Boozin’ Blog

Here in my hemisphere spring has arrived. The spring showers have begun, the early flowers are in bloom and I’m looking around for a bock. For me bocks are the ultimate spring-time beer - and not just Maibock. I love a good, rich bock with its strong malt backbone and nice lager smack; something about it just says spring to me. Sadly my local beer store doesn’t stock good German-brewed bock beer but I will surely track some down before the season is ended.

But this is a What’s in a Name entry so let’s get to it. There are a lot of fun little stories that attempt to explain the meaning behind the name of this beer. That could be because so many other German beer style names are starkly utilitarian. Take Hefe Weizen, for instance. The parts of the name of that beer describe exactly what’s in it. Hefe means yeast and weizen means wheat. So this is an unfiltered wheat beer. Bock carries no other meaning besides that it happens to be the same word used for goat. This has naturally created some whimsy as people try to imagine how the beer got its name.

This is why so many bock beer labels feature goats. But where’s the beer-goat connection? One theory suggests that the traditional time to brew bock beer was under the sign of Capricorn, the goat. Another tells the story of a drinking contest between a Bavarian duke and a knight from Brunswick. Each was given a cask of beer from his opponent’s store. After a few drinks the knight found himself on the ground while the Bavarian remained in his seat. The embarrassed knight blamed a goat that had found its way into the courtyard. The Bavarian, who also happened to be a brew master, laughed and told the knight, “The Bock that threw you over was brewed by me.”

But the most adorable stories about such things are often the hardest to believe. The most widely accepted explanation of bock’s christening holds that bock is simply a derivative of Einbeck, the city in north-central German where the beer was first brewed. This makes a lot of sense especially when you consider that to order a bock in German you would say, “Ein Bock.”

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2008 wrapped up with Germans having drunk 2%, or two liters, of beer less per capita than the previous year. This article blames things like the smoking ban in pubs and the global recession (countering the popular perception that beer is recession-proof) but I doubt it’s as simple as that.

The third reason - young people are turning away from beer - the article sites is more on the money. The first two have merit but that would lead one to believe that the decline in German beer would be isolated to 2008. It isn’t.

For years, even decades, Germans have been gradually drinking less and less beer. There is a cultural shift in German society that I don’t pretend to understand. I’m only aware of it through this one symptom – twenty-somethings are drinking less of the national drink than ever.

Like I said, I don’t pretend to know why but I’m not ashamed to float a couple of theories. First is that the EU’s more open market offers a wider variety of imported beers, wines and spirits and at lower prices than previously. With more competition inevitably comes a decrease in sales.

Second are the traditional ties that Germans have with beer. Why this would this would affect modern generations more than previous ones is beyond me but it might be an explanation. Drinking beer is what the old folks do. It’s what the hometown losers have always done and young drinkers are looking for new and sexier drinks.

German brewers have relied on tradition and the drinkers in their region to keep them in business. Even today they put very little thought into marketing and packaging. While I agree that a fancy new label doesn’t affect the brew on the inside it certainly helps the sales.

And there lies the solution. German brewers have to learn how to market, package and even export their beer. For example here in the US German beer retains a reputation of being the best. With some work German brewers can move into this market more aggressively and replace the domestic sales they’re losing. The ones that have figured this out, Paulaner, Spaten and a few others, have been and will continue to be successful. Those that don’t will not make it.

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