German Brewing between 1850 and 1900 : Malting and Wort Production

This article tries to shed some light on the German brewing practice that as it was practiced in the later half of the 19th century. It is largely based on the description of the brewing process as it is found in various books of that time. In particular the Brockhaus Konversations Lexikon (conversation encyclopedia) of 1898 and the book "Chemie fuer Laien" (layman chemistry). Althogh neither of them are brewing textbooks as they were targeted at the curious and affluent part of the public their description of the brewing process is surprisingly detailed and can only be covered in excerpts here. The actual details of the brewing practice of a particular brewery was a well guarded secret that was passed on from generation to generation and rarely published in textbooks. Brewers back than had only a limited knowledge of the science behind brewing and once they found a way that worked they made sure that a competing brewery would not benefit from that knowledge. Most of the pictures were taken in the German Brewing Museum in Kulmbach.