The Return of Kuenzl’s Kulmbacher

The second beer in the Oshkosh Heritage Series will be tapped Tuesday, October 15, at 5 pm at Bare Bones Brewery. This time, Jody Cleveland of Bare Bones and I have revived a pitch-black lager beer that was an Oshkosh mainstay in the 1880s. It's the Gambrinus Brewery's Kulmbacher Beer.

An ad featuring the Gambrinus Brewery's Kulmbacher beer from the 1888-1889 Wisconsin State Gazetteer.

Lorenz Kuenzl was the owner and brewmaster of the Gambrinus Brewery in Oshkosh from 1875 until 1894. We based our recipe and methods for recreating his Kulmbacher upon an 1893 inventory of ingredients and equipment used at the Gambrinus Brewery. We coupled that with documentation of brewing practices employed in the making of Kulmbacher-style beers during the period when Kuenzl was brewing his Kulmbacher in Oshkosh.

The Gambrinus Brewery on Harney Ave. in Oshkosh.
 Lorenz Kuenzl is seen leaning on the fence in white sleeves and hat.

Our recreation of Kuenzl's Kulmbacher was brewed on August 24, 2019, at Bare Bones on the brewery's pilot system. It was our only option. Like most modern, commercial brewing systems, the 15-barrel brewery at Bare Bones is not designed for 19th-century brewing practices. The pilot system allowed us to use the manual, traditional methods we wanted to employ.

The wort was made using a modified, Franconian-style decoction mash as documented in 1865. We coupled that with an arcane technique known as hop roasting. It was a practice once favored by brewers of Kulmbacher beers. This had us taking a portion of the thin mash (dunnmaisch) and boiling it with the whole-cone Cluster hops we used for the beer. As you might expect, the aroma that comes off the kettle at this point is fairly staggering.

Hop roasting at Bare Bones.

"The Kulmbacher, which owes its singular flavor to the peculiar treatment of the hops."
   – Chicago Daily Tribune, January 30, 1881.

This is not, however, a hoppy beer. There is a firm bitterness, but it's balanced by the beer's malt-rich profile derived from the decoction mash. This is the first time in well over 100 years that a commercial brewery in Oshkosh has used any form of decoction mash to create a beer.

And there hasn't been a Kulmbacher brewed commercially in Oshkosh since the Oshkosh Brewing Company stopped producing its version in the latter half of the 1890s. By then, the popularity of the style faded here. I think it's about time we give it another shot. Hope to see you at Bare Bones for the tapping.