Schwarzbier - Black is the New Black
From the darkness of history…
It is 1774, and the world is about to catch fire.
In the nascent British Colonies, a protest movement led to a violent civil disturbance known as the ‘Boston Tea Party’. In France the poor are thoroughly fed up with the 1%. And in Germany, a failed lawyer named Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is writing a novel called ‘The Sorrows of Young Werther’, which will make him famous and spark the entire romantic literary movement. Johann considered himself lucky to be alive, considering a few years earlier he had been a near convalescent due to illness. For months at a time he survived on just two things: Bread, and Black Beer from a 200 year old brewery called Kostritzer Erbschenke. We know the style of beer he was drinking today by the name Schwarzbier.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
Blacker than the blackest black
By the time Goethe turned to Kostritzer Schwarzbier as a cure-all, it was already a long established brewery making a long established style of beer, perhaps among the oldest beer styles in Europe. Schwarzbier translates directly as ‘Black Beer’, and was given this name due to its intensely dark color.
Even during a time period where nearly all beer made was very dark amber to deep brown in color, Schwarzbier was noted for its color, described by the geographer Anton Friedrich Büsching as being reddish to black in color. It confounded Busching when he first saw it being served at the Duke Reuss’ table, as he wondered why dark red wine was being served at quantity in beer glasses. Even today Schwarzbier is a beautiful and rich dark brown to black, with ruby highlights when held up to the light.
Hold the Coffee Please
Emerging even before such noteworthy historic dark beers as British porter and Stout, Schwarzbier has a refined character that defines and separates it from it’s closest style cousin, Munich Dunkel. Whereas Dunkel has a richer and maltier body:
Schwarzbier is notably drier, with a light roast bite not unlike espresso coffee.
Schwarzbier gets its color from the careful use of black malts, typically dehusked barley, so as to avoid an astringent note in the finished beer that would come from the use of barley with a husk. Dunkel typically does not.
Schwarzbier can also brewed via a very late addition of roasted malt to the mash, so that only the color is leached during sparging, reducing the roast character in the finished beer and leaving a more crisp beer in the bottle. Dunkel typically features NO roasted barley.
If there were ever a black beer to drink during the summer, this is it. The body is lean and light and it is easy to put down pokal pilsner glass after pokal.
To contrast Schwarzbier with its closest cousin in terms of flavor, Dry Irish Stout, the roast is less intense, and there is slightly less acidic bite. Schwarzbier also has a smoothness to it that Irish Stout lacks, thanks to the lager yeast that is used to ferment the beer in its modern incarnation.
Dark Origins
While beers like Porter have very easily identifiable emergence periods in history, for Schwarzbier things are a little bit more...murky. Humans have been making beer in Central Europe as long as humans have occupied central Europe, and dark beer has by and large been the order of the day. Before modern malt production technology, the malted barley used to make beer was typically dried over open fires. This meant the malt was characteristically smoky and dark, and thus, so was the beer made from it. Dark beers weren’t unusual or unique like they are considered by most of the public now, they were just beer. Beer was brown, and everybody knew that.
Breaking the Paradigm
The emergence of lighter kilning technologies in the british isles, and their eventual introduction into European lager brewing by Anton Dreher and Gabriel Sedlemeyer (the creators of Vienna Lager and Munich Dunkel respectively) revolutionized brewing on the European continent. Beer no longer had to be smoky and dark, and ‘light’ colored beer like Vienna Lager and Munich Dunkel exploded in popularity.
But some regions of Germany held out against this new trend towards lighter colored beers, notably Thuringia in Central Germany. Rejecting the new lighter colored malts of their Southern cousins in Bavaria, they kept making beer that was very dark in color. The brewers at places like Kostritzer and the other Schwarzbier breweries happily adopted the newfangled ‘lager’ yeast from Bavaria however. The smoothness and cleanness that lager yeast brought to beer was undeniable, and the Schwarzbier breweries took to it wholeheartedly.
An Iron Curtain
Kostritzer is one of several breweries who never stopped making extremely dark beer in Germany, even after Pilsner became an international craze and eliminated most local styles. The most famous Schwarzbier brewery, Kostritzer was first noted in official documents in 1543, and has existed continuously since then. The Counts of Reuss took over in 1696, and were elevated to the rank of Prince in 1806 by Emperor Franz II. Otto Von Bismarck is notable for being a fan of the brewery during this time period after the Napoleonic Wars, and the brewery became known as ‘The Princely Brewery of Kostritz”.
After the devastation of the Second World War, things changed. The state of Thuringia fell under the Soviet occupation zone, and the brewery was nationalized in 1948. Even throughout the long and dark years of Soviet rule, Kostritzer was left alone, aside from some desperately needed renovations that began in 1979 and ended in 1990.
With the fall of the Iron Curtain and the reformation of the state of Thuringia, Kostrizer became a capitalist entity again, and was purchased by the German brewery Bitburger in 1991. At that time Schwarzbier was only 7% of the output of the brewery, but Bitburger saw great potential in the brand and made it a priority nationwide in Germany. The result was an explosion in sales and a dramatic resurgence of Schwarzbier as a style in its own right.
A Bright Future
Since becoming part of the western world again, Schwarzbier is more popular than ever. The brand is exported all over the world and enjoys its proper perch in Germany as a treasured historical style, as well as a modern masterpiece. While Schwarzbier could do with more popularity in the United States, the style is surprisingly popular in Japan, where consumers enjoy the clean and smooth character along with the moderate roast.
Schwarzbier with Tacos
Pairings Please
When it comes to pairings with Schwarzbier, Thuringian sausage is ideal and has a history stretching almost as far back as Schwarzbier. Thuringian sausage is low in fat compared to most german sausages (25% as opposed to 50% and up in other locales), and that lean character matches up with the austerenss of Schwarzbier quite nicely. The unique spices, including caraway and marjoram, add a brightening note to Schwarzbier when it is consumed with the sausage, and it is traditional to only use beer to cool down the grill while charring the meat.
A more modern pairing though, is flourless chocolate cake. The bittersweet chocolate of the cake matches up well with the malts used to make the beer, and the dryness of the beer adds a nice counterpoint to the sweetness of the cake, making the latter more palatable.
Five to Try:
It is difficult to come up with five good Schwarzbiers to recommend that can be easily found, as there are still not a lot of producers of the style and most of them are very regional. That being said, a determined effort will lead any person on the path to excellent Schwarzbier, and it is a worthwhile search to pursue.
Köstritzer Schwarzbier - Köstritzer Schwarzbierbrauerei
The original and arguably still the best. A standard in Germany for hundreds of years and going as strongly today as it ever has. Dry and quaffable, with fine notes of espresso and roast. Drink it during the summer, but the beer is equally good during winter, fall, and spring.
Baba Black Lager - Uinta Brewing Company
One of the longest established American examples of the style. Dark mahogany brown in color, with notes of roasted malts and dark chocolate.
Black Radish Dark Lager - Weeping Radish Eco Farm and Brewery
A near forgotten classic and one of the first great American craft beers, now very difficult to find. Originating on the sheltered Outer Banks of North Carolina, immigrant Uli Benniwitz started his brewery in the early 1980s in emulation of the small breweries dotted across his home in Bavaria. Unfortunately, it was illegal to start a brewpub in North Carolina during this time, so Uli lobbied the state legislature until the law was changed and he could finally start his brewery. Black Radish is clean with no astringency, has a very dark amber color, and a lightly roasty taste.
Coedo Shikkoku - Coedo
A Japanese Schwarzbier, Shikkoku is a Japanese word that evokes the jet-black color of onyx. Mild and smooth, this beer is easy to consume in quantity.
Mönchshof Schwarzbier - Kulmbacher Brauerei AG
Underappreciated and not exactly easy to find, Monschoff might be the best German Schwarzbier. With a touch more richness than Kostritzer, Monschoff lends itself to more pairing options, and can hold up well to heavy sauces as well as fried foods. Look for the swing-top bottle and you will have found it. Ben
