From Vol. 4, No. 6 & 7, October & November 2020
In 2012, the German Brauerbund, the caretaker of the Reiheitsgebot, declared dry hopping did not violate that beer purity law. The implication was that Germans did not previously dry hop beer. That is wrong.
Sylvia Kopp offered evidence during a session of BarthHaas Dry-Hopping Boot Camp a few months ago. She cited multiple references (listed below) for the second half of the 19th century that Christina Schoenberger at BarthHaas has discovered. They “clearly recommend dry hopping for preserving effects and for enhancing flavor.”
Kopp wrote via email that members of traditional family breweries acknowledge their ancestors were familiar with the technique. In some cases, those breweries are making dry-hopped lagers today. Ruperti Pils from Brauerei Wieninger in upper Bavaria is an example of one.
“With the rise of big scale production, which is synonymous with lager beer production, modern brewing technology and new efficient ways of improving quality, dry hopping vanished from the collective mind in the first half of the 20th century,” she added. Likewise, brewers in the US and UK seemed to lose track of what H.T. Brown and G.H. Morris documented in 1893, that hops contain enzymes and dry hopping can kindle refermentation (aka “hop creep”).
In fact, some of the books Kopp points to refer to Brown and Morris. They describe different approaches to the hopfenstopfen process, compare the quality of aroma from different hop varieties, and among other topics discuss the merits of using distilled essential oils rather than dry hopping. Kopp suggests that the practice may not have been common, but that the amount of literature indicates that it was not totally uncommon.
The literal translation for hopfenstophen is “hop stopper” and it may refer to “hop plugs” as well as the overall process.
After reading about this in October, Simon Moosleitner, a subscriber in Germany, wrote to suggest there is more to think about:
“I would give it a slightly different translation. You’re definitely right with translating Stopfen as plug or bung. However, in this case the word Stopfen is a nominalization of the verb to stopfen (you may notice the difference in capitalization, in German nouns are always written with a capital letter).
“The verb stopfen has a slightly different meaning. It is used when repairing clothes or to be more precise darning socks. But more importantly it’s the same word (potentially even etymologically) as to stuff. Whether you want to say one stuffs a pillow with feathers or food into oneself, the word stopfen can always be applied. Hopfenstopfen is therefore the act of stuffing beer with hops, which I guess is an even more fitting term now with all the hazy beers around.”
Sources:
– Der Hopfen (1901)
– Handbuch der Brauwissenschaft: Hopfenstopen (1893)
– Bayerisches Brauerjournal (1894)
– Die Südgermanen, Braugart (1914)
– Chemie des Brauwesens, Lüers (1929)