The brewer at the Bearded Lamb Brewing Company, Doug Diedrich is at it again. He has reached into the annals of beer history and pulled another historical style out of his bag of tricks. I would like to introduce you to his newest creation, Mephisto’s Tears, which is a Schwarzbier. As a result of Doug producing this beer, I figured that it would be the perfect time to do a write-up on the history of the Schwarzbier.
Schwarzbier is a German-style Dark Lager with a long, albeit mysterious history behind it. The origin of Schwarzbier can be dated all the way back to the year 1390 and can be traced back to the Thuringia and Saxony areas of Germany. During this time of the middle ages, the oldest black beer produced on record was the Braunschweiger Momme (Brunswick Mum). The earliest example of a Schwarzbier being brewed where its lineage can be traced accurately, originated in the Thuringia area of Germany in 1543. This beer was from Kostritzer Brewery, and they still produce this Schwarzbier today. That is almost 500 years of brewing this beer, if that isn’t impressive then I don’t know of any other way to demonstrate impressiveness to you.
Now even though it has been brewed for almost 500 years and continues to be brewed to this day, there isn’t as much information readily available about this beer style as there is for many other older styles. Although the American craft beer revolution has renewed interest in the Schwarzbier, there just are not a whole lot of other examples of this style throughout history other than the Kostritzer version of Schwarzbier.
Recent history though has seen the style make quite the comeback, All 3 medal winners in the category of German-Style Schwarzbier at the World Beer Cup in 2024 were from breweries based in the United States. Gold went to Ogopogo Brewing- San Gabriel, California, Silver went to Flix Brewhouse- Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and Bronze went to Big Beach Brewing Company- Gulf Shores, Alabama. With American beer tastes shifting slightly away from hoppy and boozy to light and sessionable, I believe that this will help make beer styles like Schwarzbier a little more commonplace moving forward to appease the changing dynamics of the craft beer industry at the moment.
Other breweries that produce commercially available Schwarzbiers these days include Sprecher Brewery Black Bavarian, Samuel Adams Black Lager, New Belgium Brewing 1554 Black Lager, Shiner Beer Black, and Xingu Black. This style is not as uncommon as a Roggenbier, which is the last historical style that I did a write-up about but it is also usually not readily available at all times, you might have to do a little bit of digging to find this style.
Some of the local Michigan examples of Schwarzbier that I have had over the years include Devil’s Blood Black Lager- The Royal Oak Brewery, Sword in the Skull- River’s Edge Brewing Company, Samurai Squirrel- Stone Hound Brewing Company, Salute Your Schwartz- Founders Brewing Company and Sustenance Black Beer- Short’s Brewing Company.
As mentioned previously in the article, a Schwarzbier is a dark German-Style Lager. It can often be considered similar to a Stout in that they both use roasted malt to get their black color. Schwarzbier tends to be an opaque black color, which varies from dark brown with reddish hues to straight black in color. Although dark in color the Schwarzbier will be a lighter drinking Lager, they will normally check in between 3.8 and 5.5% ABV. They tend to be a little bit lower on the IBU scale where they generally check in between 20 and 30 IBUs. Generally a Schwarzbier will have hints of chocolate and or coffee in them, and this can lead them to be either mildly bitter or slightly sweet and most often they will finish relatively dry.
As the Winter months continue to drag on, hopefully they will be wrapping up here relatively soon. If you are looking for a nice Dark Lager to enjoy while watching the snowfall this coming weekend, I implore you to stop by Bearded Lamb Brewing Company and give Doug’s newest creation, Mephisto’s Tears a try. Cheers!
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