Bavarian White Beer

Whether you know it as Weißbier, Weizenbier, or Hefeweizen, Bavarian white beer is an outstanding example of a traditional beer style that survived the industrial lager revolution of the nineteenth century. Originating from brewing traditions that originally crossed the border from Bohemia, this unique top-fermented beer became so deeply popular in Lower Bavaria that Duke Maximilian I of the House of Wittelsbach turned brewing it into a strict state monopoly.

With a network of dedicated white brewhouses generating massive revenue for the Bavarian court, the style flourished before falling out of fashion and facing a slow decline over the course of the eighteenth century. Thanks to a small but loyal group of drinkers and the private brewer Georg Schneider, the style survived as a niche beer until an organic, consumer-driven resurgence in the latter half of the twentieth century catapulted it back onto the global stage. Today, it is an internationally recognised classic, celebrated and reinterpreted by modern craft brewers around the world.

The book tells you the story of this iconic beer type in great detail, discerns historic sources to explain which ingredients were used to brew the beer, how distinct mashing processes like Satz brauen and triple decoction mashing were used, and what the beer looked and tasted like over the centuries, but also discusses the latest science and state-of-the-art brewing technologies behind the aromas, flavours and haze of this style. Complete with a selection of homebrew recipes, this guide shows how homebrewers can easily recreate everything from classic Hefeweizen, historic white beer and big, bold Weizendoppelbock to innovative, hop-forward modern interpretation of Bavarian wheat beer at home.