{"id":17629,"date":"2023-06-28T09:52:09","date_gmt":"2023-06-28T15:52:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/?p=17629"},"modified":"2023-06-28T09:52:09","modified_gmt":"2023-06-28T15:52:09","slug":"the-challenge-of-recreating-the-past-in-his-case-steam-beer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/the-challenge-of-recreating-the-past-in-his-case-steam-beer\/","title":{"rendered":"The challenge of recreating the past \u2013 in his case steam beer"},"content":{"rendered":"

As I mentioned Monday, Andreas Krennmair has posted a recipe for a turn-of-the-century steam beer<\/a>, warning readers, \u201cThis recipe does not conform to the BJCP Style Guidelines for the California Common beer style, so don\u2019t use this to brew beer and get bad marks for it at home-brewing competitions.\u201d<\/p>\n

How similar would it have tasted to a steam beer in the 1890s or one shortly after the beginning of the 20th century?<\/p>\n

\"ManFirst off, we don\u2019t have much in the way of tasting notes. There was his from July of 1896, by a journalist assigned to write about being \u201cA Prince for a Day in San Francisco on Two Bits\u201d in The San Francisco Call. He put a glass of steam beer, which along with a choice of dishes and bread cost a nickel, at the center of his first meal.<\/p>\n

\u201cUpon the surface of amber-colored beer floated foam as evanescent and light as thistle down,\u201d he wrote, without naming the brewery where it was made. \u201cThe receptacle holding the beer was as deep and as musical, as it was clinked against another, as a bell of Shandon \u2018That sound so grand on the River Lee.\u2019 Clearly through its translucent sides could be observed sparkling effervescence, the riotous ascent of sparkling globules which conferred, as a reward for patronage of a plebian beverage, a delightful tang, in which was all the lusty flavor of sun-kissed fields of bearded barley, waving and rustling in the wind.\u201d<\/p>\n

Second, every ingredient is a wild card, but yeast is the wildest of all. Presumably, yeast used to brew steam beer evolved from a lager strain. However, in 1911, while conducting tests as part of another project at the University of California, T. Brailsford Robinson discovered just how different steam beer yeast acquired from California Brewing in San Francisco was from lager strains.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe yeast of the steam beer has accommodated itself to these conditions (warmer fermentation and the clarifier) to such an extent that it can no longer be employed for the preparation of lager beer, while lager-beer yeast may without difficulty be used for the manufacture of steam beer,\u201d he wrote. \u201cThe cells of the typical steam-beer yeast are somewhat smaller than those of lager-beer yeast.\u201d<\/p>\n

Because things happen, like Prohibition, the strains that brewers used then were not passed down. <\/p>\n

Fun aside<\/strong><\/p>\n

Over the years, there have been several suggestions about why steam beer was called by that name:<\/p>\n

– What looked, and sounded, like steam was generated by the pressure generated in the kegs.<\/p>\n

– Steam hung above rooftop vessels that initially cooled the beer.<\/p>\n

– \u201cDoctor Steam\u201d (whose first name has been given variously as Frank, Heintz, or Charles) invented the process.<\/p>\n

– German brewers would have been familiar with Dampfbier (\u201csteam beer\u201d in German), itself a hybrid.<\/p>\n

– The first brewer to make it, according to his son, named it \u201cmission steam beer, after the (California) missions.\u201d (f<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I mentioned Monday, Andreas Krennmair has posted a recipe for a turn-of-the-century steam beer, warning readers, \u201cThis recipe does not conform to the BJCP Style Guidelines for the California Common beer style, so don\u2019t use this to brew beer and get bad marks for it at home-brewing competitions.\u201d How similar would it have tasted … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[701],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-indigenous"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4wTn-4Al","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17629"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17629\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17637,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17629\/revisions\/17637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/appellationbeer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}