Brauerei Schumacher, Where Düsseldorfer Altbier Began
1838 in the Old Town: Düsseldorfer Altbier
Düsseldorf is the informal capital of German fashion and home to some of Germany’s most cutting-edge contemporary architecture. Forward-looking as the Düsseldorfers are, the very name of their beloved beer points in the direction of times past: Altbier, a beer made the way the Rhinelanders made beer before the tidal wave of lager swept the country.
Altbier traces its roots back to 1838 when Johann Matthias Schumacher bought the Brauerei Im Sonnenaufgang in Düsseldorf’s Altstadt. Schumacher didn’t quite cut a new beer style from whole cloth, but rather added more hops to the traditional Rhenish ale, brewed it stronger, and matured it in wooden casks. (See Dornbusch, Altbier, 19).
The result: a malty yet crisply bitter beer that blended elements of the Bavarian lager tradition with Düsseldorf’s indigenous ale tradition.
By 1871 the old-town brewery tavern was bursting at the seams, so popular was Schumacher’s copper-hued beer. Schumacher’s nephew Ferdinand was now at the helm and moved the brewery to the eastern reaches of the city. The address is easy enough to remember: 123 Oststrasse (East Street). There, you’ll find a classic Rhenish tavern brimming with natural light but also soothingly shaded in its nooks and recesses.
Sunday at the Tavern
It’s Sunday, the clock has barely struck noon, and already groups of friends have assembled for drinks around high tables in front of Schumacher. I make my way inside and take up residence near the bar area just in time to spy a Köbes (server)* hauling a cask up from the cellar with a rope and pulley. He calls down to the cellarman for another. With two resounding thuds he props each of them up on the zinc bar.
*Clad in light blue shirts and navy aprons, the Köbesses are fixtures in Düsseldorf (and in nearby Cologne, where they serve Kölsch), friendly but also known for their acerbic wit.
Though similar to many German taverns, “rustic” is not the first word that comes to mind when you enter this tidy and elegant establishment. There’s dark wood as far as the eye can see, wooden pillars supporting finished beams and a sculpted ceiling, ornate chandeliers, and large windows with stained glass inlays. (Both the chandeliers and the stained glass are design fixtures of taverns in Düsseldorf and Cologne.) Paintings and ornamental blue-ink plates depict historical scenes, while etchings of Napoleon and Frederick the Great watch over the tavern with somber expressions. (Looks like they need a drink to cheer them up!)
On Tap
The Schumacher Alt arrives in the characteristic quarter-liter cylinder of Düsseldorf, a squatter version of the narrow Stange glasses of Cologne. Beguiling aromas of pumpernickel, milk caramel, dark brown sugar, honey-roasted almonds, dark cherry, and baking spice drift out from beneath the thick cap of orange-beige foam. In some ways, the beer strikes me as a mid-point between a Munich Dunkel and a British strong ale like Bishop’s Finger. I take a long draught of this pleasantly malty beer held aloft by a firm bitterness, and then another.
Within seconds the Köbes has plunked down a fresh glass in front of me. Like the dark beers of Bavaria, quaffability is a hallmark of Altbier. Schumacher’s is no different: creamy cask carbonation contributes smoothness, while a lightly tannic bitterness reminiscent of walnuts lends the beer an aperitif-like quality. Well attenuated and well spiced, the hops mingle nicely with the toast and breadcrust of the malt.
The 1838er is a completely different beast. Brewed on the occasion of the brewery’s 175th anniversary, Schumacher’s 1838er shakes up the traditional Altbier with Cascade and Galaxy hops. And why not experiment? Schumacher had a hand in launching the style, so it’s fitting that they’d be the ones to alter its trajectory.
The result reminds me of a mellow Red IPA: pine, caramelized citrus zest, a twist of grapefruit, and a hint of melon float above aromas of brown sugar, dark bread, and light caramel. It’s hop-forward on the palate, but in a subdued way, enough to reveal dark toast and dark bread crust underneath. All in all, it’s not my favourite interpretation of Altbier, but the hop heads in the crowd will be in for a pleasant surprise.
Snacks
I wasn’t hungry thanks to an ample breakfast, but I did order a “Happen” (bread roll) with aged gouda — a steal for around €3, and just the right amount of food to fuel my walk to Brauerei Im Füchschen about a mile away. The day’s just beginning.
Brewing Notes
For the brewers in the crowd, Schumacher performs a double decoction mash and uses a coolship to cool the boiled wort to 65C. During the second phase of cooling, the brewers run the wort over an old-fashioned “Berieselungskühler” (rippled drip cooler) to chill the wort down to 20C before transferring it to open-fermentation vessels. After primary fermentation, the beer is lagered for four weeks.
Sources
Horst D. Dornbusch, Altbier: History, Brewing Techniques, Recipes (Boulder: Brewers Publications, 1998).
Schumacher website. https://www.schumacher-alt.de/1838
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© 2022 Franz D. Hofer and A Tempest in a Tankard. All rights reserved.
I stopped reading when you cited Dornbusch as a source.
Dear Rob,
That’s rather unfortunate that you would stop reading merely because I cited Dornbusch as a source, rather than taking my post on its own merits. As you know (I’ve seen things you’ve written, and enjoy reading them), folks who write about beer don’t exactly have a plethora of sources at their disposal. Until I find something else that counters what Dornbusch wrote (perhaps you could help me out there), I will cite what he wrote as the source of that particular claim.
I’m a historian (and know a thing or two about Quellenkritik — I trust you’re familiar with the term). It’s what we do: cite stuff. And when historians cite something, it’s not an endorsement of the source, as I’m sure you’re aware. Often citation protocols function as a kind of “cover your ass.” It’s like this: as someone who has also found issues in other works Dornbusch has written, I signal with the citation in question (the place where you apparently stopped reading) that this claim I’m making here is potentially problematic. I haven’t had a chance to independently verify what Dornbusch wrote — have you been able to verify everything about every era of German or Germanic history (to say nothing of Austrian and Habsburg history), and then double-check it against what’s going on in various beer scenes in the early modern era, the nineteenth century, the Nazi era, the immediate postwar, etc.? — but citing it is “code,” if you will, that I’m basing that particular claim on what he wrote. It’s not so that folks stop reading when they see the citation, but rather that they know what the source of the claim is. That brings us back to what I mentioned above. It seems you’re a scholar. If you have reliable sources that counter Dornbusch’s claim, send them along. As I’m sure you know by now, that’s how scholarship works.
At the end of the day, it’s a blog post, not a manuscript, though I hasten to add that I do due diligence on all my blog posts with the resources at my disposal. If you happen to have some research funds available so that I can go over to Düsseldorf, visit a few archives, get a “true” lay of the land regarding the sweep of Rhenish beer history, and THEN verify Dornbusch’s claim about what Schumacher did in 1838 within the context of Rhenish beer history, I’ll be glad to send you my bank account info and cite you in the acknowledgments.
Cheers, mate. Let’s have a beer someday.
Franz