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Beer history Germany Poland

Baedeker on Schöps

We mentioned schöps beer in a post about the beer war of 1380 ages ago. This week, we came across another titbit in Baedeker’s Northern Germany (1893) in the entry for Schweidnitz (now Świdnica):

Schweidnitz (Thamm, at the station; Krone, Scepter, both in the market-place; *Deutsches Haus, R., L., & A 1.5km,;Riedel's; Gruener Adler), a town with 24,700 inhab., formerly the capital of a principality of the name (since 1741 Prussian), is prettily situated on the left bank of the Weistritz. in the Wilhems-Platz, near the station, are the handsome Law Courts. The tower (328 ft.) of the Roman Catholic Church commands an admirable prospect. The old fortifications were removed in 1862 and partly converted into handsome promenades. The beer of the place (*Bierhalle, with garden, in the Wilhelms-Platz) is famous, especially the 'Schwarze Schoeps' (in autumn only), which was largely exported in the 16th century.

As Evan Rail incubates grodziskie yeast in his fridge; and Ron Pattinson and John Keeling brew Fuller’s beers to recipes from the archives; does it matter if beer is all played out?

We think these folks are brewing and selling a version of schöps… can anyone with better German than us confirm that?

6 replies on “Baedeker on Schöps”

It’s curious that any guide to *Northern* Germany would include Schweidnitz, as handsome a town it was and is — Silesia has never been anywhere else but in Germany’s South-East (back when it was German, naturally).

As to “those folks”: it’s a homebrew supply store in Heilbronn [1] whose owner a) appears interested in beer history (he and Ron Pattinson might get along), and b) traces his family’s roots to Breslau and thus takes a particular interest in Silesian beer styles such as Schöps.

It sounds to me that he is keen to find a willing and able home or micro brewer
whom he could supply with whatever recipes he has researched (as well as sell the necessary ingredients, I suppose).

I’ll be watching this development with interest!

[1] http://www.braupartner.de/

That’s what they are saying, but later they sort of say that no records of it appear to exist, as it may originate in the lost Polish lands. The imagery of Breslau would seem to confirm that. A quick google suggests bock as a synonym.

Why a Heilbronn brewery should be so interested in it is quite another matter though.

As far as I can tell they want small breweries and home brewers to brew this type of beer (several variants), but they do not brew themselves, they are just suppliers (of malt, hops, yeast and a lot of other stuff).

All — thanks for the help translating. That all makes sense.

Gerrit — Badeker’s often use strange divisions based, we think, on transport routes. It is weird, though, that Northern Germany contains Breslau but doesn’t contain Koeln or Duesseldorf. (They’re in the volume covering the Rhine.)

Going from Köln and Düsseldorf down the Rhine to Koblenz and Baden is a much more obvious tourist itinerary than, say Köln–Berlin, so it makes sense to cover them in a different volume.

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