Everything you’ve read about Dampfbier is probably wrong (including this)
There is a famous line in the film, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend,” and this is true for Dampfbier.
One of the things I love about beer is its history. The history of beer is the history of people and the history of culture. Before we begin this analysis of Dampfbier are several German words you need to know:
1. Dampf = Steam
2. Hefe = yeast
3. Weizen = Wheat
4. Weiss = White
5. Helles = Bright (meaning light)
Don’t feel bad if you don’t know anything about Dampbier. I still meet beer geeks who are unfamiliar with this dead-style of beer. The legend goes, “There was a poor Bavarian community that had to save all of its wheat for making bread and the only yeast they could store was from a hefeweizen brewery. So, to make beer, they used the hefeweizen yeast with an all-barley grain bill. The fermentation of the beer was so vigorous that the people said it looked like steam coming off the beer and so they called it, “Dampfbier” with “dampf” being the German word for “steam.” (Also note: Dampfbier has no relation at all to Anchor’s Steam Beer or California Commons).
Of course, there are several problems with the legend:
· Reinheitsgebot — The German beer prutiy law of 1516. The Reinheitsgebot law said that beer could only be made with three ingredients: barley, hops, and water. When yeast was discovered, yeast was added to the list. This law did two things, it meant that beer wouldn’t be cheapened or made unhealthy with adjuncts (think about copper oxide being used to color Absinth in France causing poisoning and madness). It also meant that bakers wouldn’t have to compete with brewers for wheat and kept wheat prices lower.
· There was an exception to the Reinheitsgebot law — hefeweizen. About 30 years after the Reinheitsgebot law was set in Bavaria, the son of Duke Albrecht V carved out an except for the Degenberger family allowing them to brew wheat beers. The Degenberger family had a monopoly on wheat brewing through the 19th century.
· Yeast was not discovered until 1680 when Leeuwenhoeck observed it under a microscope but fermentation was not understood until Pasteur discovered the process of fermentation in 1857.
· The first evidence of a “Dampfbier” style dates to 1837.
· Pilsen malt, a very light yellow malt, was first created in 1840. Before 1840, most German beers were darker in color. Many beer style began having lighter versions in the years following 1840 and other lighter malts were created. The reason Pilsen malt would have become popular with brewers is because it has significantly more enzymatic power than darker kilned malts, which means mashing grains would happen faster, require fewer pounds of malt, and produce higher alcohol beers.
· Bock beer dates to the 13th century. Einbocks began being brewed in Bavaria in the 17th century. Lighter colored bocks, Maibock/Hellesbock, became popular in Bavaria as Pilsen malt became more available.
There is another legend about Dampfbier. This one says that the “dampf” comes from using steam in the process of making the beer. This does have some possibilities. Steam engines date to 1698. However, this legend says that steam heat was used in the brewing process. There are several ways that steam boilers are used in modern breweries:
· Steam-mashing of grains.
· Heating mash water for water-mashing grains.
· Sterilization/sanitation of brewing tools.
· Cleaning kegs
· Using steam to boil the wort (unfermented beer).
Of these, using pressurized steam pipes to boil beer is possible with 19th century technology and scientific knowledge. It only takes about 10psi of pressure to hit 240F (115C) in a steam pipe. But copper as a steam pipe presents other problems. If raised to 15psi of pressure, the steam is at 250F (121C) & lead solder melts. Conversely, if cast iron pipe was used, as was common for water distribution in the 19th century, it would have corroded under the constant presence of hot water and imparted off flavors.
In my option, unless someone discovers a manuscript that explicitly states why it was called “dampf,” we will probably never know.
So far, conclusions we can draw:
1. It doesn’t matter if a community was rich or poor, they couldn’t brew with wheat in 1857 unless they were members of the Degenberger family.
2. Its unlikely in 1857, a beer would have had a “hefe” appellation on it unless it was being used to denote the cloudiness of the beer as opposed to beers that were clear. At this time, beers would have been referred to as “Weissbiers” made with lighter base malts and not weissbiers made with darker base malts.
Since the roll of yeast in beer was not well understood, it’s likely in the mid-19th century, yeasts are being chosen for their fermenter temperature requirements. There are lager (bottom fermenting) yeasts that work best between 45F and 55F (7C and 13C) and ale (top fermenting) yeasts that work best between 60F and 70F (15C and 21C). Lagers also generally require a cold storage period near freezing. Hefeweizen yeast, believe it or not, will actually ferment beer as cold as 50F (10C). It will produce clove/spicy flavors and no estery banana/bubblegum flavors.
This presents an interesting possibility. Pretend you are in mid-19th century Bavaria. You want to brew light colored beers but can’t use wheat. So you decide to make weissbier. They are popular, it’s a good choice.
Unfortunately, you don’t have a place cold enough to lager them, so you need to source an ale yeast. A hefeweizen yeast is a good bet because you can fermemnt with it year-round with ambient temperatures.
You call it “dampfbier” for whatever reason.
This new proto-style fails to catch on and quickly dies out as hefeweizen beers start to become unpopular in the 1870s with the invention of refrigeration and light colored lagers become more popular.
Fast forward three decades and the first weizenbock beer is brewed & sold in Bavaria in 1907. Weizenbocks are bock beers with 40% — 60% sheet malt and fermented with Hefeweizen yeast.
What’s the bottom line here?
While there isn’t a lot of hard-factual information dampfbier, there is a lot of well-known beer history for Bavaria during the time period. To use a metaphor, we can take the pieces of several different puzzles, hit them several times with a hammer, and create a rough picture.
It’s my opinion that if we could take a trip back in time, the most likely form a historical dampfbier would have taken is a Maibock/Hellesbock fermented like a weizenbock. Some would have emphasized the banana/bubblegum flavors while others would have emphasized the spicy/clove flavors. But at the longest, if dampfbier existed as a, “style,” the longest it existed was from when Pilsen malt was invented (1840) until the first weizenbock was sold (1907) and might have ended as early as the monopoly on wheat brewing ended in 1872.
Sources for this article include:
