Very generally speaking, Vienna malt has been described as being “in between” the very pale Bohemian (pilsner) malt and the darker Bavarian (Munich) malt. When we look at the color of beers from around the same time period, Vienna lager seems to have been slightly paler than what we’d expect from Vienna lager nowadays-roughly between 4 to 6 SRM (about 8 to 12 EBC)-which was still a bit darker than pale Bohemian lagers at the time, which were typically between 2.7 and 3.7 SRM. For the regular lager beer, it was cured at a lower temperature (176☏/80☌) for the märzen at 185☏ (85☌), while for stronger beer, the temperature was as high as 196–200☏ (91–93☌). Not all malt was cured at the same temperature. On the other hand, we have reports from Anton Dreher’s second brewery in Hungary that the malt was dried with final temperatures from 176–200☏ (80–93☌). The same historic sources that talk about these issues also describe the final kilning (or curing) at temperatures lower (167–189☏/75–87☌) than what modern Vienna malt would be cured at (194–203☏/90–95☌). Increased humidity promotes the formation of melanoidin at higher kilning temperatures. Up to the 1880s, some of these kilns had issues with extracting hot air well enough-and most importantly, extracting moisture quickly enough. The state-of-the-art kilns in the late 19th and early 20th centuries were two-floor, hot-air kilns. Some craft breweries still choose to use typical Continental hop varieties, while others put their spin on Vienna lager by brewing it with more fruity New World hops.ĬBB // How close is today’s widely available Vienna malt to what Anton Dreher and his contemporaries were malting, based on the information available?ĪK // Ultimately, this is hard to determine. More recent beers seem to go back to the classically kilned malts, often accentuated with only moderate amounts of specialty malts, if any at all.īoth categories have in common that they typically use infusion mashing, either single-step or multistep, and, of course, brewers nowadays have much better-attenuating lager yeasts that produce drier beer at a quicker turnaround. Those developed at a time when Vienna malt was hard to get or not of the right quality-in the 1980s and 1990s-often try to imitate the typical character with specialty malts, such as dark caramel malts. I think the Vienna lager that craft breweries brew nowadays can be put into two categories. ![]() AK // Nineteenth-century Vienna lager followed a very classic scheme of lager-brewing of the period: a single type of malt, kilned to the right specifications triple-decoction mashing, how it was originally practiced in Bavaria, then refined by Viennese brewers quality hops fermentation at low temperatures, with a yeast that produced a fairly sweet and full-bodied beer and long lagering periods of several months.
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