Aecht Schlenkerla Helles Lagerbier

Bottle from Beers of the World in Henrietta. Pours a clear deep gold with a head of tight white bubbles. Aroma is slightly smokey and also sweet. The flavors reveal more of the smoke, but only enough to make this sweet lager interesting. Not spectacular, but a lighter offering from a brewery that makes a lot of impressive beers.

Bottle from Sam’s, Durham. Very pale golden pour with moderate carbonation. Malts and yeast in the nose, with a hint of light fruit and a healthy bit of smoke (though nothing compared to other Schlenkerla beers - awesome that the brewery is so smokelicious that they didn’t even need to add smoked malts to this). The beer isn’t especially convincing as a Helles, with not quite enough liveliness or body, nor even a particularly flavorful quality to it. But the quirkiness of smoke in this style is enough to merit a decent rating.

Bottle, bought at brewery. Bright gold, clear. The head disappears pretty fast. Disappointing aroma is bland sweet malts, light caramel, even a hint of honey. Thin, fizzy palate. Some bitterness in the finish has good character but is otherwise bland. Drier than it smells, and has burnt wood flavors and decent hopping. Bland and I don’t get any smoke. Tastes like the brewery runoff, which all things considered, could be worse! Still, I’m left with the impression, "Why bother?"

Sampled at DØE Beerfestival 2009, Valby. Pours a clear yellow beer with a white head. The aroma is weak. The flavor is weak smoke. The palate is thin, and overall the beer needs character.

Pours pale peachy gold with a 1 finger creamy white head. Aroma is smoke, grass, lemon, sweet grain, lightly toasted grain, a little soured malt and a touch of floury bread rolls. Flavor is like smoked granola, or something right away-smokey, slightly sweet and grainy-very nice, lightly roasted nuts, some biscuit and bread notes, grilled vegetables - in a good way - definite mineral notes and apple peel near the finish. Finish is campfire biscuits, grass and lightly bitter hops, with a crisp mineral fade that cleans the palate of smoke notes before they become stagnate. Palate is light bodied with a light yet slightly sharp carbonation and a dry that borders beween dry and slightly oily. I hate to see this bottle go, I really need to buy more of this the next time I can. I’d imagine that this would be a fantastic beer to pair with just about any meat or veggie dish, sushi would probably work extremely well too, mmmm... salmon.

Pours golden with a white head. Aroma is light sweet malt, grassy hops, and light smoke. Flavor is lightly sweet with a bit of graininess, and a little biitterness in the finish. I am disappointed as I expected this to be like their other beers. Not horrible , but not a smoked beer.

Pours a very pale golden yellow color with a lot of visible carbonation and a thin white head. Aroma is dominated by a smokey woodsy maltiness with very slight golden fuit notes. Golden pilsner altiness with a subtle hop character and a very smokey, characoal wood chip flavor. Dry finish.

500ml bottle served in a dimpled mug. Clear golden pour with a two-finger thick head of slowly fading off-white foam. A decent amount of thin, spider-web lacing was left around the glass. The aroma had grass, lightly toasted grain, and an unintrusive note of moderate smoke. The flavor was clean and crisp with a light campfire smokiness. Lightly grassy with a decent amount of sweet, toasted malt. Nice body for such a low ABV drink. Light carbonation. Pretty good stuff.