As of: February 8, 2024, 5:13 p.m
By: Cornelia Schramm
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Mathilde Schneider is a beer pioneer.
© Private
Without them, the strong beer era would be different: more than 100 years ago, Mathilde Schneider invented the first wheat beer bock.
And thereby saves a brewing dynasty.
Munich/Kelheim – When Georg Schneider thinks of his great-grandma Mathilde, he has to grin.
She had an incredibly spiky beard.
The now 58-year-old had to tolerate that as a boy when she gave him a kiss.
“She was loving but also strict,” he remembers.
But the Schneider Weisse brand owes a lot to this bite.
The brewery is now based in Kelheim, but has deep roots in Munich.
Georg Schneider is the sixth to bear this name.
In the Weisses Bräuhaus he sits next to his son, George VII. They pour themselves an Aventinus.
After all, strong beer season begins on Wednesday.
Father and son sip a piece of family history.
Great-grandma Mathilde once created this wheat beer Doppelbock.
In 1907 an absolute novelty.
And to this day, breweries rarely produce anything like that.
Strong beer, yes, but not top-fermented.
Prosit with an Aventinus: Georg Schneider VI.
with son George VII in the Weisses Bräuhaus in Munich.
© Marcus Schlaf
He has his fans at the Weisses Bräu im Tal.
The “Aventinus-Buam” drink it all year round – for 40 years.
It is a Bavarian specialty in the USA, Australia and around 30 other countries.
It tastes soft, like dates, figs and ripe bananas - and yet somehow tangy.
But the pleasant warmth in the chest is treacherous - 8.2 percent alcohol content creates a great atmosphere in the tavern.
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Munich: Mathilde Schneider invents the first wheat Doppelbock out of necessity
The year 1905 was less fun for Mathilde Schneider (1877–1972). Her husband Georg III.
is traveling on Lake Starnberg in his rowing boat.
A storm hits, the brewery boss gets soaking wet, gets catarrh and dies.
His wild life ends after only 35 years.
“Perhaps because he was a Protestant,” the strictly Catholic Mathilde is said to have later speculated.
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The young entrepreneur had just moved with her and her three children.
From the Munich valley, where the brewery and malt cellar were already located in the former Maderbräu and today's Weisses Bräuhaus, to the suburb of Bogenhausen.
“This was at the request of my great-grandmother,” says George VI.
“The valley back then was not as we know it today.
It was a broken glass neighborhood, an open stream flowed through the street.
And she didn’t want the mice dancing on the baby beds.”
After her husband's death, the 28-year-old brewer's widow is left alone with her son George IV and their two daughters.
The two crocodiles that her husband, an oriental fan and collector of ancient artifacts, kept in their apartment are the least of her worries.
The old photograph shows Mathilde with her husband Georg Schneider III, who died at just 35 years old.
© Private
Mathilde Schneider “was very strong-willed”
His father and grandfather built the brewery in 1872 by acquiring the license to brew wheat beer from the Wittelsbach family.
Now sales are falling rapidly, wheat beer is out.
Mathilde absolutely has to keep the brewery - but by law she is not allowed to run it.
“She was very strong-willed and didn’t want to marry anyone else.
So she appointed her brother-in-law as director,” says great-grandson Georg.
A smart move.
Far from the papers, the widow runs the business.
When she wants to save the business with her idea for the first strong wheat beer, it is again a group of men who hinder her.
The brand new product will be called Aventinus.
After the brewery address on Aventinstrasse, which is named after the historian Johannes Aventinus.
The brewers' association vetoed it: a strong beer had to be named after a saint.
Maybe the complaint was just a pretext to prevent the newfangled brew from becoming a competitor in the first place.
But Mathilde sticks to the name.
She asks the priest at the Bogenhausen Church of St. Georg for help - and he does some research.
The result: Fact, one of the seven hills of Rome is named after the rather unknown Saint Aventinus.
The brewers' association has to give in.
Mathilde's innovation sells well.
Schneider Weisse: The Aventinus is now an export hit
“Today, Aventinus is the most awarded beer at the European Beer Star with 19 medals,” explains Georg Schneider VII. The 28-year-old is a master brewer himself and has been a member of the management team for a year.
“The special thing is that after the first standard fermentation, it matures a second time with the addition of cultivated yeast and fresh brewing wort,” he says.
“So that you can taste the aromas, you need a glass with a bulbous body.”
The fascination with beer that you can only drink out of a glass is also something that the seventh generation has inherited.
“A wheat beer like this is not a quick fix, it represents a glass culture in the pub,” says George VII. He is also breaking new ground himself.
For example with his bright light, which he recently introduced.
“I had to convince my father of that in 2021,” he says and laughs.
But innovation can be worthwhile – he knows that thanks to great-great-grandma Mathilde.
(sco)
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