Isinglass in Beer

Lagers... isinglass is used to fine cask ale (real-ale, as in the name of the group). It's pointless in lagers or keg ale: in the first case because even in those few instances where the lager is not filtered, the yeast settles out naturally over a very long time (in ale terms); and in the second case, because the beer is filtered.

Isinglass is markedly more useful as a fining agent, as it continues to fine on secondary agitation of casks, whereas gelatin does not. Isinglass is used in the UK and by most cask ale producers worldwide because of this nature.

Jamie McDonell a écrit :

Indeed, the long maturation at 2°C of a proper lager sees the yeast settling completely to the bottom of the vessel. And many lagers are filtered afterwards anyway. Actually, any unfiltered beer left two weeks at such temperatures tends to settle very well without the need of finings.

Now, Reinheitsgebot... this overblown myth is not what so many people who haven't really looked into it believe it is :

- it is actually Bavarian, not German, and originally only applied to part of it for just one year (1516 AD).

- its aim was to ensure, in a time of famine, that wheat was used for the making of bread, not brewing.

- it lists just barley, water and hops, not yeast. Nor does it say barley should be malted.

- it laid forgotten for centuries, until, around 1860, Bavarian brewers unearthed it with a purely protectionist purpose on their minds. Bavaria had been forced to join the German Empire, and Bavarian brewers feared competition, so they just whipped out an obsolete edict from 1516 to deny beers from the rest of Germany access to their home market. And then they managed to have it extended to the rest of Germany, killing off many traditional beer styles (spiced beers for example).

- currently in Germany, the Reinheitsgebot is not part of the legislation. The Biersteuergesetz (beer tax law) is.

- This Biersteuergesetz (BSG) allows only the use of barley malt, water, hops and yeast for the brewing of beer. In listing yeast, it departs quite a bit from the 1516 Reinheitgebot.

- It is absolutely silent as to what may happen before to its ingredients.

- It also allows the use of hop extracts, even precising which types are allowed. Another difference with the 1516 edict.

- it allows the use of farbbier, ie colouring beer, texhnically fontaining a tiny bit of alcohol and a trace of hops, nbut little more than black malt extract (qv.http://www.weyermann.de/englisch/produkte_sinamar.neo?headline=SINAMAR for one notorious such produce). Farbbier mixed into a pale lager turns it instantly into a good-looking schwarzbier. Just a tell-tale treacly, slightly metallic taste may allow seasoned drinkers to spot such a trick.

- It allows for exceptions for special beers (whatever that may mean), beers meant for export (we currently have on the swiss market one beer contract-brewed in Germany that contains unmalted Emmer Wheat and Dates. QE.) and experimental beers.

- It allows the use of sugar, dextrose and non-barley mated cereals in top-fermented beers. Yet another point that departs from the 1516 text. Which de facto only applied to top-fermenting beer, as lager did not exist at the time.

- The BSG also allows finings : "Only materials which act mechanically or by absorption and are thereafter removable, leaving no, or only such residue in the beer which is of no health, taste or odour concern may be used to clarify beer." This incidentally fits the use made by any competent cellarman of isinglass to fine a cask of ale : no smell or taste left behind, and isinglass is widely recognised as innocuous.

- Final point, this myth has killed off the creativity of german brewmaters, who are trained in a straitjacket, and consider any innovation, even legal ones, as suspect. You won't see them brew with unusual hops (such as US varieties), for example, or try to brew anything that does not fit a commonly accepted style.

That's about it... excuse the lack of substance. ;o)

The german text of the Biersteuergesetz and its english translation can be found at the bottom of this enlightening page :

Cheers !

Laurent

Another factor making the Pure Beer laws meaningless was the poor quality of German malt - containing a high proportion of unmodified grains. So a brewer thinking he was using pure ingredients was in fact using far more adjuncts than say an English brewer of the time.

-- It allows the use of sugar, dextrose and non-barley mated cereals in

The term "lager" simply means that the beer has been stored , in fact lager goes back much further than 1516. Simply put , brewing was difficult during warm weather so extra was brewed in winter and stored for later.No lager would be drunk during winter of course - there was no need. As for bottom fermenting yeasts - many lagers are brewed using top fermentation , particularly in Eastern Europe where open fermentation is common.

valeofbelvoirdrinker a écrit :

I was using the term lager in its usually accepted UK sense, ie a general word for bottom-fermented beer

storing does. Recognitionof bottom-fermented beer as such definitely not.

That's indeed the origin of such names as Märzen, Saison or Bière de Garde. But Saisons and many bières de garde are not lagers (ie. not bottom-fermented), but ales.

Sorry, but there's a confusion here : open fermenters do NOT equal top fermentation. And bottom-fermenting yeast also throws quite a head of froth atop the vessel, albeit not as thick and bubbly as top-fermenting yeast does.

What do you mean by Eastern Europe ? Czech Republic for instance ? They all use bona fide bottom-fermenting strains at low fermenting temperatures (5-9°C). So did the now-defunct Okocim plant in Krakow, Poland I once visited, which brewed a stunning 7% pale lager using bottom-fermenting yeast in cooled open fermenters.

I'know of a few breweries in Switzerland and Austria (notably Boxer and Joseph Stiegl) who use open fermenters, too, to brew lagers, and bottom-fermented ones !

Cheers !

Laurent

I quote Graham Wheeler from his "Home Brewing" book - he is a very knowledgeable person indeed . "The word "lager" is German for storehouse : a lager beer is a stored beer and that is all! It matters not whether the beer is pale or dark , fermented by a top working yeast or a bottom worker , whether it is infusion mashed or decoction mashed or whether you drive an XR3i or ride a push bike." and later "It may come as a surprise to you that one of Britain's most popular commercial lagers is brewed using pale malt , English hops and the infusion mash system." He also mentions the widespread use of top fermenting yeasts in lager production on the Continent. IMHO , the characteristics now commonly associated with lager are (relatively) quite recent developements such as the availability of bottom fermenting yeasts , the decoction system and so on.

Hm. I think you mean Josef Sigl here - the brewery in Obertrum, Austria, as opposed to the Stiegl brewery in Salzburg.

And good beers they are, too. Sigl's Trumer Pils is a fine drop.

Then he may not be quite as knowledgeable as you think. There are some top-fermented German styles that also are cold-conditioned for a time, including Alt, Kölsch, and some of the Weizen beers. None of these are considered "lagers" in the conventional sense. The vast majority of continental lagers are produced with bottom-fermenting yeasts. I've yet to go to Germany and have a top-fermented "lager" served, nor have I encountered such in Austria, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, or Slovakia.

It is possible, particularly in North America, to find blond-colored beers that have been made with top-fermenting yeasts. These beers, however, are almost always called "blonde ales" or something similar; none of them are referred to as "lagers."

Instead of relying on an appeal to an alleged authority on the subject, perhaps you could list a few of these brewers known for their widespread use of top-fermenting yeasts to make lagers.

Decoction goes back farther than you might think. It's been around for a while, as an answer to using undermodified malts. Decoction also can be useful in other ways, as the flavors of some of the better German wheat beers, pale lagers, and dark bocks will attest.

dgs a écrit :

Indeed, Stiegl is a pretty uninspiring lager, it's Sigl's that's still a small independent...

Nice crisp hoppy pils indeed :o)

Cheers !

Laurent

valeofbelvoirdrinker a écrit :

He most probably is, but nevertheless drew hasty conclusions on the nbase of dodgy evidence over that one. Besides, a homebrew book is not necessarily what I'd choose as first reference for such definitions, but then each to his own.

Nope. Altbier and Kölsch are indeed stored. And COLD-stored at that, but are never referred to in their Rhineland home as being "Lagerbier", as they are top-fermented... Some Weizenbiere are lagered as well, yet only some brit supermarket publicity persons would dare dub a Weizen "a lager"...

indeed.

This is an abusive generalisation on the basis of dubious practice of some british industrial brewers cutting corners by brewing so-called lagers using shortcuts in the brewing process, fermenting at a slightly higher temperature being a very efficient way to speed up production. The fact a brewer gives a beer one certain style description does not mean said beer is brewed according to time-honoured ways for this particular style, nor that it will taste anything like it.

Think of all those so-called pils /pilsners where the hops are barely noticeable or all those so-called guezes that have never seen a brettanomyces, or those Krieks which have never been close to a Scharbeek cherry, apart from the one on the label, that is...

again, a generalisation on the basis of corner-cutting by industrial brewers...

Right... If it's experts that you need, I'll quote :

"A lager is a beer which is fermented with yeast that works at cool temperatures - then laid down for cold maturation, or 'storage? at close to 0°C in tanks at the brewery"

The english denomination "lager" is a reference to the fact that the long-lagered and therefore well-cleared bottom-fermenting beers have started their victorious march from german-speaking countries in the mid-19th century. Lager - or its czech translation "lezak" - designates, in many languages, beer made following a cold fermentation process"

Erm... no mention of top- or bottom fermentation in that particular bit ??

Indeed, many a british industrial so-called lager uses such short cuts, but that does not mean they are typical of lager brewing as a whole and can be considered a definition of lager in general.

Which is IMHO a myth. Indeed industrial brewers tend to ferment their o-called lagers a few dehgrees warmer than the tradition would require, but they still use bottom-fermenting strains, and can't really push into top-fermenting territory, because that would leave some unwanted flavours in the finished product.

Availability ? Such yeast strains have been de facto selected over the centuries in Bavarian storage caves, and rather unwittingly at that. They've been recognised as a separate yeast species in the 1860s, but had been around for quite some time then...

Decoction which is actually older than infusion mash. Infusion mashing is a result of the industrial revolution, with better-transformed malts available, and the search for quick, energy-efficient ways of brewing decoction was born out of limited heating capacity in the breweries and poorly-transformed malts.

Cheers !

Laurent

I am not a vegetarian but even so I find it uncomfortable that British beer may contain fish protein/DNA.

A few vegetarians (and even surprisingly 1 vegan) I know were unaware of the fact and for them the fact is more than just uncomfortable and actually quite offensive. Sainsbury's should be applauded for allowing people to access basic facts and make a choice as a result.

All food, and beer is food (!), should be labelled in terms of ingredients.

Actually, to be fair, a bottle of beer I bought in Asda earlier today described in a bolder and larger type face - "protein derivatives from various sources" - a vegetarian friend told me that this is a well known code for vegetarians beware!

Sainsbury's has however gone one further and presented the word "Fish" in a larger bold type.

Gareth.

That's interesting - is there anything I can easily access that describes this in more detail?

Gareth.

I don't know.Quite clearly in the past they didn't know the percentage modification , but apparently the English produced much better malt , whether because of the climate or processes or both I don't know.In the 19th century the decoction method was introduced to mash malt on the Continent as the infusion system couldn't produce the clear pale beers such as were becoming fashionable in the UK. Must remember that the vast majority of beers were dark up till then.

My small contribution wasn't really intended to spark off an attack on German beer brewing methods. Rather, I wanted to point out the undesirability of having ingredients which could effects nobody appears to have considered. Gareth hit the point with his statements

"I am not a vegetarian but even so I find it uncomfortable that British beer may contain fish protein/DNA.

A few vegetarians (and even surprisingly 1 vegan) I know were unaware of the fact and for them the fact is more than just uncomfortable and actually

quite offensive. Sainsbury's should be applauded for allowing people to

access basic facts and make a choice as a result.

All food, and beer is food (!), should be labelled in terms of ingredients."

I agree completely with these sentiments. Unfortunately, it's one stage worse than that - for some people it can be lethal.

ellerman12

If people want to adopt these peculiar dietary principles, they should take the trouble to inform themselves better.

The use of isinglass is hardly a big secret, and nor is it a recent development.

The failing is not so much in the labelling of food products as in the dismal standards of food education in this country.

d.

Yes, and "gay" still means "happy" to some people.

d.

ERM: the COOP have been labeling Isinglass on their own labe beers AND WINES for a couple of years - credit where it is due.

Yes, to gay people.

Gareth.

It is kinder not to tell them.