Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier Märzen

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

This is a tour de force of smoke! It might best be described as a liquid, smoked salami with alcohol. I adore it and could drink mas after mas of it. It’s sad that it’s not more widely available in Denmark. It should be a stable in most bars...

Bottle. Ridiculous (and delicious) heavy smoky aroma of burnt salami. Low carbonation lets charred wood flavors come through - very smooth mouthfeel lets smoky flavors linger. Flavor is much weaker than the nose, with some meaty malts. Honestly, such a huge aroma inundates all other aspects of the beer. If you like it, you love it.

Pours a dark ruby but that’s not really the color. Looks like the water at Blackwater Falls in WV. If you’ve been, you know. If not I apologize for my lack of color vocabulary. Sort of a ruby-brown I guess. A good sized tan head but it quickly dissipates. Some light lacing. Smells like pork rinds. That’s all I can smell. It’s smoky and porky and smells just like pork rinds to my nose. Taste is overwhelmingly smoky to my palate. I mean, I have had rauchbier before but only American versions. This is the smokiest damn beer ever. Smoked pork, smoked shrimp are the flavors that come to mind. As I slowly get my tongue around the smoke, it is a nice malty marzen in there somewhere. Not sticky but a smooth maltiness. A very defined cigar aftertaste but I like cigars so that’s cool with me. Not too drinkable for me, a sipper for sure but an experience in itself. As a beer advocate, you usually have some sort of reference for a style but this beer is unique to me. A singular taste adventure that is not to be missed if you want to learn about beer.

Very smokey, hickory bacon aroma. Like huffing a charcoal grill. Works well for the aroma but a little too much in the taste. Certainly unique but really you taste nothing more than the intense smokiness.

Bottle from sam’s. Pours a glowing amber with thin white lace. Nose is smoke, bacon, malt, and pleasant. Flavor is well balanced between excessive smoke and layered malts. This was much more of an easy drinker than I expected, yet it was still utterly complex. A gem of smoked beers.

Wha’d we say? I had this once with AC and apparently didn;t enter. Remember something about smoked melted gouda on a leather baseball mitt, grape leaves, and humidors. It was absolutely delicious and exciting and I remember the high rating. Will be drinking this again for sure and getting a more detailed comparison of this series. This should be a standby beer.

this is such a great beer. lucky my brother gave me two 18-20 oz bottles, because the next bottle i open, i’m going to drink it with smoked salmon. this beer is a really dark, smokey brew.

Amazing smoked beer, i’ve tried others that were possibly smokier, more like drinking liquid smokey bacon than anything (can become cloying) but this works better and is a better beer because it’s so dry in the finish.