Most people divide the year into four seasons, but not the Bavarians! They count six seasons! Sure, they have summer, winter, spring and fall like the rest of us, but they also consider Oktoberfest time a separate season, neither summer nor fall, when, under giant beer tents, millions of visitors from all over the world descend upon Munich to swig endless liters of Helles and Oktoberfestbier and munch on endless yards of sausages for two weeks of lederhosen-slapping and oompah band-playing fun.
Then there is Starkbierzeit ("strong beer season") during Lent in February, around St. Joseph´s Day (March 19). It is a more local affair than the Oktoberfest. All Bavarian Lenten strong beers belong to the family of Bockbier lagers or to the even stronger family of Doppelbocks, and the Paulaner Brewery´s Salvator is the oldest of the Doppelbocks. Each Bockbier season, therefore, opens officially, when thousands of Munich residents gather in the Paulaner Beer Hall at the Nockherberg (a hill in Munich) to witness the kick-off of two weeks of hefty Bockbier drinking, inbitiated by the tapping, usually by a celebrity, of the year's the first cask of Paulaner Salvator Doppelbock.
Bockbier: A Strong Lager of Ale Ancestry
Nowadays, two out of every three German strong beers are made in Bavarian brewhouses. Bockbier, therefore, is now considered one of the keystones of the Bavarian brew culture. Surprisingly, however, the name Bockbier is not Bavarian at all. It is of northern German origin. The brew started in the Lower-Saxon city of Einbeck, near Hannover, in the mid-1200s. At that time, Einbeck was one of the leading ale-making centers in Europe. It exported its top-fermented brews through the Hanseatic League, a medieval a trading association, to all places of the then-known world — yes, even to the feudal lords of Bavaria. To ensure the ale´s keeping quality during the often long transport, the Einbeckers always brewed it particularly strong.
The Dukes of Bavaria, while much taken by the strong brew from Einbecker, eventually deemed its importation too much of a drain on their state coffers. That's how much they drank of the sutuff! So they figured it would be much healthier for the Bavarian balance of payments to make a similar strong brew right in their own court brewery in Munich. So they engaged the services of an experienced Einbecker brewmaster, Elias Pichler, to get them started, and Elias' first version of an Einbecker beer was ready for tapping in Munich in 1612. Because the yeast available to Elias was a local bottom-fermenting instead of an Einbecker top-fermenting variety, the strong beer that he produced turned out to be a lager, not an ale. After this brew-technical "Bavarianization" of the northern strong ale, the natives even mangled its name. In the local vernacular, the original "Einbecker Bier" soon became "Ayn pöckisch Bier" and eventually "ein Bockbier" ... and this is how the Bavarian strong beer acquired its name. The original Bockbier from Einbeck is still made today, but on the label, it's called Ur-Bock ("ur" is a German prefix meaning "original").
The Superlative of Strong Is Doppelbock
Especially the monasteries soon excelled in Bockbier-brewing. The monks, accustomed to frequent fasting, regarded the potent Bockbier as a welcome and nourishing substitute for the forbidden solid food, especially during the six weeks of Lent. They called their Bockbiers "liquid bread," and the stronger it was, the better they liked it. Over time, monastic Bockbier gained in potency and eventually became known as "Doppeltrunk" ("double drink"), from which we derive the modern designation of Doppelbock for extra-strong Bockbier.
Among the first friars to get into strong-beer act were the Paulaner monks. Their order was named after St. Francis of Paula in Italy. The Paulaners had been invited to come to Munich by Duke Maximilian I, in 1627, and within a few years, they had brewed their first beer. We do not know for sure when that momentous event occurred, because monasteries did not need a license to make beers for their own consumption. This meant, however, that the Paulaners were not allowed to let anybody else taste their beers, neither for free nor for pay — a prohibition, to which the monks obviously paid little attention, at least judging by the frequent complaints that are on record against them. The Paulaners brewed their strong beers according to a traditional Benedictine recipe for a very malty so-called Sankt-Vater-Bier ("Holy Father Beer"), a name that was later contracted to Salvator (which happens to be Latin for "Savior").
Ordinary people got their first, legal, taste of the Paulaner Doppelbock in 1751, when the monks were granted special dispensation to sell their beer to the general public — but only on April 2, the names day of St. Francis of Paula. Initially, therefore, at least in the public's mind, the brew was not associated with Lent. By 1780, Duke Karl-Theodor of Bavaria finally granted the Paulaner monks the privilege to sell their popular brew to anybody, wherever and whenever, without any restrictions — an edict that brought the monks a tidy profit. Unfortunately for them, however, these earthly benefits were not to last ...
because of a pesky chap named Napoleon. In the wake of the Frenchman’s conquest of much of Europe, in 1799, he instituted a novelty, secularization, a new creed that stipulated the separation of church and state. This was one of the key tennets of the Enlightenment, which had spawned the French Revolution of 1789. Religious institutions, henceforth, were no longer permitted to own property or engage in commerce. For the Paulaners this meant that their monastery and brewery had to be closed. Both became the property of the Bavarian state, and the brewery fell into disuse, leading, of course, to a hiatus in the availability of Paulaner beer!
The brewery was rescued from oblivion, however, in 1806, when Franz Xaver Zacherl, the proprietor of the Munich Heller Brewery rented the Paulaner premises. Franz Xaver promptly resumed production of the famed Salvator and, in 1813, bought the Paulaner brewery outright. It was on Franz Xaver's watch, in the 1830s, that Salvator became the signature beer for the opening of the two-week strong-beer season in the spring — to celebrate the arrival of Lent.
After the success of the Paulaner Doppelbock, other Munich breweries, of course, did not want to be left out of the lucrative strong beer market. One by one, they too came out with their own Salvator beers. This led, in 1890, to a dispute between the Paulaner owners at the time, the brothers Schmederer, and other Munich breweries over the rights to the Salvator name, a dispute that was settled in 1896, when the German Imperial Patent Office accepted Salvator as the Paulaner Brewery's registered trademark. Oddly, this was the beginning of a wave of suffixed "-ator" names for beer, including such fantastic ones as Animator, Triumphator, Bayuvator, Celebrator, Bambergator, Operator, and Maximator.
Eisbock, a Frozen Curiosity
It is true that the modern "ice beer" was introduced, in the late 20th century, by the Canadian brewery Labatt's, but the practice of concentrating a brew through freezing is definitely much older. In Bavaria, it has been practiced for centuries, though nobody is sure exactly for how long. There is a persistent legend though, which no one has been able to verify, which says that the first ice beer was made from a batch of Bockbier in the northern Bavarian city of Kulmbach, and that it was made purely by accident.
Apparently, a brewery lad — after a long day of toil in front of the mash tun — was too tired in the evening to roll the barrels of finished Bockbier from the brewery yard into the cellar, as he had been told. He figured that there would be no harm in leaving them outside until morning. The night however, turned out to be bitter cold, and the beer inside the barrels froze solid. By the time the brew crew returned the following morning, the staves of the barrels had burst open. It appeared to all that the entire lot of wonderful Bockbier had been ruined. As the brewers inspected the frozen brew more closely, they discovered that, at the very center of each barrel, a small pool of murky, brownish liquid had collected. The brewers were unaware that alcohol has a much lower freezing point than water, and that it becomes concentrated in the center as the beer freezes from the outside in. And as the water freezes, the alcohol also transportes with it all the essence of Bockbier's delicious, malty flavor.
The irate brewmaster, bent on meting out severe punishment, ordered the hapless lad to crack open the icy barrels and drink the awful brownish stuff in the center. The lad did as he was told, taking mere tentative sips at first, but then imbibing with ever increasing gusto. In the center of each barrel-size lump of ice was the most malty-sweet, and heavy beer imaginable. Punishment, indeed! The lad, of course, let the others partake in his "punishment," too.
Thus was born, allegedly, the Eisbock, a Bockbier beyond even the realm of Doppelbocks. Still today, an Eisbock is made according to the principles that operated on that bitter cold wintry night in Kulmbach: A very strong Bockbier is partially frozen and then strained to eliminate much of the water from the brew. The result is a beer of almost 25% extract (which is about twice as much as that of a "regular" beer). Most Eisbocks nowadays have an alcohol by volume level of 8 to 9%, but have 12% or more!