adapted this recipe for a typical bottom-fermented beer from early 19th-century Bamberg.

If you’d been around then and gone to the keller for it, you might well have called it kellerbier. The process includes an antiquated, batch sparge–like mash of two runnnings plus an old, local method—called hopfenrösten—of boiling the hops separately in a small amount of wort.

For more on the kellerbier tradition and what makes these rustic Franconian lagers so distinctive, see The Bier from the Keller.

ALL-GRAIN

Batch size: 5 gallons (19 liters)
Brewhouse efficiency: 72%
OG: 1.059 (14.5°P)
FG: 1.014 (3.6°P)
IBUs: 36
ABV: 6%

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Lager Levels Up (Fall 2024)
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Lager Levels Up (Fall 2024)
From leafing through the archives of old-fashioned brewing traditions, on a quest to recapture lost flavor, to pushing the envelope of modern techniques, seeking new expressions and undiscovered permutations, today’s independent brewers are thirsty for more, ready to expand the lager canon.
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