Kunze Brewing Book

[Lane Stefano]

AGerman book by origin that became THE reference for brewers worldwide. Every aspect of brewing is explained in a clear and practical manner: malting, fermentation, maturation, ingredients, brewery machines and techniques.

A German book by origin that became THE reference for brewers worldwide. Every aspect of brewing is explained in a clear and practical manner: malting, fermentation, maturation, ingredients, brewery machines and techniques. All illustrated with more than 800 pictures. Indispensable for every professional brewer! 948 pages. In English. Hard cover. 6th revised English edition, 2019.

Wolfgang Kunze, born on 7 August 1926 in Dresden, made an apprenticeship as Brewer and Maltster" at the Waldschlchen Brewery in Dresden (Saxony) from 1947 to 1949. Following he moved to Berlin where he began to study brewing technology at the VLB Berlin and Humboldt University. Against all the odds of the divided postwar Berlin, he graduated as a Diploma Brewing Engineer in 1952. The newly married young father decided - for family reasons - to move back to his home city Dresden which was located in the GDR. There he took a job as a teacher at the Vocational School for brewers and maltsters. What was originally conceived as an interim solution became his professional passion that occupied him for 38 years. So in the course of nearly four decades countless brewers and maltsters from across the GDR went through his classes.

Continuing his career as Director of the Vocational School Dresden, Wolfgang Kunze additionally took over the lessons for brewing technology at the Engineering School for the food industry in Dippoldiswalde (Saxony). However, he refused an offer of the Technical University of Dresden for an unscheduled promotion due to a lack of time. In 1990, Wolfgang Kunze had been replaced by its successor Herwig Bittner, who has been the head of the Vocational School Centre for Agriculture and Food in Dresden until today.

With great dedication, honesty and his Saxon humor, Wolfgang Kunze had accompanied the brewing industry up until old age. He was a regular and welcome guest at numerous trade events and on trade fairs at the stand of the VLB he was always available for an interview, a photo or even for an autograph.

His withdrawal from public life began two years ago when a serious illness weakened him. Although he temporarily recovered somewhat again, he died on January 17, 2016. Wolfgang Kunze is survived by his wife Christa, with whom he was married since 1948, three children, eight grandchildren, seven great-grandchildren and a dog.

Are you familiar with this process? I cannot find any literature on this topic. Will it work without adding gyle/krasening/priming sugar and yeast, or is the remaining dissolved yeast and sweetness enough to complete the fermentation and carbonation? That would be something.

The elephant in the room with this general overview is the relatively fine temperature control and the slow changes made to temperature. When these methods are read with modern eyes, a brewer may wonder how these methods came to be and why they were used. The answer is likely found in the environment surrounding the production of these traditional lagers. The temperature changes were probably not designed into a process, rather the specifics were teased out of established practices.

The modern brewer may raise a suspicious brow at these low lagering temperatures and question if yeast is actually active at such low temperatures. The world may move at a faster pace today than it did in the past, and waiting weeks for a beer to finish fermenting may seem like an eternity, yet lager yeasts are indeed capable of very slowly fermenting at cold temperatures. The practical brewer can empirically determine the lower limit for their yeast strains and cellar designs as there is no single number for the practical minimum.

Some of the challenges of these slow processes include the risks of incomplete attenuation, incomplete diacetyl reduction, contamination by opportunistic bacteria that may find the residual carbohydrates in green beer appetizing, and the questionable economics of very long aging practices. While krusening is a very traditional lager brewing method, it was most surely developed as a practical and effective way of speeding up the aging process. Krusen beer brings fermentable sugars and a fresh charge of viable and vital yeast to the party and helps to speed things up so that the aging beer can perform its real function to the brewer, and that is being converted into revenue by the business end of the brewing operations! Gyle or priming sugar additions can also be used at home if beer is racked to a closed secondary with insufficient fermentable sugars to carbonate the beer.

When it comes to hop math, there is really only one equation universally used and that is how to calculate hop charges based on some level of bitterness in terms of international bitterness units (IBUs). Unfortunately, the golden key that makes hop calculations tick is the elusive utilization term; most brewers refer to tables relating utilization to boil time, wort gravity, and hop preparation type. Some brewers calculate oil contribution based on hop analytics, but this is not commonly used.

Another great source of information about brewing calculations is found on brewing ingredient and process aid specification sheets. My brewing calculation workbook includes separate tabs for usage rates of beer finings, enzymes, and nutrients. These are the sorts of tidbits of information that can easily be added to your library of nuggets as you try new things.

Explore our grounds in Atlanta's Old Fourth Ward along the Eastside Beltline Trail from the Beer Garden to the Barrel Room and then take in our Rooftop views. Wherever you choose, pull up a seat and reach for a glass - there are new brewing realms to explore.

Located just outside of Charleston on lovely Daniel Island, NRBC features an immense outdoor patio, stages built for incredible live music inside and out, and an incredible selection of flavors from the wood-fired kitchen and from our 27 taps.

Wander our sprawling grounds from the vast 2-acre Beer Garden to the intimate Taproom and then take a seat around the fire. Wherever you choose, pull up a seat and reach for a glass - there are new brewing realms to explore.

This was one of my favorite beers we brewed in The Specialty Brewing Group. The last of the American Originals, it was a deep amber/brown ale, malty, but not sweet, with an intense hop bitterness and floral, spicy hop aroma. Without a doubt, the most aggressively hopped beer we released while I was in the group.

At AB, most brands were mashed in at a fairly low temperature for protein rest, and a cereal boiling process was used in a separate cooker. In what AB called the American Double Mash process, the rice or corn after being boiled a short time to liquefy the starches, was pumped back to the mash vessel containing the malt, and that process, coupled with steam flow to the jackets on the mash vessel, helped raise the overall mash temperature to the desired conversion temperature. This is very similar to the traditional German decoction mashing technique.

Hopping:

Not a lot of detail available on my sheet, but the hops used were Cluster and American Fuggle (which is the same hop as Willamette. Legally, for labeling purposes, they are interchangeable). The beer was then dry hopped with 3/4 lb/bbl Fuggles. I remember we tried Cluster on a pilot brew and felt it was a little too catty for this beer.

The main reason for the relative inactivity is that the topic now requires a lot more empirical evidence. This is time-consuming and often a trial is not producing the anticipated result, which made it necessary to return to my textbooks from Narziss, Back, Kunze and Annemller and dig deeper into the reasons and mechanism of this complex machinery known as the brewing process.

The topic of mashing always attracted a lot of attention. When talking with friends who are also keen students of the very same texts, I noticed that, malting apart, the process can be divided into three principal sections

In the past weeks two of my followers have pointed me to a paper released by the folks from the German Brewing Forum. That paper talks about low oxygen brewing and how very low oxygen levels (so low that even very detail oriented brewers will have to change their brewing technique to achieve them) are responsible for what we have been calling the Elusive German Flavor in beer. That delicate malt flavor with a subtle background of fresh hops.

I myself have not been able to test any of this but am very intrigued to do so after reading through the paper. The main points are that one needs to deaerate the strike and mash sparge water, use sodium metabisulfite as an additional scrubbing agent and be very careful with doughing and any oxygen uptake later during the brewing process. A DO (Dissolved Oxygen) meter helps with keeping track of the O2 levels throughout the process.

If you think this is the HSA (Hot Side Aeration) discussion all over again, you are somewhat right with the caveat that there is new evidence and a new theory. This theory postulates that the current standard home and craft brewing process already allows for enough oxidation that additional splashing of the wort does not do any noticeable change. As a result HSA experiments have shown inconclusive results so far.

An anecdotal observation that supports this is that craft brewed beers in Germany (usually brew pubs) lack that delicate flavor that many commercially brewed beers in Germany have. Those commercially brewed beers are more likely brewed in a low-oxygen brewhouse.

This paper was not really about chlorine in brewing water and its removal. Chlorine was mentioned as SMB may also be used by some brewers to remove chlorine. RO water was likely used because many brewers use it to build low alkaline water for brewing lighter beers.

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