Doppelbock - The 6 Pack Pod (S1E3)
Dec 01, 2023
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6Pack pod S1E3
Welcome to the 6 Pack, where we discuss 6 quick topics, mostly about beer. Your host is Advanced Cicerone Chris Cohen. We do a full breakdown of a classic beer style, answer audience members' questions, & talk about beer, life, the universe, and everything. If you've got a question for Chris, record a brief voice memo - intro yourself, say where you’re from, & ask your question. Email the audio file it to [email protected] Cheers & thanks for listening! Go hit that subscribe button right now!
🎙️ The 6 Pack: S1E3
🍺 No more Baltika #6 Baltic Porter for you! Russian Carlsberg / Baltika CEO and top manager arrested after Putin & oligarchs seized Baltika: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-67436369
🍺 Yep, we’re all talking about the bloodbath / craft beer becoming a mature industry! For Many Craft Breweries, the Apocalypse is Now: https://www.pastemagazine.com/drink/craft-beer/craft-beer-brewery-closures-2023-growth-stagnation-costs-bubble-burst
🍺 Gale’s Prize Old Ale just dropped in the UK. It’s an amazing example of an Old Ale in the style of the historic “vatted” English ales that inspired the creation of the Flanders Red style. It’s a modern recreation of a beer made since 1923, which was itself at that time a recreation of historic English ales! Very cool.
- Bittersweet Complexity — The Re-Re-Rebirth of Gales Prize Old Ale by Martyn Cornell for Good Beer Hunting: https://www.goodbeerhunting.com/blog/2023/11/6/rebirth-of-gales-prize-old-ale
- Gale’s Prize Old Ale homebrew clone recipe by Jamil Zainasheff, who actually went to England and helped make the latest commercial version of the beer at Dark Star: https://byo.com/recipe/gales-prize-old-ale-clone/
🍺 Yep, Tesla has a beer. Sound like it’s a Helles Bock. Two undoubtedly super fresh and properly stored (lol) bottles of “cyberbier,” along with two “cyber mugs” can be your for just $150. What a steal! Take a gander at those bottles: https://shop.tesla.com/product/cyberbeer-_-cyberstein-limited-edition-set
🍺 STYLE OF THE WEEK: Doppelbock. #DrinkMoreDoppelbock This strong, malt focused, light amber to deep brown German lager is perfect for the winter season, plus it’s a whole hashtag movement! Let’s break the style down. https://www.bjcp.org/style/2021/9/9A/doppelbock/
🍺 Check out some phonk from Ryan Celsius. He’s most famous for his Trappin’ in Japan series of extended music and video sets, but there’s tons to check out on his R y a n C e l s i u s ° S o u n d s YouTube channel. Here’s one of many good sets you should check out: https://youtu.be/0sBEoGvZ79E?si=qedOHATXTNpGsSNq
If you have a question for me, about beer, life, the universe, or everything — fire up your phone’s voice recorder and tell me: 1) who you are; 2) where you’re from; and 3) what your question is. Email the audio file to [email protected].
Want to crush the Certified Beer Server, Certified Cicerone, or Advanced Cicerone exam? Here’s the quickest & easiest solution: www.thebeerscholar.com
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TRANSCRIPT
6 Pack Pod S1E3 Doppelbock
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Chris Cohen: [00:00:00] Alrighty, welcome to the Beer Scholar Six Pack where we discuss six quick links, topics or current events, mostly about beer. I want to say happy Thanksgiving. You may be watching this any time of the year because it's just like on YouTube and in . Podcast format, but it is Thanksgiving time, and I wanted to say happy Thanksgiving to all of you.
I'm truly, truly thankful to all of you for your support. I hope you're, you know, for you, you're like entering a season of the year that feels like special and cozy and is full of families and loved ones and good food. But hey, if this is a season that you struggle with, as some of us do.
Please reach out to the people in your life and [00:01:00] ask them if you can come hang out for Friendsgiving or, you know, Christmas or whatever. Whatever holiday you celebrate. Or that they celebrate. You know, I have had great holiday seasons and real bummer holiday seasons. So I definitely know both sides of this, right?
There's all the expectations and the pressure. And it's not always you putting the pressure on. Sometimes other people around you, you know, you might have... Brutal travel, you might have difficult family members, who knows. And, you know, I want to say like, don't let it get to you. But, sometimes that's just impossible.
So, you know, one thought I have about the holiday seasons is that sometimes you just need to simplify. You need to just do the easy thing and hang out with the people who really make you happy. You know, for me... I wish that I could be in Florida with my parents for Thanksgiving and for Christmas. Um, but they're literally on the opposite side of the United States, so it isn't really always an option, like [00:02:00] financially, or because of like the brutal travel involved and like just kind of my own mental health.
So, I'll be here in Portland, Oregon with my friends and some of their families. Um, love and miss you mom and dad. They do watch, they do listen. So I wish I could be there, but I'll be here, be here in Oregon. And I am your host, Chris Cohen. I'm an Advanced Cicerone and a National BJCP beer judge. I'm the co founder of the San Francisco Homebrewers Guild.
I'm a former bar owner. I'm an attorney. I'm a member of the bar, the great state of New York. I'm also the founder of Beer Scholar and I've been doing beer education. And I've been training folks to crush the Cicerone exam since 2014. That's almost a decade of teaching about beer. It's bonkers. In honor of my friend, Advanced Cicerone, Chris Crowe's nascent but trending movement.
You must know about this. It's all over the place. [00:03:00] If you're on the gram, and I'm like embarrassed to use the term the gram, I'll probably be even more embarrassed in like a year or two. I mean, I don't know. It's definitely not like the latest greatest. Uh, social media platform at this point, right? , but you must have seen on the gram.
People using the hashtag, drink more doppelbock. It's a whole movement. If you haven't seen it, I don't know how to explain that. You're probably just not on there. Everybody's doing it. They're drinking doppelbock. You can buy one anytime. They're at the store. No one can stop you. They won't even try. You can just walk right in and get it.
People are doing it. They're getting doppelbock. They're taking pictures of it and they're posting it on Instagram and wherever else. And they're using the hashtag DrinkMoreDoppelbock. It's a whole movement. It's huge. Millions of people are doing it. And you could do it too. Please tag me if you do. And tag my friend Chris Crowe.
So I'm the beer scholar. Shockingly, you [00:04:00] might, may or may not know that. Chris Crowe is fresh beer enthusiast. So, please, post your doppelbocks. Hashtag drink more doppelbock and tag me and Chris Crow. You know, doppelbock, it's a malt focused, amber brown lager. It's perfect for the winter season and for pairing with all the goodies that you're going to eat at, you know, traditional American Thanksgivings and a lot of people's kind of traditional American Christmas dinners.
So. In honor of all that, we'll be tasting and breaking down the Doppelbock style in this episode. It's a style that you should be able to find quite easily. It's around, local craft breweries make it, but it's also just, you know, it's, all the good bottle shops have like OG German versions. And it's on the syllabi for every level of the Cicerone program.
It is a lovely dark lager that you need to know about. Not just for the exam. But for whenever you need a [00:05:00] break from all those hops and all that bitterness and all those IPAs, sometimes you just need a break, but this is the six pack. So we're going to talk about some other stuff too. Starting with, let's see if I can get the right button here.
Yes. All right. Fans of interesting beer from all over the world are likely familiar with the Baltika brand. Baltica number four is listed in the BJCP guidelines as a commercial example of international dark lager. But the one more people are familiar with is Baltica number six. Always found that numbering system to be like super annoying and confusing.
But Baltica number six is listed as a commercial example in the BJCP guidelines of Baltic Porter. And it used to be pretty widely available in the U. S. You may or may not know why it's not anymore, but here's why. Baltica is a huge beer brand in Russia. With around 8, 400 employees across 8 different breweries.
Until recently, Baltica was owned by the [00:06:00] Carlsberg Group. Other brands owned by the Carlsberg Group include Cronenberg, 1664, Brooklyn, you know. Pretty big one here and Summersby cider among many seriously many others They own a bunch of different brands breweries all over mainland Europe including in many Eastern European countries So they're definitely one of those breweries.
That is You know consumed in Eastern Europe and Russia. I mean they even they had breweries in Uh, they have breweries, I don't think, for Baltica, but for other brands, even in Ukraine. So, like many Western based businesses, the Carlsberg Group came under pressure to leave Russia after Putin's brutal invasion of Ukraine began, remember, right when it started, and there was all this pressure to, like, you know, Hey, McDonald's, how can you possibly, you know, justify making money in Russia?
Cause they're evil, right? So what did Carlsberg do? They did what any big company would do in their situation. You're not just going to walk away from like [00:07:00] billions of dollars of business. So they put Baltica up for sale and Carlsberg claimed at that time that they had found a buyer and had even signed a deal.
They hadn't completed the deal, but then Putin stepped in like literally personally and signed an order, bringing Baltica under Russian government control because it was deemed to be an asset. Of a firm from an unfriendly quote unquote unfriendly country So basically Putin just took over Baltica and gave control of it to like his oligarch buddies who are Obviously cutting him in on the profits.
This is just how this whole oligarch situation in Russia works. No one knows how much money Putin has He is considered to easily be among the richest people on earth. Some recent estimates are that he has over 200 billion dollars in personal assets. So anyway, he and his buddies They got a multi billion dollar freebie when they grabbed up Baltica You know, you want to [00:08:00] call it a breathtaking level of corruption, but it's Russia.
I don't even know if breathtaking, the term, can apply. It's, that's just Russia. It's crazy. I know I'm sitting here in the U. S. and I get like news that... Isn't always positive about Russia, but I took Russian in college and, uh, I was interested in it, but the corruption there is just breathtaking. Anyway, Carlsberg at the time said that they refused to help make that Russian takeover of Baltica appear to be legit by like signing any paperwork, you know?
Cause of course they kind of came to them and said like, Hey, let's work out some kind of BS deal where, you know, we're taking you over, but if we could paper it up and make it look legit, that'd be great for us. And they said, no, um, interestingly, and this is where. If you read between the lines of like these articles about, about this situation, you kind of understand just how insane the corruption level is here.
So most of Baltica's top management actually remained in place. [00:09:00] And of course, presumably are now taking orders from whichever oligarch was put in charge of company at like this very high level. But like the management of Baltica was already still there, right? Still, they're doing everything just like kind of sending the money to someone else, I guess.
, and of course, this is also a great opportunity for them to enrich themselves, right? So if that wasn't all crazy enough, though, the saga continues. Because the two top bosses, that all happened like, you know, a year, year and a half ago, right? Because the invasion is like two years old now, which is heartbreaking, heartbreaking for Ukraine.
But anyway, the top bosses were detained this week on accusations of fraud. Those top bosses of Baltica were detained. So fraud in Russia, like who would have thunk it? Carlsberg representatives said that the allegations against the former Baltica CEO and top manager are fake and meant to justify the Russian government takeover.
But... I think this is, [00:10:00] I'm just reading between the lines. I don't think you need to be a genius to come to this conclusion. I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I'm really not like the last election was not stolen. I'm sorry. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, you know, these two guys who got arrested.
Like they were previously C suite level employees of Carlsberg's Baltica. They had been working for the Russian state for like a year and a half or something. So, okay. Maybe those guys are totally innocent and just are taking the fall for the sake of appearances. But really, I mean, let's make the more reasonable assumption here and guess that they were probably doing the same stuff that the Russian oligarchs were doing and stealing money.
From Baltica instead of sending it up the chain to like the capo. It's a crazy world. I don't know. I just thought that was so interesting. So it's just crazy. Uh, I think at the top level of like giant corporations, I don't know. I don't know if this stuff is normal or not. aNyway.
Next up. All right. An article. [00:11:00] In paste this week sums up the general feeling in the U. S. Craft beer biz. The title of the piece is for many craft breweries. The apocalypse is now, and that's true. I think we're all feeling that, right? I keep seeing like every, you know, sub stack, everyone who like writes about beer, everyone who has a newsletter, everyone's just kind of like.
It's the apocalypse, you know, things are bad. We're all dying, you know, and things really are rough out there, which is sort of amazing because I do recall that even in like 2016 or 2017, people were saying they could not believe how fast craft beer had grown. And you were already starting to see like some flat lining right of sales pre COVID.
And there was all this chatter about like the soon to arrive apocalypse that was going to come to the whole industry and it never came to pass. I honestly was stunned that we kind of, you know, the COVID pandemic hit and most breweries like found a way to survive. Now, with the numbers [00:12:00] never returning to pre COVID levels, the bloodbath has really finally begun.
So the tracking website Statista shows that nearly 350 breweries have closed in the last 12 months in the U. S. And the big question is, you know, whether it's sort of churn and a similar number of new breweries are opening or whether it's like an actual shrinking of the total numbers of craft breweries in the U.
S. We will know in a few months what the numbers look like for the total of 2023. But the overall contention that the beer, the U. S. beer market is, is now finally a mature market. Well, that certainly feels like the case. I, I, I don't know. I had been saying that prior to now, but I have seen all these articles coming out now saying.
Okay, the beer market is finally mature and that's because I believe it's the economist for the Brewer's Association Did a talk where he kept saying that exact thing that okay now the industry is mature [00:13:00] You know, there's no way that you can have an explosion in an industry like that Uh, of growth the way that craft bearded, if you have a mature industry, right?
That's a, that can only happen in an industry that is ready for sort of disruption, uh, where people are dissatisfied with it or some new product that comes to market that just changes everything
super interesting. You know, once, once that happens, once an industry is disrupted, it will eventually come back down to earth and be a new mature industry until some other thing happens that disrupts it again. I think, yeah, super interesting, but the days of, you know, the whole, I've been, I've been homebrewing for a couple of years and I've decided to open a commercial brewery, like, those days are so long over, and I felt like, once that happened, that's kind of when the industry was mature, like, you couldn't, you couldn't just BS it, you didn't have any runway, you had to show up on day one with great beer, that was sort of like, the, the, you know, just the buy in, [00:14:00] table stakes, so, anyway, that story has just been everywhere in it, It seemed that, that actual, like I've been homebrewing thing.
That's that story has been everywhere. Right. And it seemed it had like this, this authenticity vibe to it, but nowadays it feels like a brand story that, that basically points to like, you're probably screwed if you, if you don't have some bad ass pro brewer coming in on day one. Anyway, the point is this.
Go out and support your local breweries because you don't know which ones are struggling until they post that, that post that says, you know, it's with great sadness, we have to make this announcement. Also, you know, this is, this is a shakeout. The breweries that kind of underperform and don't understand business side stuff and are poor at marketing and maybe just make like bad beer.
Yeah. It's not going to be good for them. I don't really know. Like I, I feel hopeful though. I think that you're going to see a [00:15:00] lot of great breweries rise from the ashes of some of the, you know, all this equipment, all these breweries, all these spaces are becoming available and yes, the market may shrink a little bit, but I think we're going to see a lot of new small breweries rise from the ashes of this, you know, supposed apocalypse.
All right. Enough about apocalypse. Alright, in last week's six pack, we broke down the Old Ale style. Well, that choice of style for that week, it was actually inspired by the release of a classic Old Ale in England called Gale's Prize Old Ale. It was released last week, or I guess now about ten days ago, by London's Meantime Brewing in pretty limited quantities.
And if anyone out there knows where I can find some in the States, please do let me know. I would really love to try this beer. So... Gail's Prize. It's just such an interesting story. It has a lineage dating back to 1923 when it was first brewed at Gail's Brewery But even then that beer was a total blast [00:16:00] from the past.
It's a blend of freshly brewed beer and vatted ale which mean you know vatted means that the beer has been aged So it's developed all these age related oxidation characteristics including like sherry like flavors and and but in this case and in The case of actual old beers that are vatted, it, it really meant that it was aged also with a mix of yeast, bacteria, and brettanomyces for our final product that, from what I gather, is not unlike what you get from a Flanders Red Ale or an Oud Bruin type of ale.
You know, you're gonna get some extra acidity from the bacteria, you're gonna get a combo of like leathery phenols and bright esters from the birtanomyces, and so... You know, these old ales, like if you listened to last week's episode, you'll recall those old ales were actually what inspired the creation of Flanders red, these British old ales.
So Flanders, it's crazy to think about that, that Belgian sour ales were [00:17:00] influenced by English, by aged English beers, you know, brettanomyces translates to British fungus. That's where it was discovered in aging British beer. So. Really interesting. , so Gail's Brewing and its brands have been bought and sold over the years, but currently reside with Asahi who inherited Gail's when they purchased Fuller's in 2019.
One of the Fuller's breweries was, was called Dark Star. Or, maybe it still is Darkstar, I don't know if they're still around. They're in, all these, these are all in the UK, uh, except Sahi, of course. But, uh, Darkstar had been making Gale's Prize, Old Ale, in recent years. So they had kind of resurrected it a little bit.
If you're interested in learning more about this beer and the process of making it, check out beer historian Martin Cornell's article about it in Good Beer Hunting, which is linked in the episode description. And if you're a home brewer and you want to make weird beer like this, I've linked an article in Brew Your [00:18:00] Own by Jamil Zaynicheff about how to make this beer.
I just think it's so freaking cool that like some dude, gal, presumably, in 1923 wanted to recreate a historical ale and did so. And now in 2023, we are, you know, it's like this big, cool thing. And, and it's been revived. I just love that. We're we're today reviving things that have already been revived multiple times.
I just think that's so cool. Anyway, Gail's prize, old ale. If any of you know where to get that in the States or want to mail me some, I would be stoked. All right, next. I don't know how big this has been on social media. Maybe you've already heard about this, but I just found out about this. Tesla has their own beer.
Tesla, like the car company. It is literally called Cyber Beer. It comes in a horrific slash [00:19:00] amazing Cybertruck inspired bottle. So I just heard about this. I think it's worth talking about. Just in case you're unaware because you really ought to see these bottles. It's So ridiculous. So I first read that they had come out in Europe a few months ago, but I think they're actually available in the U S I think you can just order them on Tesla's website.
So I guess. What these are, are 7 percent ABV pale lagers. , they are calling it a fest beer, like an Oktoberfest style beer. But that's obviously like a massive, kind of a pretty massive ABV, so 7 percent ABV pale lager, probably something more like Helles Bock. Apparently it was brewed and bottled in California by Buzz Rock Brewing Company.
I don't know those guys. , I lived in Northern California, , for quite a long time until just a couple years ago. But, , I'm not in SoCal that often, so I don't know BuzzRock Brewing Company, but you know, as, as I was sitting here, like, scripting this, this episode, I just thought, you know, I should look this up, uh, you know, on some other [00:20:00] websites.
I always do that. I try to do a little research here, you know, I'm, I wouldn't call myself a journalist. Uh, I'm not doing like new, brand new journalism necessarily, uh, at all. I do feel like I need to, you know, look things up, make sure they're, They're legit before I start telling you all about them. So it looks like it's still available on Tesla's website.
It's a limited edition set. Get this $150 for two, 11. 2 ounce, you know, 330 ML, whatever bottles. So two smallish bottles of beer plus two very angular mugs that are called cyber Steins. Oh man. I honestly, I kind of wish Elon Musk wasn't such like a creepy conspiracy theorist and anti Semite because I would love to buy this and just try the beer like live on a future episode of the six pack.
I think it would be worth a laugh. But also, you know, I'm not trying to like necessarily support [00:21:00] Elon Musk. I don't know. What do you think? Would it be worth, would it be worth the laugh? Anyway, if I was in the market for a car these days, like it'd be really difficult not to consider a Tesla. It's so annoying.
Capitalism makes people do weird stuff. So on that note, Tesla has already sold out of its 50 cyber bottle opener. That's a real thing too, that people purchased and is now sold out, which is bananas. Oh, next up we got this.
Let's talk about beer styles. Let's talk about beer styles. Alright, I mentioned that hashtag that's been blowing up on Instagram over the last few weeks. You've definitely seen it Hashtag drink more doppelbock. My buddy advances our own Chris Crow. He started that whole thing I've done my fair share to boost the signal I'm really trying to bring [00:22:00] drink more doppelbock to the people and Listen do me a favor, you know, I don't ask much of you.
I really don't but please do this for me Whenever you have a Doppelbock, take a photo of it, post it with the hashtag DrinkMoreDoppelbock, tag me, The Beer Scholar, and my buddy Chris Crowe, Fresh Beer Enthusiast. So this week, we're talking about Doppelbock. Doppelbock translates to English as Double Bock.
So, this is an extra strong, bock type beer. Just like with double IPA and regular IPA, you know, Doppel bock isn't necessarily actually double the strength of a Helles Bock or a Dunkels Bock, right? Um, the whole double thing doesn't always mean double, it just means bigger the history of the Doppel bocks style is pretty fun.
Bocks generally come from the northern German town of Einbeck. One theory about where the term bock comes from is that it's sort of a bastardization of the beck in the word einbeck [00:23:00] in the name of. The town, Einbeck, where Bocks come from. So, it's, uh, it's also worth noting that bock, the word in German, also sounds like the word in German for goat.
Which is why you often see goats on the labels of bocks or Doppelbocks. I'm holding, right now, a Paulaner Salvator. And, unfortunately, there are no goats on this beer that I can see. Let's see, I'm sure I must have other doppelbock's here. Hold on one second, let me... Let me just check, I'm gonna, I'm gonna pause this for one moment.
Alright, I'm back. I just checked my other Doppelbox. All I've got is an Andechs, which is kinda crazy. Turns out I drank my Korbinian. My Weihenstephaner Korbinian for Thanksgiving. I forgot that I did that. It paired perfectly with the stuffing in the gravy. So good. Anyway, um, Ondex does not have any goats on the label.
I don't recall if Corbinian [00:24:00] does, but anyway, okay. Let's get back to business here. You'll see a goat on a lot of bock beers, on the label. So, anyway, Einbeck was one of the centers of brewing in Europe during the Middle Ages. There were, there was lots of brewing happening in southern Germany as well, in the Bavarian region where Munich was, and, and of course still is today.
But, uh, the Einbeck area in the north... Was closer to water. The Hanseatic League was up there. They were shipping beer all over the place, and the beers from Einbeck were considered some of the best, and they were getting shipped all over the place. Well, when the folks in southern Germany got their hands on some of these Einbecker beers, they really liked them, and they started to replicate them.
You know, we're talking early 1600s here, and they replicated some of those beers, but with their own twists, like, for instance, using lager yeast and lagering techniques, which were fairly new at the time. Um, so they're taking these like darker beers [00:25:00] and they're, , they're making them in their cold cellars, they're using lager yeast, they're just putting their own spin on it, right?
They probably aren't wildly different than the ones that were being made in in Einbeck. So then, in 1627, some Franciscan monks from Paola, Italy, set up a cloister in Munich. And a few years later in 1634, they began to brew there. They were making beer to consume during Lent, which is a Christian holiday during which the truly hardcore may fast for up to 40 days, not eat food for 40 days.
Wow. You gotta love, you gotta love your lord for that. That's, that's serious business. So, thus, there was this necessity for liquid bread, quote unquote. That is, you hear that term used all the time when people talk about doppelbocks, it's, liquid bread. So, the monks at Pauliner, [00:26:00] they basically took the Bavarian spin on northern Germany's Bockbeers and then made it stronger.
So these Bockbeers, these styles, they came from northern Germany. The folks in southern Germany really liked them. So they started making them with their own spin and then, and that probably was happening. Who knows, like. 1500s, right? Then in the 16, early, mid 1600s, these monks show up and they start brewing it, but they want something stronger.
They want something that'll get them through Lent. And so they, they just boost it. They just make it extra strong and they name it Salvatore, which translates to savior, which, you know, they're celebrating. Jesus Christ, their savior. And also this beer as their savior when they can't eat. So it's Salvatore
pretty cool. So the OG example of the doppelbock style and what we're drinking today. Definitely is not going to be very similar to [00:27:00] the original Salvatore beer they were making like 400 years ago, right? We've obviously learned a lot about how to brew in that time, you know, just little things like what is yeast?
Yeah, for instance, anyway Eventually in the late 1800s Imitators making similar beers were also calling their Salvatore, but the then owners of polliner Which had become a secular business at that point. Um, because Napoleon Bonaparte showed up and privatized it, uh, interestingly. And then it just got, you know, sold to some private business men in the area.
But all these other breweries started making this beer too, like a similar beer and calling it Salvatore. So the owner of. Of a polliner brewing who wasn't a monk was just a business guy. He was pissed off and he applied for a trademark, which he got. And so no one else was allowed to use the [00:28:00] term Salvatore anymore.
So that's why all these other versions of doppelbock and have a name that ends with a T O R right. A tour. So you've got like Ayinger celebrator, Spatan optimator. Troege's Troganator and like so many others. I could, I could have written a huge list, but I just thought that'd be enough for you to understand what I'm talking about.
You've got a few weird ones out there, like Vine Stefaner's Corbinian, you know, not all of them have an ATOR at the end, but anytime you see a beer with ATOR at the end, you pretty much know that's a Doppelbock. Um, and it may be like, , something where you just see that there's this dark beer that your local craft brewery made and, but it just has a name that ends in ATOR.
I don't know if you can hear that. Bunch of sirens going by. All right, there we go. But yeah, if you're a local craft brewery makes a beer, you don't know what it is, but it ends in a T O R. You know that it's a double buck. All right, so let's talk about, actually, let's just pop [00:29:00] this cause I would like to be sipping it while we're talking here.
As I said, you know, drink more doppelbock. Yeah.
This is a good mug for a doppelbock. I think. Got that German Stein kind of vibe to it. Yeah, yeah. Fairly pale. Fairly pale Salvatore. We'll talk about that.
Alright, that's delicious. Okay, anyway.
Here's what the BJCP guidelines has down for doppelbock's overall impression. Quote, a strong, rich, and very malty German lager that can have both pale and dark variants. The darker versions have more richly developed and deeper malt flavors, while the paler versions have slightly more hops and dryness.
So to be clear, the vast majority of doppelbox that you'll find on the market will be of the darker variety. So let's, you know, I'm mostly going to talk about darker doppelbox here, and we're going to start by talking about appearance. [00:30:00] And I just want to, point out that this is Salvatore.
This is the O. G. Got it in a way finder mug here, but you can see the Spears Amber, and that is still considered a dark doppelbock. Although a lot of them are darker, this one's actually fairly pale and it's not even considered a pale doppelbock. So just heads up on that. And so, yeah, let's talk about appearance first.
When you pour a doppelbock, you're going to have a beer that falls somewhere between like amber, which is a bit unusual. It's usually, they're usually deeper brown, right? Which is, is more common. The BJCP says that more common dark versions are, quote, copper to dark brown in color, often with ruby highlights and an off white head.
They go on to describe the less common pale versions of doppelbock as deep gold to light amber in color with a white head. The SRM range for this style is massive. It goes from six... SRM. So six is that light amber. I mean, that's very light amber, almost like a, [00:31:00] like a deep gold, but 25 is a deep brown. So most doppelbocks you're going to encounter are going to be in the realm of like copper with Ruby highlights.
That's pretty typical. But one thing that is interesting is that Salvatore, the, you know, OG, the most OG of doppelbocks is fairly pale for the style and this beer is pretty much straight up amber. It isn't dark enough really to qualify as copper. I wouldn't say I mean you're looking at it if you're watching the video I'm holding it up.
It doesn't really qualify as copper. I guess, you know, it has an SRM of probably around like 14, maybe Definitely somewhere in the like 12 to 15 ish range. Weihenstephan Corbinian, Ayinger or Celebrator on the other hand These are much darker doppelbocks, they'd be described as more like brown or garnet or copper with ruby highlights They're near the upper SRM level for the style, I would guess, which, you know, I would guess they're in the lower 20s, SRM lower 20s.
Again, this style can go all the way from [00:32:00] SRM 6, which is a very light amber, to SRM 25, which is dark brown. So even Salvator, which is amber, as I mentioned, is listed in the guidelines as a dark doppelbuck. So if Salvatore is considered dark, it is my contention that you aren't going to find many pale ones out there.
They do have a little list of pale ones, and if you can find them, definitely try them. Because... So when we're talking appearance, color is the easy and obvious element of appearance. But what else is there to look at? So let's talk about other things. Let's talk about, first of all, clarity. In other words, how clear is this beer?
For doppelbock, The BJCP says you should have good clarity, quote unquote good, meaning there may be just the slightest touch of haze. But, many examples are going to have what we call brilliant clarity, which is the term we use to describe a beer that is as clear as it could possibly be. Like, you could read a newspaper through it, it's so clear.
And, when I hold this beer up against, like, my computer, I can totally see all the words right through [00:33:00] it. So this Salvatore is darn near brilliantly clear. With darker beers though, it can sometimes be difficult to determine their clarity, right?
Because they're just so dark that when you hold them up to a light, you can't really see through them. But when you hold them up to that light, you begin to understand the difference between an actual opaque black beer and these dark brown or copper beers that have red highlights. Because you can kind of catch a glimpse of the light going through the beer and these what we call highlights.
So those beers are generally, going to have really good clarity because you're, , you're seeing the light come through and it's showing up as Ruby or Garnet or red kind of highlights. So next up there's the beer's head. So what color is that for doppelbock? It'll usually be off white for a dark version, maybe white for a pale version.
Is the head persistent? Does it have a bunch of like tight bubbles? Does it have a bunch of large bubbles? This is a mix of different kinds of bubbles. These are all elements of appearance for doppelbock. [00:34:00] You should see quote, quoting the BJCP here, large, creamy, persistent head. So, ideally, it's a pretty dense head that lasts a while.
Um, there are a lot of things that affect a beer's head. I'll probably do a six pack pod episode on head and foam at some point. I don't want to dig in on that too much. This beer... This Salvatore I just poured myself has absolutely no head. And that is actually my experience with the Salvatore that I poured myself just the other day as well.
Um, I don't know if it's just because these are really old or what, but, um, when I had recently a Corbinian from Vines of Fondor and an Iyengar Celebrator, both of which I've just had in the last couple of days. Huge fluffy heads. Totally persistent. So, I'm not sure what's going on with these Salvatores. I don't know if I just keep buying them from some old batch.
I'm just not sure. But, the foam on this beer is basically non existent. But that's not normal. It should be large, creamy, and persistent. Some other appearance related elements to consider. Does the beer's head leave lacing behind on the side [00:35:00] of the glass as you drink it? You know, when you swirl the beer, does it have legs like some high alcohol beverages do, such as wine or like barley wines?
You know, doppelbock can be up there. That can be up to 10 percent ABV. So there is a chance you'll see some legs. And I definitely saw some legs when I was, yeah, I can see some legs here. Well, barely, it just makes a sheet.
, this beer style can go up to 10 percent Salvatore 7. 9, I believe. So, you know, seeing some legs wouldn't be, wouldn't be crazy. iF you're having like a beast mode, barley wine or a glass of wine with really high ABV levels, you can definitely see some legs.
All right. So next up, let's take a sniff. This is the moment, you know, when you take a sniff of this, it becomes totally clear that this is a very strongly malt focused BJCP says indeed. Very strong maltiness, possibly with light caramel notes and up to a moderate alcohol aroma, virtually no hop aroma.
So that's what it says in the BJCP about aroma for doppelbock. You [00:36:00] are, like I said, much more likely to encounter dark versions of doppelbock, and for the aroma of those, the BJCP says, specifically, that you should notice, quote, significant rich maillard products. That's browning. That's like... Not caramelization, but a different kind of browning, the kind of browning that happens to like a steak, right?
There's not like a bunch of sugar all over your steak, but it still Gets a brown crust on it, right? When you, when you cook it right, properly. So Significant rich maillard products, deeply toasted malt, and possibly a slight chocolate like aroma that should never be roasted or burnt. Moderately low dark fruit like plums, dark grapes, or fruit leather is allowable.
All right. So now we're in the territory of a strong dark and malt focused beer, right? But one that does not feature much, if any, roastiness. So if you'll recall, like last week, We discussed Oldale and it's kind of similar. It's quite dark generally, but it's not roasty. You can have a dark beer. That's [00:37:00] not roasty.
The roasty malt is what makes a lot of stouts and porters black. And this beer just doesn't have that. It doesn't have that going on. So let's, uh, let's see. Let's see what we get in doppelbock when we give it a sniff.
I'm not gonna lie. I think it'd be real boring for you to like watch me sniff and swirl and sniff and sip and swirl and stare off into space for like multiple minutes while I sit here writing down descriptors and stuff like that. So, I did open one of these beers a bit ago and did a little sensory on it before hitting the record button.
, oh, and I also did a live doppelbock tasting in my course for the Certified Cicerone exam. With a bunch of my students just a few days ago. So me and a bunch of the enrolled students, we tasted doppelbock together. We broke down the style in great detail. And, um, it'd be real cool if you joined us for those weekly live tastings and Q and a's, we always pick a different style and then we all get together, you know, predetermined style.
Everyone has like a [00:38:00] month or more to go get all these beers and then everyone shows up and we'll all have different ones. Like of course with doppelbock. A lot of us had Salvatore, because that's one of the ones that you can always find. But, there were a few people that had different things. I had, I had a Salvatore.
I also had a Celebrator. Um, so I had one dark one, one that was a little paler. We all talked about it. We all talked about what we were sensing. We talked about the whole style. We broke it all down. Super fun. And then there's also an open Q and a, of course, everyone gets their questions answered. Anyway, you should totally join.
You should sign up for my course. Do it. All right. So some of the aroma descriptors I wrote down for, I anger celebrator included caramel chew or like kind of like a Werther's original. If you're familiar with those caramel candies, I wrote down toasted pumpernickel bread. That one just, Just really was the, the main aroma I was getting toasted pumpernickel bread, a fruit [00:39:00] cake, which is all about that dark dried fruit.
So we're talking about things like plums and figs and dates, right? And in a fruit cake. And I also wrote down rum soaked raisins. And I really love that one because it, it. It helps me communicate that I'm smelling some alcohol in here without using a totally generic descriptor like perfumey alcohol, right?
Quote, unquote, perfumey alcohol, like alcohol is hard to describe in a way that is consumer friendly and sounds delicious and is interesting. So, uh, you know, rum soaked raisins, I think does a great job here, but you can, if you can come up with any kind of sort of alcohol soaked something. And, you know, rum soaked raisin is kind of an easy one, it's sort of a familiar one.
But other times I've, I've used other descriptors like, something infused vodka, or whatever. , just to let the reader know that, hey, or the listener know, hey, I'm getting some booze on this as well as this fruit character. Or this spice character, or [00:40:00] whatever. Um, so yeah, fun fact, if you didn't know, fruitcake.
We talk about it, a lot of people actually haven't had it much, if ever. But, uh, often the fruit that's used to make fruitcakes are soaked in brandy or some other alcohol. And so it not only adds flavor, but it also helps the cake last longer. Interesting, fun trivia there. The uh, ABV level for Doppelbot can range from 7 percent ABV to 10 percent ABV, so 7 to 10 percent ABV.
So, this is a pretty big beer, and you are going to get some boozyness, especially from the stronger ones, so. Some other decent descriptors, depending on which example you've got, could include like molasses, or treacle, or toffee, right? These dark sugars. A touch of chocolate, or cocoa. You know, these beers are never roasty, but you'll often find just a light touch of these sorts of aromas and flavors, especially in the darker.[00:41:00]
You can talk about any kind of bread that you're getting, , usually like these darker breads, like, like pumpernickel or toast, toasted breads. There's lots of good, lots of good descriptors you can throw out there for this. So when you're assessing a beer's aroma or flavor, , never forget to go down your list of beer ingredients and specifically look for aromas from each because you will forget.
You will forget to do this, like in an exam situation I'm talking about here, but you know, anytime you're judging a beer or breaking it down, you should do this. So as you sniff your doppelbock, you know, what are you getting any hop aroma? How about any yeast driven aromas, any fruity esters, any spicy phenols?
What about malt driven aromas? Right? Sometimes it can be difficult to know exactly where an aroma or flavor is coming from. And other times it will be like super obvious. So with doppelbock the aromas and flavors are usually going to be pretty much all about the malt. This is a lager. So the whole point is for the yeast to get out of the way and allow the other ingredients whether that's hops or malt, the point of lager making lagers is [00:42:00] typically to have like very little yeast.
Flavor presence and to allow that hop, the hops or the malt to shine and indeed, , This doppelbock has a very clean fermentation profile, or I should say all the doppelbocks I've had over the last week I've had a few like I mentioned Celebrator, Corbinian, Salvatore, very clean fermentation profile, you know, these aren't like estuary fruity ales And they're certainly not like phenolic Belgian ales.
So, the fermentation on these is done at a low lager yeast temperature. So it's slower, it's more controlled. These produce less flavor active compounds as they grow, and as they process sugars into ethanol and CO2. And then the beer is lagered after fermentation. So lagering is, as you know, simply... A cold conditioning period during which the beer is held at a very low temperature sometimes just above freezing for anywhere from a few days to several weeks or for [00:43:00] strong loggers like doppelbock the loggering process is often done for several months.
And so, what is the point of this? Well, during lagering, certain flavor active compounds in the beer are processed by the yeast into less flavor active compounds. So, crazy enough, the lager yeast are still kind of active, even at these ridiculously low temperatures. You know, they're definitely moving in like slow motion at this point.
And a lot of them have probably just, um, flocculate, you know, flocked out, um, given up. But there's still some active, there's still some activity in there. It's bonkers. And ale yeast wouldn't even, they would just be gone. They're just done at these temperatures. , but lager yeast We'll continue to do work.
It's pretty impressive. , what they're doing is, , processing some of some certain flavor active compounds into less flavor active compounds. , that includes some of the off flavors that you have to learn for the Certified Cicerone Exam, like [00:44:00] Acetaldehyde and Diacetyl, among others. Uh, some, some compounds simply precipitate out of the beer during the lagering period.
So that's the case for some, uh, something like proteins and tannins that are just like hanging out in the beer, they'll just precipitate out. So it doesn't really rely on the yeast actually processing anything. They literally just precipitate to the bottom of the tank, which, by the way, is one of the reasons that.
lagering tanks are often horizontal because then there's less, it takes, you know, it just doesn't take as long for all the stuff to settle out because the tank is on its side. So also some residual sugars in the beer continue to be processed. Um, a lot of the sulfur that's in the beer, which, lager yeast kind of notorious for making a little bit of sulfur.
We're talking like burnt match kind of sulfur or like eggy kind of sulfur, either, either, or a lot of that will. Basically volatile volatilizes out. So, you know, you'll read it written as like being scrubbed out or [00:45:00] whatever, but really it's just kind of volatilizing out and turn in in the sense of, you know, these are very volatile compounds.
They want to kind of come out of solution and come out, go up into the air. That's why you can smell them because they're volatile. And so as there is still some CO two production happening, Uh, because that yeast is still active in there, it will, , scrub some of that out. When that CO2 blows off a little bit, it will take a lot of that sulfur with it.
So altogether though, the lagering process helps make the yeast driven aromas and flavors in a lager beer less apparent in the final beer. And it also provides it with that smoother mouthfeel that we kind of associate with lagers and, you know. It's kind of hard to describe what these changes are, , if you read around, you'll, you'll see people use words like, oh, it's smoother afterwards and stuff like that.
It's, you know, it's not like ineffable necessarily. It's not like an acid trip that's like ineffable. I just can't describe it. But it's, uh, you know, it is hard to [00:46:00] describe, but the beer is going to have less yeast driven characteristics. It's going to be a little smoother. It's gonna be a little cleaner.
Those are the kind of descriptors we use for describing lagering. I'll probably do a whole show on that one day. Alright, let's talk about flavor though. So now we're putting the beer in our mouths. We're bringing taste into the equation. You remember the five basic tastes, right? You can't smell those. You might smell things in a doppelbock that give you the impression of sweetness. But you cannot smell sweetness. You have to put a beer in your mouth to detect sweetness. And so, , often the flavor delivers what the aroma promises, but there's often some differences. , with the anger celebrator, I got a lot more of the dark dried fruit flavors in the, in the flavor than I did in the aroma.
So in the aroma, I could definitely detect some of that stuff. Some of that fruit cakey stuff like dark cherry and figs fruit cake. But my guess is that actually putting the beer in my mouth, bringing in the [00:47:00] taste of sweetness. It kind of bends the overall flavor profile for me into the direction of of being fruitier, right?
So, I think that's why I'm getting more, more of that dark dried fruit character in the flavor than I was getting in the aroma, which is kind of neat. So, I don't get any hop flavor in, well, any of those Doppelbocks I've mentioned, I didn't get any hop flavor in them, and it may be because they're kind of old.
It's quite possible, but it's generally this isn't a beer style where you're going to get a lot of hop flavor, so that's pretty normal. , I got no obvious yeast flavor there. These sort of dark dried fruit flavors, you know, I mentioned before sometimes it's hard to tell where a flavor is coming from, what exact ingredient is driving it.
These dark dried fruit flavors, , probably a little bit of an interplay between some yeast esters, but mostly it's the dark malt. , I believe those dark dried fruit flavors are mostly driven by malt, , in every beer that they show up in. Of course, you know, there are no yeast driven phenols in this beer, like I mentioned, , like Belgian type phenyls, those [00:48:00] like peppery or spicy or clove y phenyls.
Because it's not brewed with a, an ale yeast strain that is POF or PAD positive, , which are the kind of yeast strains that make those phenols. So, you know, those yeast strains are used to make beers like Weissbier or Saison or other Belgian ales. They're never used to make lagers. So now, , we can sense. The primary taste of the beer.
We can now that we can taste that, we can, we can check out the balance, right? You can't smell the balance. You have to put the beer in your mouth to get the balance. All beers, most beers, not all beers, most beers are balanced. A balance of the sweet malt and the bitter hops, right? There are some sour ales, where instead of bitterness, it's balanced by sourness.
This is definitely not one of those beers, this beer. Is going to lean slightly sweet. The BJCP says, quote, most examples are fairly malty sweet on the palette, but should have an impression of attenuation in the finish. The impression of sweetness comes from low hopping, not from [00:49:00] incomplete fermentation.
Okay, so doppelbock's IBU range is from 16 to 26 IBUs. So, IBUs is the IBU range, and as we know, knowing the IBU range of a beer doesn't tell you anything. It's literally useless knowledge without knowing a lot more about the beer. Because all that matters, really, is the beer's balance. I mean, for actually breaking down the flavor and the balance and all that stuff, right?
I can tell you the IBU range of a beer. And it doesn't tell you squat knowing more about doppelbock knowing a lot more about doppelbock. We know that it's a fairly strong beer, right? It's a, it's a, it's a seven to 10 percent ABV beer. So 16 in a beer that big isn't a lot so yeah, it's a malt driven beer and it typically leans slightly sweet.
It's not at all cloying or what we would call worty. Worty is sort of like what you would say about a beer that doesn't seem to have been fully fermented. It's sort of [00:50:00] still, you know, the thing that you get after the mash that you go to ferment. That's the wort, right? W O R T. And if the fermentation just stalls out and you don't get a complete fermentation, that beer is going to be like super sweet.
It's going to taste kind of worty. It won't be fully attenuated. The sweetness in doppelbock is driven more by a low level of hop bitterness than it is by having lots of residual sugar still in the beer, right? So you've had beers that are really sweet, but maybe also really bitter, and still, they're still balanced.
That's fine. You can do that. This beer, it's not really sweet. It leans slightly sweet, but that's largely, or at least partly, because it's just not very bitter. But it is fully attenuated. It's, it's... , it's got a full enough attenuation that the doppelbock, all the ones I've had recently, you know, they have this pretty well defined kind of cutoff in their finish, right?
Yes, it's sweet. It comes across as sweet, but there's no like lingering sweetness or like lasting heaviness on your [00:51:00] palate that would cause your palate to be fatigued after a few sips of this beer. , that's not going to happen with these beers.
, they're pretty well attenuated. So now you can see we're kind of veering into talk about mouthfeel. So let's, let's dig on, dig in on mouthfeel. So the BJCP says quote medium full to full body. Moderate to moderately low carbonation, very smooth, without harshness or astringency. A light alcohol warmth may be noted, but it should never burn.
So yeah, medium full is what you're gonna get, uh, for the body, for most doppel bocks. Maybe when you're hitting that, like, high level, kinda 10 percent ABV level, you're gonna get a full bodied beer. , And in fact, uh, it's unfortunate that the BJCP doesn't say this anymore. , it used to say, , okay, yes, this is a style that goes from seven to 10%, but, and this is, I'm going back to like, I don't know if this is the 2008 BJCP guidelines or the 2016.
I just don't remember. I didn't like look this [00:52:00] up for the show. It's ridiculous that I remember all these things, but this is how long I've been doing this crap. It used to say. Okay, sure. The style goes from 7 to 10 percent ABV, but there's actually no real upper limit on the ABV of doppelbock. It used to say that straight up, and I think they were saying that because there are huge doppelbocks out there.
You know, when we think of a doppelbock that's huge, we might be thinking, you might be thinking like, oh, Eisbock, or something like that. But there are actually gigantidoppelbockchs out there, like Samiclaus, which is a, well, it used to be, let's see, it used to be Austrian? It either was Swiss and is now brewed in Austria or it was Austrian and is now brewed in Switzerland.
I think it is brewed in Austria. It's a 14 percent alcohol. Basically, it's a dopple bocks. It's a big, dark lager. In fact, it was for a long time the world's strongest production beer, I believe. And definitely was for a long [00:53:00] time the world's strongest production lager. And if you don't know what I'm talking about, you've never had Sammie Klaus, you got to go to the beer store and find some Samiclaus, because it is.
Kind of amazing. I love it. , I have a whole bunch of them downstairs. They're all dated by year or two. So you, it's definitely one of those beers you can, you can cellar. Anyway, for our purposes, they go up to 10 percent ABV. , a lot of Doppelbocks are going to provide a little alcohol warming in the mouth and throat, right?
Especially the bigger ones. Then they mentioned moderate to moderately low carbonation. So yeah, this isn't your, you know, a zingy, tingly, high carbonation lager. This is a big, deeply malty lager that doesn't need lots of fizz. , it's not the body of the spirit. It's not so dense that it's like a sipper, but it's also not a spritzy like poolside summer crusher.
So these mouth felt feel elements of a beer. They're critical in thinking about why we like to drink certain beers or eat certain foods at various times of the year.[00:54:00] , I don't mind having a dark lager by the pool in the summer, but I want it to be a Schwartz beer, right? Which is more like a spritzy dark Pilsner in the winter.
I want a bock or a doppelbock or an ice bock or a Baltic Porter, which is a lager by the way, usually almost always, these are all big dark lagers and that's not what I want to drink when I'm like sitting by the pool and it's a hundred degrees out. All right, we're almost done. Let's finish this up by hitting on a few final items.
What are doppelbocks made from and what are the important brewing techniques used to make them? So the BJCP says, quote, Pils, Vienna and Munich malts, occasionally dark malt for color adjustment, traditional German hops, clean German lager yeast, decoction mashing is traditional. So yeah, Pilsner is the palest base malt, as you probably know.
Vienna is a fairly dark base malt [00:55:00] and Munich is the darkest of the base malts. So, a base malt is malted barley that contains enough enzymes to convert all of its own carbohydrates into, uh, sugars in the mash. So, base malts are always, you know, they're called base malts because they are the majority of every recipe.
Specialty malts, these are malts that do not contain the enzymes, enough enzymes to convert their sugars. And usually the reason is that they have been kilned or roasted. In high heat or over a long period of time and , that's great for creating super flavorful malt, but it also denatures the enzymes in those malts so that you can't just make a beer with specialty malt, like all specialty malt because it just won't, you know, the mash won't really work.
You won't get a bunch of sugar out of it and your fermentation will be all whacked out. So, all beer is mostly base malt with some specialty malt thrown in for flavor and color. That's how that works. And, in the case of [00:56:00] doppelbock, the only specialty malt you'll find is sometimes a handful of roasted malt to give it, you know, a little more depth of malt flavor, you know, just to provide more depth to that malt flavor.
And, I think it's fair to say, it's very likely that that is where the minor notes of chocolate or cocoa are coming from in those darker doppelbox that have those notes. That roasted malt's also going to darken the beer's color a bit. , let's see, the BJCP mentions traditional German hops, those are going to be your typical continental noble type hops like Hallertau and The Gang.
We already talked about that clean lager yeast. As for techniques, decoction mashing is traditional. So decoction mashing, it is the most intense type of mash. It's where the brewer removes about a third of the mash and boils it separately and then adds it back into the main mash. So this is usually done like two or three times and it can take hours to do a proper triple decoction mash.
You can do a double decoction, triple [00:57:00] decoction, you could do a single decoction. And historically this was done because brewers were making beer with poorly modified malt, under modified malt. And I'm not going to dig in on that because it's kind of technical, but they would take the mash through a series of temperature steps to ensure that they were getting all the sugars they possibly could out of those malts.
So it was kind of an efficiency thing. And, you know, these days, Malt modification is not a problem. Maltsers know exactly how to fully modify their malt. Back in the day, that wasn't the case. So, a lot of brewers were getting malt, and it was maybe not fully modified, which meant that when they brewed with it, it wasn't going to provide them with the amount of sugars they would want out of it.
So, they would take it through all these different steps in the mash. Um, a few other historical reasons brewers did decoction include, like, acidifying the mash. You might, you might do like an acid rest. You know, I mean, you're stepping the mash, right? If you take out a third of the mash, boil [00:58:00] it, and then put it back in, then the main, the temperature of the main mash is going to rise.
So you're taking it through a series of temperature steps, which are called rests. And... , one of them might have been like the acid rest if you needed to acidify your mash. But none of these reasons are really necessary today, right? They've all been solved. Like, you need to acidify your mash? Cool.
Like, go buy a jug of lactic or phosphoric acid. Throw some in your mash or your brewing liquor before you even mash in. So, you know, why would you do a decoction mash? Well, for flavor. Most of the world's top lager makers, pretty much across the board, say that they cannot reproduce the malt flavors they get from decoction by any other mash.
method. So a lot of brewers, you'll hear all these brewers say, and if you read like homebrew, you know, I don't know, whatever home brewers on Reddit or whatever, you'll see all these brewers saying like, why not just throw in this or that specialty malt and you can replicate those flavors, right? Cause we've got all these specialty malts now that they didn't have back in the day.
[00:59:00] Like just throw in a bunch of caramel malt and whatever, and get those like malty flavors that you're looking for that, that you get from decoction. But I've never heard one of the world's top lager brewers say that ever. They swear by decoction, they say that they cannot get those flavors without doing decoction.
So, uh, Wayfinder Brewing here in Portland, Oregon, one of the top lager makers in the US, they make a quadruple decocted doppelbock is one of their seasonal releases, super good. And why would you do that? Well, it's all about, well, it's, that's, it's just a fun, special project. That's like bordering on the ridiculous, but it's all about developing that depth of malt flavor.
And it's also, there's also this thought that there's perhaps like a mouthfeel element to it that boosts mouthfeel slightly, uh, so that you can kind of fully attenuate that beer, but still get this, this weight or viscosity in that final beer that you desire. [01:00:00] So finally, I kind of mentioned this at the top of the discussion, but let's do a quick style comparison.
The BJCP says, quote, About doppelbock, that it is a stronger, richer, more full birdied, birdied, full bodied version of either a Dunkles bock or a Hellesbock. Dunkelsbock being a dark beer and Hellesbock being a pale beer. So basically doppelbock is a bigger version of a Dunkels bock, right? Considering the fact that almost all of them are the dark version.
Doppelbock is mostly a bigger Dunkelsbock. And Dunkles bock, if you really want to dig in on that, is basically like a bigger version of a Munich Dunkel, right? So you got Munich Dunkel, Dunkelsbock, and then doppelbock. So, it's basically like a ladder of these dark German lagers, each of which is stronger and more intensely malty than the last.
If you're talking about pale doppelbocks, Then you're talking about, you know, Munich Helles, Helles [01:01:00] Bock, and then a pale Doppelbock. So there are these two ladders in the German lager families, that are just strength related. The beers are generally in, you know, have similar flavors. They just get bigger and bigger and more flavorful and more flavorful.
So anyway, all of them are delicious. All those beers I just mentioned, all three styles, all six styles. You should go drink them. Go get a Doppelbock. Hashtag drink more doppelbock.
All right. Number six this week. I'm just going to tell you about some music. I dig that. I like to work too. It is Ryan Celsius. I don't know if you ever heard of this guy. He's got a pretty popular YouTube channel. It's pretty amazing channel actually. If you're into like chill trap music, then he is your phonk and chillwave overlord.
Just search Ryan Celsius or click the link in this episode's description. If you want to check them out. [01:02:00] All right, folks, that is episode three of the Beer Scholar Six Pack. If you enjoyed it, please subscribe and give it a thumbs up, five stars and or a positive glowing review wherever you get your podcasts.
But do it on YouTube. Go to YouTube, check out the whole video. Actually, I can. I'm just like, I've got this monitor right here. You're like, why is he always looking off the side? Well, on one side I've got like some script stuff on the other, I've got a monitor and I can see that the video is doing some weird, choppy thing here, so I apologize for that.
But, uh, yeah. Please, give it a thumbs up, subscribe, hit the little bell thing. Also, if you have a question for me about pretty much anything, please fire up your phone's voice recorder, record your question, and email the audio file to chris at thebeerscholar.
com. I haven't done an Office Hours segment for Episodes 2 or 3, but [01:03:00] it'll come back. I do have some questions in the in the queue, but I would love to get your question. Anyway, thanks so much for listening. Your support means the world to me. See you next week.
