305: Matthias Trum of Schlenkerla Isn't Preserving the Ashes, He's Keeping the Rauchbier Fire Burning

Matthias Trum is the sixth-generation brewer at Bamberg’s Heller-Trum Bräu—better known as Schlenkerla—and he is as obsessed with local history as he is with producing world-class smoked lagers via their old-fashioned methods.

Bamberg has a long history of brewing, and Trum is a great student of that history—and his family has played an important role in it. In this episode, he immerses us in that story, discussing:

• old family brewing logs that detail strong beers as well as lower-strength ones made from second runnings
• the true story of rauchbier, and Schlenkerla’s role in preserving its legacy
• details on Schlenkerla’s own wood-fired malting process, and the old practice of using different types of wood
• the non-linear intensity of the smoky character in Schlenkerla’s beers
• the importance of decoction to fermentation and flavor
• the flavor contribution of their direct-fire copper kettles
• the trick of balancing smoke and malt with evident hop bitterness
• experimenting with malts smoked by different woods and paired with different aroma hops
• balancing the non-smoked yet subtly smoky Helles Lagerbier
• how hyper-inflation led to the development of the Helles

And more.

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