The History of Berliner Weisse with Ron Pattinson – BeerSmith Podcast #257

Ron Pattinson joins me this week to discuss the interesting history of the Berliner Weisse sour beer style and how its popularity rose and fell in its native Germany.

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Topics in This Week’s Episode (43:16)

• This week I welcome back Ron Pattinson. Ron is the author of dozens of books and articles on historical beer brewing including his most recent effort to document British brewing during World War II. You can find his articles and purchase his books from his blog which is Shut Up About Barclay Perkins.
• We discuss a few of the projects Ron is working on including his upcoming two volume set on British brewing in WWII.
• We discuss how much of beer history has mythical roots, as well as open a discussion about Berliner Weisse.
• Ron explains some of the legends vs reality of the Berliner Weisse origins in Northern Germany.
• We talk about some interesting historical processes which included fermenting the beer in the mash tun itself.
• Ron explains the evolution of the style through the 1800’s to become the style we are more familiar with today.
• We discuss its evolution in the 1900’s as well as the significant impact of the division of Berlin after WWII.
• Ron tells us about the decline of Berliner Weisse after the wall fell in 1989, and why it is basically down to a single commercial brewery in Berlin now.
• We briefly talk about the growth of the style as a specialty Craft beer here in the US, which has largely kept Berliner Weisse alive in a slightly altered form.
• Ron offers his closing thoughts.

Sponsors

• Thank you to our sponsor Craft Beer and Brewing Magazine for sponsoring this episode. I encourage you to subscribe to their great magazine!
• And also Anvil Brewing Equipment. Anvil is a new line of kettles, burners and accessories from John Blichmann at Blichmann Engineering. They make top quality brewing equipment built to last a lifetime.
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Thanks to Ron Pattinson for appearing on the show and also to you for listening!
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