BEAR-ly Getting Started 7.3 - Helles

The origin of the Helles come from where? The name. The style. The proper German pronunciation. What are the signature characteristics that make the Helles truly unique? Featuring Weihenstephaner Helles from the world's oldest brewery, Bavarian State Brewery Weihenstephan in Bavaria, Germany. Cheers!

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The Buffalo Brews Podcast. That was what we were talking about the last episode, that the W's are V's. Yes. Yeah. So we're going to be talking about Vajenstavana Brewery, which is the oldest. The world's oldest brewery. Yep. From 1040 in the ultimate motherland. I grew up in Sherman, New York, but my family's surname is Edinger, which comes from the brutally hacked up Odingi from Bavaria. But I don't have the German blood because I, my grandfather, my paternal grandfather was adopted and he was, he is English blood. So his parents were, were German, so, but it doesn't carry. So that's okay. That's got some, got some lineage, but I'm quarter Scottish, so that's fine. Some broken links here and there. Yeah. All right. So here, so here we are. This is the third of four episodes and we're going to continue to talk about lagers. Let's talk lagers. Let's talk lagers. So how did, Vajenstavana, okay, brutally butchered from time to time, and you'd think we'd have the time to get it right. Okay. Good practice. Yeah. The world's oldest brewery. So brewed in Bavaria since 1040. We talked a little bit last episode about, you know, the Czech Pilsner and then that becoming the German Pils in North Germany. So the, we had darker beers, you know, kind of throughout history than the right setting and circumstances allowed for Pilsen, Czech Republic now to come out with their Pilsner in 1842, Pilsner Erkel. And now this beer is getting imported. People want it. Let's get it. It's lighter in color. It's got clean, crisp flavor. It's lighter than the Dunkel. So it's got this brilliant kind of gold look and it's clear and it's got nice refreshing hot bitterness to it that leaves the mouth dry and just all sorts of stuff to kind of make the world go in a tizzy because it's new. We always want the new and, you know, we're just so used to dark and malty and now we have something that's a little lighter, a little hoppier, a little bit more, you know, it's kind of like the, you know, American, when we went for our IPA craze, they were going through the Pilsner craze and who can make it lighter, who can make it crisper, who can make it cleaner and Germany, they were like, okay, well, the Czech Republic's got their Pilsner. We're going to make our version and North Germany had the German Pils and then the motherland Bavaria, they're, you know, they're not going to, they're not going to call it a Pilsner. They're not going to call it a German Pils. So instead of Dunkel, meaning dark, they went with Helles, H-E-L-L-E-S, I think that comes from Helio or the sun. So this means light, it's a light beer, very light in color. And if you think about the difference between Czech Pilsner, they're a little bit more full bodied, a little bit more amber, you know, without those like red hues, just a little bit more, you know, before we get to the dark Browns or the light Browns, we're in that amber category, the German Pils that we kind of just glossed over that is very similar to the Czech Pilsner, but a little lighter in color and a little less full bodied and it has more German characteristics and it's hot profile and then we get to the Helles. So the Helles is, this is the light beer and we're talking light colored because I think this is we're back to a 4.8%. So you know, we haven't really veered too far off, we had a 4.8, 5.2 back to a 4.8. So we're all in that very, you know, decent category of that on average 5% beer where, you know, it's not quite sessionable where you want to have, you know, more than a half dozen, but it is not super heavy where you're going to find yourself in trouble if you have more than a couple. But when we talk about light colored beer, Helles is kind of like what reigns supreme and I do know that this name gets butchered along with the brewery, but Helles is the style. So other breweries and I'm sure you've seen it on a brewery tap board, tap list before and a lot of people say Hellies or Hells, but Helles. Talking about butchering names, you know, Germans, you know, Helles, two syllables, then you get words like ambulance and it becomes Krankenwagen, you know, so yeah, but you know, Helles. Yeah, yes. Go for it. It's just, you know, as long as you give me a nice cold one, you can call it whatever you'd like. I'll just look at it on the can, but Weihennstepaner, it is the world's oldest operating brewery. So they've been brewing beer since 1040. It is one of those places, I think there's a university on the campus now. Just one of those huge meccas. It's on my bucket list and they are just churning out quintessential German style beers because they've been making those for a millennia almost now, right? That's going to be one heck of a celebration, right? We've got what we're about, not even 16, we're about 15 years away from this brewery being around for a millennia. You know, while you're pouring that, you know, people are like, well, 1240, what does that And also well known as for people who didn't keep up on their history. Do we know the story of Lady Godiva? I know some of it, but I think you're going to be a better... So she rode naked through Coventry on horseback because she was trying to force her husband to lower the taxes. You know, talk about things that are lost on us these days. Yes. You know, as you say that, it rings a bell. I was thinking Godiva chocolate and then I don't know if it has any release. They stopped making their chocolate liqueur and I'm mad, mad upset about that. All right. So now when we pour this, okay, the Bavarians, you know, they had some time to refine and you know, they, they were seen like anybody that takes their time. You take what you like from certain things and then you change what you don't like. Now when we pour this Hellas, and this is what a quintessential Hellas should look like, I have now poured, you know, we went from Dunkle's Dark, which was that copper chestnut slightly amber light brown to a Czech Pilsner, which was, you know, dark gold, you know, approaching a slight copper. Now we are, we are definitely at a gold, a light gold yellow, but this is one of the clearest beers I've seen. It is, is brilliant. One would say as I hold it to the light, it, it glows even more and it is, you know, it's just that not quite yellow. It's definitely golden. It's a golden crystal beer. This is one of those where, you know, the name suits it. Hellas, you know, light spawning from the sun brings that kind of vibe to it. You look at it, you, you think you're going to be drinking a light beer because it is so clear. It is so, it looks like we're about to have a clean crisp beer and that is what they shot for. So I'm going to take a few sniffs and where I talked about, you know, before we sipped the Czech Pilsner, I was talking about cracker-like. Now cracker, you know, when we get into the English beers and we were talking about those, we had some cracker, but they were a little bit more biscuit, right? Biscuit being a little bit more dense, a little bit more doughy, where cracker, you know, you think saltine, oyster cracker, water crackers, crisp, clean, yeah, just the whitest of white bread. It doesn't have too much of a backbone of sweetness. It is just that white, clean crackerlike flavor. That's kind of like, this is a showcase for Pilsner malts, so Pilsner meaning that this is one of the lightest malts you can make. So it should be, you know, very, very light in flavor. And if something is very light and well, well made and well balanced, should have very light hop notes there. They should be present, but they shouldn't overpower. They should be there to balance. So all of that, you know, I talked about what it looked like. I talked about what it smelled like. Now I should turn and taste it. What it drinks like. Here we are again. So much so into our beer that we didn't cheers. Oh, see, we got excited. That's okay. But we didn't forget. We didn't forget. Don't forget. We don't have to double cheers the next episode. Yeah. So first two episodes, you know, I definitely did a lot of talking, so I'm glad you said that because I'm turning it over to you. I want you to tell me what differences your palate is getting from the Helles versus the Czech Pilsner we just had. Well, see now, like now for me, we talked about cracker for the Pilsner, saltine, oyster cracker. Like you said, this goes back to episode before with the Dunkel. So I've got more of the grain. This is very full bodied light on the flavor, and I think that's why I like this so much is it's, I guess, by extension, why I like the Dunkel because sometimes I like the dark, but this here I could drink. I could drink a gazillion of these and I probably shouldn't, but you know, if somebody slid you a full liter Stein, I don't think you'd be upset. This is, yeah, this is always, these are always beautifully done for me. So this goes back more, if we're comparing it to the Pilsner, it's cracker versus grain. This is, you know, it's a full flavor for me. It's full bodied, which the Pilsner was a lighter bodied, still kind of full bodied, but I think, but a lot lighter than this, in my opinion. Well, yeah, I agree. The Czech Pilsner, it finished dry, a little bit of that was that bitterness. Yeah, lightly, this is very low bitterness where the Pilsner was a little more bitter. As expected, because, you know, you want that balance, and here, it's the reason it feels fuller bodied and bodied typically comes from the sweetness, and if there's residual sugar, so the Dunkel finished a little sweet, this Helles finishes a little sweet, that Czech Pilsner finished a little dry, and it definitely, with that dryness, you had that, you know, lingering hot bitterness, not in a negative way, but it's still on my palate, whereas I have enough here to balance so that it's not a super sweet, cloyingly sweet drinking, you know, you want to be able to drink it, drink it in gulps if you wanted to, it's that type of beer, it's not a sipper, it's in between a sipper and a gulper, but it's one of those where you can take a larger take of it without, you know, getting blasted with too much flavor, but the residual sweetness in here is definitely more so than that Czech Pilsner, and if it's going to be very light in flavor when it comes to the malt flavor, then you have to have a little bit less of that balancing act with the hops. Taking another little sip, you know, this one, it starts to get to that, oh, it tastes like a beer beer, you know, where you are getting that pure, just Pilsner, light, just grainy flavor that comes across as what I think of, you know, old school drinking from your dad's can, just, yeah, that. Well, you brought it to him, you earned that sip. Right, you got to get your keep, but the, you know, I've brought it up before, but I use this concept with some other stuff, but it's basically, if aliens were to come and you needed to, you know, because we can't save somebody from another country because beer is all over the world, so it's otherworldly, if aliens were to come and you were to say, this is beer, there's so much beer, to me, you know, this is the type of beer that I think of when I just think beer, then obviously, you know, we talk about, there's this huge family tree and all these misconceptions, but this has some of that just clean, crisp malt, light malt, I should say, grain that comes across as that crackery, as light as can be bread, and it's got, you know, just a hint, hint of bitterness, and you almost can't make out the hops like you did with the Czech Pilsner, and the residual sweetness here makes for a very clean and easy beer. The hops you make reference to, so we're talking about those Saphir hops is what I have written here. Okay. Is that the Hellertal region, where they're common? Well, there's, the Hellertal Mittelfruh is one of the noble hops, so I think that's the region, but I mean. I think one of the episodes we talked about was that, we were talking about how that, it might have been in the last episode, or I'm sorry, it was the last episode of our, of series six, where we were talking about how sometimes when you get below a certain longitude, hops don't grow, and Germany was affected by that. Certain areas of Germany, most of Germany grows hops, but there are, you know, certain areas in East Europe that are in the grain belt versus the grape belt, because grapes don't grow as well, as well as the, yeah, it was, we were talking about the wee heavy, the Scotch ale, so the Scotland is a little too far north, and they're a little too cool in climate to grow hops. They don't want to import them as much, so that had a much more malt forward flavor to it. Whereas, you know, Germany produces a lot of hops, and you know, being able to keep it from even importing and just, you know, purchasing from within, you know, domestically if you're living there, it makes it easier to brew beer because there is an abundance of hops. Yeah, Saphir, the only other time I see Saphir a lot is Italian pilsners, which basically are dry hopped with Saphir, and it, you know, in this beer, it's one of those where the hop presence isn't so noticeable, where you kind of want something that's easy drinking on the back burner, that's not going to provide, you know, these huge herbal perfumey notes that linger because you kind of want that grain bill to shine and be the, you know, the star of the beer. You just, you just want that nice little balance, and I, you know, I think that's what you get when you drink a beer like Helles. It's meant to be a very light, refreshing, you know, almost like malt soda, I say when it comes to yellow beer. That's a great, that's a great term. Yeah, and it's light malt soda, right? Because, you know, again, we always, I just right there fell into, you know, that common trap of, this is what I think beer is, versus we started with a Dunkel, okay, and for there was longer time on this planet where it was darker beers like Dunkel than it was lighter beers like this. I mean, yes, Weihenstephaner has been brewing since the thousands, but, you know, they were not brewing Helles until, you know, 800 years later, and that is because the technology needed to get there and people needed to, you know, evolve with their palates and then what they were brewing and then how they're brewing and then where they're getting ingredients and how the process changes with technology. And you end up with something like this. And if you see it on a tap list now, you can, one, pronounce Helles properly, two, you know, if you see Weihenstephaner, again, I'm sure there's plenty of much better German-speaking individuals out there that can pronounce it better. We have. 6% of our listeners are from Germany, and I would love for just one of them to message us through the podcast because we'd love to have a conversation about beer there. But we definitely know it's Weihen, and then I do believe it's Stephaner, you know, I don't think they do the PH, F sound. So Weihenstephaner, Helles, and we're just enjoying this and we're halfway through. Well, no, we're on our third beer, we're going to... We're about three quarters here. Three quarters. There you go. Any, any misconceptions or anything that you've ever had with lagers when, you know, now that we're talking lagers? Misconceptions? Yeah. I know you know more than your average beer when it comes to beers, but things, you know, when you were kind of starting your craft beer and your traditional beer journey, you know, some people don't even realize that Dunkels and Schwarz beers exist and, you know, anything that you learned along the way that you'd like to touch on? Well, you know, I think the one thing that I picked up on was that different regions, different regions came up with different styles. So when there was German Pilsner, and then when it went someplace else, it couldn't be a Pilsner because they were going to do it a little different. It's almost like the band broke up and they were like, well, I'm just going to go form my own band over here. So that's what I always kind of related it to. So then you had your Helles, then you had your Dunkel, because they were in different regions of Germany. So it depends on where you're at. Like if I go to Bavaria, I know I'm having Helles, I'm going to have the real deal there for sure. It's my personal favorite German, you know, I like a Hefeweizen, I like, I like a Dunkel I really like a Dunkel because I just like, I just like that lightly roasty, but not too much. But, you know, learning different styles of lagers, I just found that I don't like a, if somebody, somebody's like, well, I have a light lager, but that's the only thing that they have. Okay, I'll drink it. Because I like lagers in general. But yes, I, I am more drawn to the German, I do like Czech Pilsners over American Pilsners. I think I said that in that episode too. So I'm definitely a proponent of Czech Pilsners only because it's, it's just, it's more bold for me. It's there's a more, there's a bigger flavor profile to contend with. But yeah, yeah, I don't, yeah, I don't think there's anything to misconstrue. I think early on when I was learning about it, I think that was the big thing. It was like, oh, there's so many different styles because, you know, it was, it depends on where you go. It can't be called the same thing everywhere. Here it's just American Pilsner everywhere you go. There's no Iowa Pilsner, there's no Colorado Pilsner. You know, the IPA category, there are some people, you know, you have the New England versus the West Coast versus, you know, you're starting to see some people come out with West Coast Pilsners. So I think you will start seeing some regions, but yeah, I mean, not a state by state. The only people, you know, the Bostonians, you know, Massachusetts and then Vermont, they kind of, they think like, hey, this is, the New England belongs to us, whereas I think Vermont almost wants their own kind of style of IPA. And to me it's like, okay guys, it's, we're splitting hairs here. But then again, you know, you've got places, you know, Germany is the size of some American states and you've got Northern Germany, German Pils and you know, Bavaria with the Helles. How long do you think it takes for something like that to catch on? Because it, you know, with marketing and stuff, I mean, it's, it's, it's not so much how long, it's how much money, right? I guess, I guess. How much money to make it so that people are pushing it and it becomes like a household name. And, you know, I, I think it's about a five year timeline where if somebody wants to make some sort of dent and change some things, right. And, you know, let's, let's take a look at like that heavily fruited sour and smoothie sours. Those, those were around and then you had, you know, a very short period of time before it was a very large like hype product that people wanted to get their hands on. And one, it takes something that's completely different, right? Something that's new, like sour beers aren't new, but this heavily fruited sour, that's something new. IPAs, there's not like, if I go and I talk about, all right, here's a heady topper versus a Trillium, both fantastic beers, there's going to be some nuances to it, but it's not like drinking a Goza from Goslar, Germany, and a marshmallow, peanut butter, pineapple cake from, you know, imprint or froth. Kind of Adam's family combination is that. Yeah, it's, it's, it's so far from what it was originally. And some could say that about the hazy IPA versus like the English IPA, but it's not as record scratch different from what the base style is. It's just like, oh yeah, I see, I see that you made a detour, whereas like, okay, you drink something that's almost like a nice refreshing lemonade with a Goza or, you know, something that's tart and refreshing, like a Berlin or a Weiss, and then you just drop a blueberry smoothie on somebody and you're just like, are we, are we talking same, same thing here? So it's, you either have to be dramatically or drastically different, or you need to just kind of stick to it and, and keep that marketing and keep that, that nomenclature going where it just becomes second, second nature to people to refer it to a certain way. And because when it is something as crazy as like a heavily fruited sour or a milkshake IPA that like people need something to say, they don't be like, well, I don't want to put this in the same category because it's, it's really, it's not. But that's, that's what forces you because if basically styles exist so that the consumer knows and expects what they're drinking. So if I said a sour beer and I'm used to Belgian lambics and you give me something, you know, that I have to cut with a fork and knife to drink, I'm going to be kind of, you know, shocked versus, you know, all of these different variations of loggers. Like if you tell me it's a dunkle, well geez, that translates to dark. Like I should expect that it's going to be a darker maltier, more roasty of a beer, but none of these are too far off of the beaten path. It's just, Hey, how dark and roasty or how light and easy drinking do you want your lager to be? Then, you know, there hasn't been, you know, we've got some fruited loggers out there, but none of them are heavily fruited and it's kind of just this light, easy drinking beer. You know, I'll talk about Brickyard Brewing Company from Lewiston. I just had it on one of the faster moving beers I've had in a while, but their Blueberry Pilsner, I mean, just, it's good, super, just super good. You know, it's kind of like just one of those beers that it's exactly what you think it's going to be. Clean, refreshing blueberry and you drink it and you end up having two or three and you're happy with it and you don't feel like you just had lunch. It's like, Hey, all right, we had a couple of beers and they had blueberry, right? You know, you know, we always talk about a little bit of food on most episodes here. And one of the things I brought up here was on my notes, it was perfect for a classical Bavarian cold meal. And I heard that the traditional cold meal is called Brustseite, which is a meal typically including bread, cold, cold cuts, cheeses, pickled vegetables, and condiments. So essentially deconstructed sandwich, you know, Bavarian charcuterie, you know, like, so it was very big with that. And then also done with hearty roast and schnitzel, we were talking about schnitzel in the last episode too. And then the flavor derived that we're talking about the Saphir hops. But as far as the brewery is concerned, again, going back to the fact that they're the oldest brewery in the world, started back in 1040, Weiheitstephan Pana is that this was actually a bronze medalist in the 2024 world beer awards in the, in the Germany category. But they also took home a host of awards for their other beers because they took home gold, silver, and bronze in this exact same category. So they ran the table in the world beer awards. And then they actually possess the world's best wheat beer. I think we can contend that German wheat beer is, is top notch. Oh yeah. Yeah. And then they also had the overall Germany winner and then they had the style winner. So they were just raking in the awards this year for, you know, and they make five beers. Yeah. That's it. And you know, when you are, so think of what you just said, opened in 1040, they make five beers, right? You got places that they open with 12 beers on their tap list. That's right. You know, it's a lot of the Bavarian, I mean, Munich means of monks, you know, monks. So it's similar to the Belgian beer culture where you just have people that are brewing and they're brewing with their science and they continue to hone their craft. And you know, these guys are the original craft brewers. This is, this is where we're not trying to go crazy and you know, make something that is going to shock the world. We're just trying to make good beers. And if we shock the world and, you know, racking awards or like with that Czech Pilsner, if we shocked the world because we made a really good beer, well, we sought out to make a really good beer, not shock the world. And if it ends up being that that's the case, then that's the case. And I'm sure they're glad to do that, but you know, when you have the pedigree as this brewery does, it's one of those nice things where if you do see it on the shelf or you do see it on a tap list that you're not going to be displeased. And if it doesn't taste good, then maybe it's the place serving it versus the beer in the bottle or the draft. They are the legit OGs of, of German beer. There's no other way to put that. We got, well, that's, that's three up and three down so far, but we got a grand finale that's coming up that takes us all the way down to the beautiful pan handle of the United States to Tampa, Florida. And we're going to finish out this series. We have, you know, this has been a, it's been a ride so far between going Dunkel, Czech Pilsner. Now we're at the, the German Helles and then what style do we have left that's on the table here? Well, you know, I, I, I always take time to pick out the beers and you know, this beer is called full circle for the fact that we are coming full circle, but we have an American light lager from angry chair brewing company out of Tampa Bay, Florida. And we will be bringing it full circle because we, you know, we started with dark beers and then we, and in Germany, and then from, from that it was the Pilsner that was born in the Czech Republic. And from that spawned the Helles in Bavaria. And then when people started to immigrate from Germany to America, they needed their beer. And that's what brings us full circle to an American lager. It may be full circle, but we are barely getting started. Cheers my friend. Cheers.