Schlenkerla

Heller Bräu Trum GmbH
legal form	GmbH
founding	1405
Seat	Bamberg , Germany
management	Matthias Trum
Number of employees	10 (2015)
Branch	Brewing
Website	www.schlenkerla.de

Tavern Zum Schlenkerla

The Schlenkerla (formerly Zum Blaue Löwen , also Heller Brewery ) is a historic brewery restaurant in Bamberg . It was first mentioned in a document in 1405 and is the most famous smoked beer brewery in Germany.

history

The building Zum Blauen Löwen , in which the Schlenkerla restaurant is located today, was first mentioned in a document in 1405. At that time the building around the monastery church of the Dominican monks was in the hands of the Zollner family. The Büttner Asmus Schneider was the first owner in 1538 to set up a restaurant in the Zum Blaue Löwen building . During the Thirty Years War the property was almost completely destroyed. In 1649 Jakob Stengel bought the ruins and began to rebuild it.

In the following years the house was extended with a rear building. In 1714, the new owner, Georg Zimmermann, was forced to file for bankruptcy due to his mismanagement . Johann Peter Hirsch, underculture of the St. Georgen district, acquired the entire property and the brewing rights. In 1738 Johann Wolfgang Heller bought the brewery and gave it the still existing name of Hellerbräu . In addition, he appropriated a rock cellar on the Kaulberg, which he bequeathed to his daughters along with the fields and gardens. His grandson Josef Heller took over the business in 1797 and bought the Felsenkeller back on the Kaulberg.

With the acquisition of the brewery by Konrad Graser in 1866, a new era began. The brewery is still in the hands of his descendants. With the marriage of his son Andreas in 1877, Konrad withdrew from the business. After his death, his son Michael took over the business. He expanded the rock cellar by buying another piece of land and expanded the summer inn. In 1926 he also expanded the restaurant by leasing the Dominikanerklause . In 1936 he also had a brewhouse and a bottle filling plant with cooling built. After his death in 1943, his widow Margarete and daughter Elisabeth ran the brewery during the final years of the Second World War . In 1950 Elisabeth and her husband Jakob Trum purchased a piece of land on the Upper Stephansberg. A brewery with its own malt house was built there . The brewery is currently owned by Matthias Trum, the grandson of Jakob and Elisabeth Trum.

Naming

Only a few people know the brewery under the name Heller . It owes its popular name Schlenkerla to Andreas Graser. From 1875 until his death in 1907 he was master brewer at the Heller brewery. According to tradition, the brewer should have run over horses when unloading the barrels from the cart. He was hit by the wagon and injured. Since then, he has had to compensate for the injury by swinging his arms while walking.

A Bamberg rhyming chronicle sums it up as follows: " Because he likes to dangle with his Orm a wengla, that's why he christened him Schlenkerla out of arrogance and ridicule ".

Types of beer

The Schlenkerla brewery currently produces seven types of beer:

Rauchbier : The Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier is a dark, bottom-fermented Märzen beer . It is traditionally stored in an oak barrel .

Urbock : The full-bodied and bitter Urbock is served during the strong beer season in autumn.

Smoked wheat : The wheat beer is brewed with our own smoked malt and therefore gets its delicate smoky taste.

Lager : The Schlenkerla brewery uses the same copper kettles for the brewing process of the smoked beer and the lager . This is how the Aecht Schlenkerla lager gets its subtle smoky taste.

Krausen : The combination of a young beer with an already mature beer is called Krausen. The Krausen is made from a lager to which Märzen beer is added.

Lenten beer: The bottom-fermenting, full-bodied yeast gives the Lenten beer its slight cloudiness. It has a fine smoky taste and a subtle bitter note.

Oak : The Schlenkerla Brewery's Doppelbock, known as the oak, is only served at Christmas time. The malt is not dried over beech wood as usual, but over oak wood.

Brewing process

The Schlenkerla Brewery brews according to the purity law of 1516. In the first step, the soaking , the barley is soaked in water to germinate . As soon as the water content in the grain is 35%, enzymes are formed which break down protein and starch . This process takes seven days, during which the master brewer constantly aerates and turns the germinal material. The resulting green malt is now in the third step, the Darren , traditionally beechwood fire, dried whose smoke gives the beer later its special flavor.

Now the malt is crushed in a grist mill. This process is called grinding . The malt grist is now mixed with water in a mash tun during mashing . At a temperature of 45 ° C to 77 ° C, the starch in the mash is converted into malt sugar . This creates solid components, the grains . These are separated from the liquid components, the wort . This process is called lautering . In the following step, the wort and hops are mixed in the wort kettle during cooking. The heat dissolves the bitter substances in the hops, and the evaporation of water creates what is known as the original wort . Some of the insoluble residue from this process, the hot break, is removed during cooling and pitching.

The wort is then cooled, aerated and mixed with yeast ; this step is called queuing . The subsequent main fermentation then lasts seven days. During this time the malt sugar is converted into alcohol. After all, the smoked beer matures for several weeks in the brewery's storage cellar and thus unfolds its entire taste profile. Filtration is the last step in the brewing process . This removes yeast and other opacifying substances from the beer.

Bottling

The Aecht Schlenkerla smoked beer is still traditionally stored and sold in oak barrels . In order to guarantee foam-free filling of the barrels, they are put under counter pressure . This process is also used when bottling the beer.

useful information

The brewery is also one of the locations in the film adaptation of The Flying Classroom of 1973. The restaurant is called in the film Zum toll Hund .

Awards

Märzenbier:

1984, 1988, 1990, 1992, 1994, 2000, 2004, 2006, 2008, 2010, 2012 Great DLG Gold Award .

1996 Gold at the World Beer Cup (USA).

1999 Gold at the Stockholm Beer Festival .

2003 Certificate of Honor from the CMA .

2007, 2008 gold at the Stockholm Beer Festival.

2009 1st place at the International Beer Festival .

2009 Best Imported Beer at the CAMRA London Drinker Beer Festival .

2009 silver medal at the NZ Beer Awards .

2010 silver medal at the Australian Beer Awards .

2012 gold medal at the Stockholm Beer Festival.

2013 gold medal at the Stockholm Beer Festival.

2014 silver medal at the Australian Beer Awards.

2015 gold medal at the Australian Beer Awards.

2016 gold medal in the World Beer Idol competition.

2017 gold medal at the Stockholm Whiskey and Beer Festival .

Urbock:

2004 1st place at the Turku Beer Festival (Finland).

2005 overall victory at the Cambridge Beer Festival (England).

2007 overall winner at the Helsinki Beer Festival .

2007 Best Rauchbock at the Bock Beer Festival in Amsterdam.

2007 2nd place in the Helsingin Sanomat winter beer competition .
2008 silver medal at the Bock beer festival in Amsterdam.
2008 1st place in the Helsingin Sanomat Christmas beer competition .
2010 1st place at the Bock Beer Festival in Amsterdam.
2011 gold medal as one of the 50 best beers in the world.
2011 1st place in the Helsingin Sanomat winter beer competition.
2015 bronze medal at the Australia Beer Awards.
2015 1st place in the winter beer competition of the Ilta-Sanomat .

Schlenkerla worldwide

The beer is sold through an online shop and beverage retailers. It is exported to 49 countries.

Celebrations

Bamberg Sand Church Fair , end of August
Schlenkerla Urbock tapping, beginning of October
Lenten beer serving on Ash Wednesday
Doppelbock bar on the 1st of Advent

literature

Christian Fiedler: Bamberg. The true capital of beer . Self-published, Bamberg 2016, pp. 104–107.
Johannes Schluters: Bamberg's breweries. Experience and enjoy the variety of beer . Fränkischer Tag, Bamberg 1998, pp. 14-15.