The Making of a Classic: Schneider Weisse
During this time of pandemic, when we have more time for reading than sampling new beers, I thought it would be a great time to explore some classic, much imitated (but rarely equaled) beers and what makes them tick. Click here to see other beers in the series.
Here it is the first week of August and I have neglected a profile of what might arguably be the classic summer beer style: Bavarian weissbier. It earns this status both through the ale itself—effervescent, light, quenching—but also the culture that surrounds it: the ancient Bavarian ritual of sipping from half-liter vase-shaped glasses in shade-dappled biergartens. For many in Germany, this scene defines summertime.
A lot of breweries make weissbiers, and some are served worldwide. Yet if we go looking for the classic example, the ur-weiss of the modern era, all roads lead to Kelheim.
Almost Lost
The ancestors of the current style lived a very long time ago—long enough that their origins are murky. By one account, they were Bohemian in origin, beers made for nobility, dating to around 1400. A hundred years later weissbier entered (or had its origins in) the town of Schwarzach near the modern Czech border. There, Hans VI, the Duke of Degensberg set up the first and only weizen brewery and thereafter the rights to brew the beer was restricted by ducal decree—the regal lineage that continued for centuries. In 1602, the Degensberg line died out and Maximilian I, Duke of Bavaria, decided to expand the ducal right to a few other specially designated breweries.
Kelheim is a bit north of the hop fields in Hallertau, in the midpoint of a triangle connecting Munich, Nuremberg, and Pilsen, Czechia.
Wheat ales enjoyed a very long period of popularity, selling quite well despite the brewing limitations through the 17th and 18th centuries. At that point weissbier was four hundred years old and had been a popular regional style for at least half that time. Not a bad run! (By comparison, pilsners have only been popular about 150 years). It’s not shocking the style saw an inevitable turn in popularity, and that came around the turn of the 19th century. The rise of lagers through the 1800s did weizens more violence.
A big part of the decline in popularity was the restriction in who could brew it. Once weissbier started to decline in popularity, market forces could do little to rescue it. Fortunately, a daring brewer named Georg Schneider gambled that wheat ales could be revived. He managed to buy a Munich wheat brewery with a legal lease to produce in 1855 and began a crusade to end brewing restrictions. He finally succeeded in 1872. By that time, there were very few breweries still making the style and there’s a very good chance it would have died out altogether without a champion like Schneider devoted to saving it. The process took a long time: even as late as 1960, it amounted to only 3 percent of Bavaria’s annual production.
A Brewery Making Only Weissbier
Because of the bizarre law restricting who could make weissbier, entire breweries were devoted to making them. In 1927, the Schneider family bought the old Weisses Brauhaus in Kelheim, one of the old traditional facilities where weissbier had formerly been made. That became Schneider’s sole brewery following the destruction of the original Munich site in WWII.
This history is central to Schneider’s identity. In part that has to do with keeping the style alive, but perhaps even more centrally because the only kind of beer Schneider makes is wheat beer. That’s the part brewer Hans-Peter Drexler emphasized when I visited the brewery. “We have the traditional wheat beer brewing system. It is very important to have the right equipment. It’s the same system as a hundred years before—the only difference is one hundred years ago they had wooden vessels and we have stainless steel.” Drexler has been with Schneider since 1982 and has been its master brewer since 1990. I have the sense that if you cut him, weissbier would pour out.
Even more impressively, until quite recently, because of the unusual way wheat beer is made, it’s the only kind of beer that could be made here. Why? Drexler describes the process.
“We do the traditional wheat beer brewing system. We start of course in the brewhouse, and after the brewhouse we move the wort to the open fermenters. After 5-6 days or so, we move straight from the first fermentation to the bottling. On the way, between fermentation and bottling, we add the food, the spiese, and that’s it. Then we close the bottle and have the second fermentation in the bottle and after three weeks maturation in the bottle, it’s finished.”
Most breweries don’t have open fermentation, of course. That’s an important part of the beer, but what’s really remarkable is that after bubbling away in those open fermenters, they immediately bottle the beer. It doesn’t go to a tank to settle or condition at all. In 2008, they expanded the brewery to be able to make kristalweizen and alkoholfrei weissbier, for which they needed conditioning tanks. Until then, the brewery had never needed them. It is a weissbier brewery through and through.
Schneider Weisse
Because of its familiarity, we don’t often stop to consider how weird Bavarian weissbiers are. The original hazies, they are opaque as milkshakes. Unlike hazies, they’re light and highly effervescent. What really distinguishes them, however, are vibrant banana esters and spicy, usually clove-like phenols. Compared to the sedate lagers made elsewhere in Bavaria, weissbiers are a bit of unexpected flamboyance. Let’s consider how brewers coax these qualities out of the beer.
“For me, there are three different styles of aroma in a Bavarian wheat beer. Most of them are very fruity; [for example] from the Weihenstephan 68 strain. There’s one that is more neutral. And there are some that are more spicy like the Schneider yeast—spicy-tasting like clove and nutmeg.”
The Malt
Wheat generally constitutes the majority of the grist, and both gives a weissbier its dry, clean flavor and its famous billowing cloudiness. Yet wheat isn’t the only player, and in some ways not the most important. Barley, which may make up as much as half the grist, contains an organic compound called ferulic acid that can be converted during fermentation into the compound 4-vinyl guaiacol—the phenol that tastes like clove.
“We are very interested to have the raw materials that bring a lot of the ferulic acid to the wort to get a lot of vinyl guaiacol in the beer,” Drexler explained. “It comes from the barley and the wheat—most of it comes from the barley. The wheat malt brings other characteristic aromas, but the clove aroma—most comes from the barley malt.” Ferulic acid is freed during mashing, but only within a band of temperature between 104-113˚ F, known as a ferulic acid rest. Breweries differ in their preference for a more banana-y presentation or a more phenolic one. Schneider, famously, prefers spice.
The Yeast
Now, what about those esters? Fermentation temperature affects them (yeast produces more esters at higher temperatures), but even more important is the fermenter itself. And among weissbier breweries, open fermentation is critical. At Ayinger, where they spent millions of dollars building a new brewery and abandoning old techniques like decoction mashing, they nevertheless preserved an open fermentation room for their weissbiers. The science seems to support it. Stan Hieronymus documents this in his indispensable book Brewing With Wheat. There he presents German research illustrating that an open fermenter produces more than twice as much isoamyl acetate (the classic banana ester in weizenbier) than a cylindro-conical tank, and a third more than other closed tanks.
Hans-Peter in the brewhouse.
A Snack on the Way Out
The final element is effervescence. This is achieved by dosing the beer with a bit of unfermented wort or speise (literally “food”) on its way to bottling. The wort reactivates the yeast, which carbonates the beer in the bottle. Weissbier brewers aim for carbonation levels as much as twice as high as standard beer. (Most ales contain 1.5 to 2.5 volumes of carbonation; weissbiers have from 3 to 4 volumes.) Carbonation levels are often overlooked, but that incredibly thick, snowy head, the creaminess in the body, and the refreshing crispness are all enhanced by lively carbonation.
The Beer
Like so many of the classics that define certain styles, Schneider Weisse doesn’t actually resemble most of the others. It’s a deep amber color, far darker than the “white” weissbiers like Weihenstephaner’s. The brewery really leans into the spice note, which to my palate contains not just clove but a drying, tannic quality. Weissbiers have gotten sweeter over time, emphasizing banana, and so I think of Schneider as more the grown-up’s wheat beer. Perhaps my favorite quality, though, is the creaminess. Some weissbiers are too light; they end up seeming watery. Schneider is full and luxurious in the mouth, though it somehow finishes with a dry, slightly acidic snap. It is the rare beer that seems rich in the mouth, but with a finish that is crisp and quenching. To me it is in a class by itself, a beer few other breweries have dared imitate.