Schlenkerla

Bamberg's smoked beer is not a novelty invented for visitors. It is what beer tasted like across Franconia before kilns learned to dry malt without fire, and Schlenkerla has kept the old method running in the same building for six centuries.

Brewery · Bamberg, Germany · visited 2019, 2020, 2021, 2027

Schlenkerla — Locator plate rendered for this archive.

1405 first recorded

Rauchbier beer

beechwood-smoked malt

oak cask, by gravity tapped from

Why it tastes of smoke

Before indirect kilning arrived in the nineteenth century, every brewery dried its malt over an open fire. The smoke went into the grain, and the grain went into the beer. Most of Europe replaced that method with hot-air kilns and forgot the flavour. Bamberg did not: the malt for Schlenkerla is still dried over beechwood logs, which is why the beer smells of a cold fireplace and tastes, on the first sip, like bacon and rye bread.

The first glass is the difficult one. By the third, the smoke has stopped being a flavour and become the frame everything else sits in — the malt sweetness, the dry finish, the way it cuts through a plate of smoked ham.

The name is younger than the beer. Schlenkerla comes from schlenkern, to sway, and only stuck at the end of the nineteenth century — a nickname for the house, or for the walk home. The building is the older story: Dominikanerstraße 6, the house zum Blauen Löwen, with a line of owners documented since 1405, in the old Dominican quarter beside the church.

Inside the tavern

The room is dark wood, low ceilings and long tables shared with whoever sits down. There is no music and no television. The beer is tapped by gravity straight from an oakwood cask behind the bar, arrives in stoneware mugs, and the menu is Franconian cooking without pretension: pork shoulder, sausages, sauerkraut, a slice of bread with lard.

It is a working tavern, not a museum. Locals stand at the bar for a quick one on the way home; visitors linger. Both are welcome, and nobody rushes you out.

The house pours more than the famous Märzen: a smoked wheat beer, an Urbock, an oak-smoked Doppelbock, a cherrywood-smoked red lager, an alder-smoked black lager, and — the one worth planning a trip around — the Fastenbier, unfiltered at around 5.9%, on tap only between Ash Wednesday and Easter.

One date belongs in any beer calendar: 23 July, Smokebeer Preservation Day, when the brewery taps special Märzen editions — unfiltered, and a pale one — that exist for that week only.

The building itself is part of the argument. The tavern sits in the old Dominican quarter, a few steps from the church, in a house that has been selling beer since the fifteenth century — one of the oldest continuously operating brewery taverns in the world.

What to order

Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier Märzen — the benchmark; order the first one in the 0.5 l mug and give it three sips before deciding.
Rauchbier Helles if you want the smoke turned down and the malt turned up.
Fastenbier in Lent — the seasonal that regulars wait for.
Bock in winter, if it is on.

Where to eat

The Schäuferla — roasted pork shoulder with a dark beer gravy — is the city's Sunday dish and the reason to sit down rather than stand at the bar.
Smoked ham with bread and butter, which is less a dish than the correct answer to the beer.
Across the river in the Sandstraße, Spezial and Fässla are a five-minute walk if the tables here are full.

Notes for travellers

Bottles to take home come from the brewery itself — sold at the house and through its own shop (shop.schlenkerla.de), which also ships the seasonals.
No reservations and no host stand: walk in, look for seats, and ask to share a table. That is normal here.
Cash is the default across Bamberg's taverns. Cards are increasingly accepted but not guaranteed, especially at busy times.
The beer is stronger than it reads. Two mugs and the walk back over the river is longer than you think — which is, more or less, where the name came from.

Where it is

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49.8916° N · 10.8853° E

Closest stop on the routes: Munich by rail, 2019 · The first European loop, 2020 · Bamberg to the Allgäu, 2021 · The 2027 plan · Würzburg route

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