Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier Märzen

Brewed by Brauerei Heller
Style: Smoked
Bamberg, Bayern, Germany

Pours deep mahogany into a shaker. Sharp hickory-smoked meat notes. Offwhite micro head with good retention leaves slight lacing as it recedes. Creamy smoked sweetness with a lasting bittered smoke finish.

Bottle. Metallic/smoky nose. Good woody smoke flavor, very similar to the taste of BBQ smoke. Slight metallic finish.

Pours a clear red-brown with a loose off white pancake batter head. Just liquid bacon grease. There could be nothing better, smoke, over a heavy dark body to support it. Taste is more smoldering campfire smoke, bacon and bbq smoker fumes.

Smoked beers are apparently not my thing. Looked good pouring out but the aroma and taste were too heavily smoked for my tastes. Down the drain.

500ml from Total Wine, Durham. When you’re in the mood for a rauchbier (or as my wife calls it, a "meat beer") I’m not sure you can do much better than dial up this classic. Pours like a substantial brown ale, clear, impressively colored, with a fairly minimal head. But the aroma is just ka-pow! Deep in the pit, with the hog on the spit. It’s not meat beer in the abstract, but lovely wood smoked bbq. What’s nice is the high quality of the marzen at the heart of it all, with some hops battling through the strong smoked malts, and a very rich creamy body (much fuller than I remember). A delight.

The first time I tasted this VERY smoky beer I hated it. Acouple of years later I tasted it again and thought: ’Hmmm, it wasnt THAT bad’. So I tasted it again and thought: ’HELLO this is GOOD!!’. Now it’s one of my favourites. So folks, it’s never too late to learn to like something.

Smokey!! feels like I’m drink liquid smoke. Nice and smooth, good malts, though a little spicy, has a cola presence to it. I feel like eating cheese with this beer