On 12 January 2009, an old custom was revived in Dörflis near Neubrunn: sawing ice to cool beer. In the past, it was common practice to cut large blocks of ice from frozen lakes in winter to keep beer cellars cool during the summer. This was necessary at the time because refrigeration technology did not yet exist – it was not until 1873, with Carl von Linde’s refrigeration machine, that this began to change, and until after the Second World War, only a few breweries could afford this technology.

In this nostalgic event, the Dörflis brewers, together with the Franconian Brewery Museum in Bamberg, sawed pieces of ice from Lake Gleusner, transported them by horse-drawn cart to the rock cellar and stored them there – just like in the old days. The hard work with the ice blocks, which weighed around 30 kg, impressively demonstrated how laborious ice harvesting used to be.

At that time, the natural ice was stored in special rooms next to the beer barrels and broken up with wooden mallets so that it froze into a large lump of ice and reliably cooled the cellar. In summer, the ice melted slowly and the meltwater was drained away through gutters.

The event attracted numerous spectators, who reminisced about times gone by over potato soup and dark ‘Dörfliser Obama beer’. Perhaps, the organisers hope, the ‘ice harvest at Lake Gleusner’ will once again become a regular winter tradition in the region in future.

‘Fill your cellar with ice if you want your beer to turn out well!’