Origin: Germany
Type: Rauchbier
Color: Reddish brown
Alcohol content: 5.5%
Recommended serving temperature: 7ºC/45ºF
Brewery: Brauerei Schlenkerla
I have decided to write today about one of my new favorite German beers. Actually, one of my new favorite beers all together.
I am not going to play the numbers game here and try to figure out whether it is one of my top five, top ten or top twenty five, because the sooner I say that, the sooner I will find enough beers I prefer over this one to oust it from whatever place I have put it in.
Nevertheless, I will say it is one of the most pleasantly surprising beers I have tried in a long time.
I am talking about the Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier Marzen, a smoked (rauchbier is German for smoked beer) marzen brewed in Bamberg, Bavaria, by Schlenkerla.
It is a brown beer with some reddish tones and with an average creammy colored foam which reduces quite fast.
Nothing really special in its appearance then. The impressive part, the one that has me hooked on it, is the smell.
Even though I assume I have given it away at least partially by explaining what rauchbier means, I will reveal its deep secret: this beer smells smoked. To be specific, it smells like hickory smoked bacon. Yes, you read it correctly, it smells like you are about to drink bacon.
Now being Spanish, you will understand my excitement. Pig is the cornerstone of our diet, but we have not as of yet been able to recreate its flavor in what we drink. Lo and behold, the Germans on the contrary, have managed to recreate it in a beer. This is truly a magical moment for me.
You yourself may be skeptical at best at this point, but you need not be, as I will do my best to explain as I describe its taste.
It is not that the beer's flavor is an entirely different one, because this beer also tastes like hickory smoked bacon. However, it is more so the way that it feels. It is not an incredibly intense flavor as you would have expected from the smell, it tastes more like smoke and wood and a faint saltiness, deriving from the toasted malts and the wood cask in which this beer is kept.
It is also perfectly rounded and just feels rich in your mouth.
In other words, you do not get a greasy "I am eating a slice of bacon as I pull down my beer" kind of feeling here, but more an I am enjoying a pretty interesting dark beer whose smokey woodiness reminds me of the way bacon smells. Because that is the significant difference, this beer tastes like the smell of bacon, not its taste.
Add a pretty limited carbonation and a slight acidity in the finish to the equation and you have a beer which is flavorful but not excessively heavy or hard to drink.
Pair it with a steak and you are in for an experience rich in flavors and a satiating meal. Pair it with a baked ham and get the full piggy experience. I tried it with the former and was gob-smacked. I vow I will try it with the second.
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