Month: April 2024

A TECTONIC SHIFT

At first blush, the Munich Baker-Brewer Dispute might look like a curious footnote in the annals of medieval history.[1] But it’s much more than that. Flaring up sporadically between 1481 and 1517, this inter-guild dispute is not only a colorful story, it also illuminates a momentous transformation in brewing history: the shift from top fermentation to bottom fermentation in Bavaria, and the emergence of what we now call lager. For when we zoom in and focus on what the decades-long dispute was all about, we notice something interesting: yeast.

Besides furnishing us with documentary evidence confirming that medieval brewers and bakers knew what yeast was, the dispute also reveals that brewers were beginning to practice a different kind of brewing.[2] Significantly, the yeast for this new process required more time and lower temperatures. What’s more, brewers discovered that more malt, higher hop rates, and long periods of cold storage resulted in a beer that was resistant to souring microbes during fermentation, kept longer, and, most importantly, tasted better.

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In between evenings of losing myself in my annual “big book” (Don Quixote this year), I’ve been reading Terry Theise’s What Makes Wine Worth Drinking: In Praise of the Sublime. Theise makes a compelling case that people who write about wine or who sell wine for a living be forthcoming with their readers and customers about their tastes.

WHY ACCOUNT FOR TASTE?
It’s a simple premise: writers and critics should examine their taste proclivities so that their readers know where they stand. As Theise asserts, this is the first obligation of the critic, whether that person is writing about wine, beer, art, or music. It’s what buttresses our credibility. And, I’d add somewhat paradoxically, it’s what makes our judgments and pronouncements that much more “objective.” (More on that below.)

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