URBOCK

Pronunciation guide for English-speakers:
"oore-Bock" (pronounce the "oo" as in "booze")

Definition:
The prefix "ur" means "original" in German. Strictly speaking, the original Bockbier is an ancient northern German, not a Bavarian, beer, though many Bavarian brews nowadays also use the designation Urbock. Perhaps the best-known original Urbock today is the Bockbier of the City of Einbeck in Lower Saxony, whcih is also where the Bock beer originated in the Middle Ages. Though brewed today mostly as a barley-based lager, the original Bockbier—the real Urbock—was a stong, cold-conditioned brown ale from barley and wheat made by 13th-century brewers of Einbeck. These Einbeckers were early users of hops instead of the usual herbs or "gruit" (see Gruitbier) as a beer flavoring. Plenty of hops combined with a high alcohol content gave these beers excellent keeping properties and made them suitable for long-distance shipping.

From Einbeck to Ein Bock
Einbeck was a prominent member the Hanseatic League, a private merchant trading empire that, at its height, included some 200 cities. The League traded in almost any commodity, from wine to oil, grain, leather, cloth, copper, iron, salt, to beer. Port cities like Bremen, Hamburg and Lübeck were among the founding members of the Hanseatic League, but soon cities further inland, too, such as Brunswick, Breslau, Magdeburg, Dortmund, Cologne, and Einbeck, were eager to join this new trading network. Their role was to supply the League with manufactured export goods. Strong beer soon became one of the League's most important trading commodities...and Einbeck became one of its most important sources of that commodity.

As the Hanseatic trade grew, so did the brew "industry" of Einbeck. Eventually, there would be several hundred breweries in the city, all strictly regulated—and taxed—by the city fathers. Wagon loads of Einbeck export ales would rumble down the dusty northern highways on their way to the harbor storehouses of the Hanseatic merchants. Bremen took the early lead in beer exports sending casks of ale as far as Flanders, England and Scandinavia. Hamburg would soon join Bremen as a beer export center. Einbecker brew would sail in the holds of Hanseatic ketches to places like Amsterdam to the west and Reval to the east, and even to Jerusalem, where it may have quenched the thirst of a crusading knight.

Perhaps the most important destination of Einbecker beer, surprisingly, at least from hindsight, was Munich. Starting in the 15th century, Bavarians who could afford it—especially the nobles—would drink the ale from Einbeck before they would swig what they considered lower-quality local brew. As Einbecker ale became the most popular drink in Munich, Bavarian brewers suffered. Where there were once hundreds of breweries in Munich, by 1569, there were only 53 small ones left. Because the beers from the north were expensive, they also represented a constant drain on Bavaria's money supply, much to the chagrin of the Bavarian ruler, Duke Wilhelm V, who himself was not just a feudal lord but also in the beer business. He ran his own brewhouse in Landshut, where, in 1590, he decided to come up with a brew that might compete with the northern interloper. He had his brewmasters make a strong brown to red lager that he hoped would finally recapture the market lost to the northern ale. A year later, he completed a new brewhouse in Munich dedicated entirely to the production of his new brew. That brewery was on the site of the now famous Hofbräuhaus. By 1610, he made his first deliveries from the Munich brewery to local innkeepers and private households...Bavarian beer was fighting back!

But it was Wilhelm V's successor, Duke Maximilian I, who landed the grand coup that finally spelled an end to the dominance of the northern beer in Munich. In 1612, Maximilian enticed one Einbecker brewmaster by the name of Elias Pichler to come to Munich and create an authentic copy of the famous original beer from Einbecker.In Munich, Elias' "Einbeck Bier" metamorphosed from a strong ale into a strong lager, which is what we now know as Bavarian Bock beer. The "Bock" is a product of the Bavarian dialect. As the Bavarians started to quaff Elias' creation, they soon mangled the name Einbeck to "ayn pock" and, eventually, to "ein Bock" (a Bock), and the name stuck.

Related beer styles:
Bockbier, Doppelbock, Maibock, Eisbock, Weizenbock, Weizendoppelbock, Weizeneisbock