“There is more food value in beer, than beer value in food…”

The history of Lenten beer proves this bit of beer wisdom to be true as well as humorous, since bock beer is the traditional beer of Lent. Bock is a strong lager beer with its roots in the German town of Einbeck. The beer became known as bock apparently due to a derivation of the word Einbeck. The town has been brewing the dark, strong lager since the 4^th or 5^th century. It is thought that the town leaders wheeled a hot kettle of wort around town from door to door. Each house would take a share and ferment the beer in the home.

Today, bock beer has many variations. Helles or maibock is light (blonde) in color, and delivers a very malty flavor. Maibock is the bock for the month of May. Traditional bock is amber to garnet in color. The flavor profile is very malty (from lots of barley), even a bit sweet on the palate. Hops are used to balance out the residual sweetness. Well-brewed versions will come across as having caramel notes due to a rigorous brewing procedure known as decoction mashing. Toasty flavors from kilned malt is common — and are what you should expect in a traditional version. Bocks are lagers, which means that a properly brewed bock should taste and finish very clean. Bock beer ranges from a low of around 6.5% alcohol by volume (ABV) to 12 or 13% for eisbock, which is a dopplebock that has been strengthened by literally freezing the beer and removing the watery slush. It is never appropriate for a bock beer to exhibit hot alcohol flavors. Much skill is needed to pull this off in fermentation.

Bock’s Lenten history comes by way of the Bavarian monks of St. Francis, who brewed a strong dark lager as nourishing “liquid bread” during the Lenten fast. Lenten bock packs around 250 calories per 12 oz serving and takes about 5 oz of barley to make. That’s easily equal to a couple of slices of hearty bread! This beer was coined “doppelbock” (double bock) due to its higher strength relative to the similar bock beers of the time. Commercially released doppelbocks have followed the tradition of naming the beers in such a way as to end in “tor” for Salvator (savior), a tribute to the monastic heritage of this beer. Other popular dopplebocks are Ayinger Celebrator, Spaten Optimator and even the American Bell’s Consecrator.

Real Bock beer is impossible to buy here in WV, again due to our archaic beer laws (and greedy beer distributors who fight change). I must admit my frustration in writing these articles when I know these beers do not exist in our market. Once again, we are required to travel and spend our dollars out of state so we can taste world class beer. Let’s get these laws changed so we can join the rest of the folks in the 21^st century!

By the way, Shiner bock and Anheuser-Busch Amber Bock; are bock beer in name only, having no particular qualities of an actual bock beer. False advertising, if you ask me.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 27th, 2007 at 10:01 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.