Franconian Beer Message Board
How Many Breweries? |
| Posted by Nick B. on 2011-02-13 04:51:46 |
| There's a nice piece in this weekend's Erlangen newspaper about 3 brewsters nearby: the two at the breweries in Gräfenberg and the one at Wiethaler in Lauf-Neunhof. The article reveals how all three struggled against unfair treatment and prejudice during their trade school years (being made to clean more than the men, not being allowed to touch the copper, etc.), but then runs into a bit of trouble with numbers. I believe the number of breweries in Franconia has been on the decline for a long time, but there are also new ones opening up here and there. IIRC, there are around 280 breweries in operation. The article says 350 though, and "over 200 private breweries" are in Oberfranken alone. It then goes on to say that this 200 is more than in any other Bavarian administrative region (collection of counties, more or less), more than in any other German state, as well as in any other European country. Well there are certainly more than 200 private breweries in England, if not also in Belgium and the Czech Republic. Or am I wrong about this? And in Friday's paper, there was an article about the new monthly top-fermented beer at Steinbach in Erlangen: "Hopfenfrucht" (hop-fruit). Steinbach have gone out on a limb and dared to experiment with an exotic new hop variety--Saphir! (Well, it has been on the market for 8 years according to the article...) Much is made in the article about how fruity and citric this new variety is, hence the name. So we wandered down to try it on the way to one of our favourite Italian places for dinner last night, and sure enough, it's fruity, but not from hops, rather, like ALL their top-fermented beers, from the Hefeweizen yeast they use. Oh, sure, there's enough hop in there to at least come close to balancing out the underattenuated malt sweetness and residual sugars from the dark malts used (6+% abv, though it tasted and felt like 5%, copper), but not nearly enough to warrant the name, let alone a whole newspaper article with photograph. No, this ain't hoppy. It's as if the brewer held up a bag of Saphir and let the wort get a good look at it, but didn't actually put any in. |
| Followups: |
 How Many Breweries? by TreinJan on 2011-02-13 06:11:53 |
| How Many Breweries? by john ratcliffe on 2011-02-13 07:38:30 |
| Czech Republic by Evan Rail on 2011-02-13 08:53:18 |
| How Many Breweries? by Fred Waltman on 2011-02-13 10:03:42 |
| How Many Breweries? by Uncle Jimbo on 2011-02-13 10:33:42 |
| How Many Breweries? by A Harvey on 2011-02-13 11:31:34 |
| Fog In Channel - Continent Cut Off! by DonS on 2011-02-13 12:36:35 |
| How Many Breweries? Italy by Fred Waltman on 2011-02-13 13:19:57 |
| How Many Breweries? Italy by Uncle Jimbo on 2011-02-13 14:39:40 |
| How Many Breweries? Italy by sergio ancellotti on 2011-02-14 00:04:49 |