Munich
But we must leave Einbeck smoldering there in the early seventeenth century and follow bock’s story to Munich. Much of Einbeck’s famous beer had found its way to the steins in this Bavarian city. But by the end of the sixteenth century the same pressures that would eventually cause the Hanseatic League to collapse began to interrupt shipments of the good northern beer.As the beer from the north reduced to a trickle, Duke Maximillian I knew that he had to do something. His predecessors had hired a brewer from Brunswick in hopes of reproducing the northern beer and even built the Hofbräuhause München brewery but demand for the imported beer only seemed to increase as the supply dwindled. So in 1612 he invited the Einbeck brew master to Munich. Even as the League was collapsing around him, Elias Pichler packed his bag and headed south. Once he was warmly ushered into Munich he found that he was not quite so welcome to leave. His knowledge of brewing was too valuable for him to be allowed to return home. One can imagine Duke Max telling him, “Vee have vays of making you brew!” Two years later the Hofbräuhause München was brewing a fair approximation of Einbeck’s beer.
Why “bock?”
But, what were they calling this beer? The origin of bock’s name is impossible to prove although some interesting explanations have been floated over the years. Many of them focus on the fact that bock in German also means billygoat. 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 an amusing 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. This makes a lot of sense especially when you consider that to order a bock in German you would say, “Ein Bock.”
