Original Schlenkerla Smokebeer

Original Schlenkerla Smokebeer — Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier — is the beer that defines Bamberg's smoked-beer tradition: a Märzen brewed from malt kilned over burning beechwood and poured at a tavern in the city's old town. That house was first documented in 1405 as the "Blue Lion," and building, brewery and beer have been inseparable ever since.

The odd name is Bamberg dialect: a Schlenkerla is someone who swings their arms as they walk — a nickname pinned on a nineteenth-century brewer here, inherited first by his tavern and then by his beer. The brewery, formally Brauerei Heller after an eighteenth-century owner, is run today by the Trum family in its sixth generation.

Everything still turns on smoke. Schlenkerla smokes its own malt over beechwood logs, the flagship Märzen is joined through the year by smoked bocks and a smoked wheat beer, and at the tavern the beer is still drawn by gravity from oak casks. In an era full of smoked experiments, this is the original the others answer to.

Deep amber-brown with an unmistakable beechwood-smoke aroma — smoked ham, campfire — over a clean, bready Märzen base; drier and better balanced than first-timers expect, with the smoke lingering long after the malt fades.