After driving down to Salem, Oregon to help my buddy move this weekend (and after walking through a hop field in the Willamette valley (yes I've got pictures)) I stopped at a bottle shop in Portland and picked up some pretty fantastic stuff including a beer style that I thought was extinct: Lichtenhainer.
Lichtenhainer is like traditional Berlinerweiss and rauchbeer got together and had a baby. It's a light smoked and soured wheat beer. Ron's got plenty to say about it's history and traditional recipes here: <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="
barclayperkins.blogspot.com/2008/01/lichtenhainer.html">
barclayperkins.blogspot.com/2008 ... ainer.html
This version is from a VERY small brewery German brewery in Cologne called "Baustelle", they've created a new brewery brand that they call "Freigeist" (translation: "Free Spirit"$$ literal translation "free ghost"). The label brews experimental beers, historical beers and "style bending" beers.
They admit that this is their take on Lichtenhainer and not necessarily taken from an actual documented historical recipe.
It's acidity is pretty muted and not super noticeable; it's not intensely sour like a lambic or flemish red or brown, it's a clean lactic sourness that's all in all quite mild and balancing. They definitely used Weyermann's Rauchmalt and again the smokiness is muted and in the background. It's an incredibly refreshing and drinkable beer and has that great rauch beer taste in the finish. This makes me pretty happy that BJCP is trying to promote Grodizke/ Gratzer, even if they've missed the historical mark on the style guideline.
They're now having other breweries brew their freigeist beers under license (at least some of the time) and they've picked up the US mega importer Shelton Brothers so it's likely to become more available. The version I had still remained slightly cloudy despite all yeast flocculating.
It's 10x easier drinking than you'd expect a sour, smoked wheat beer to be.
They definitely didn't use a hefeweizen yeast strain and my guess is that they used their normal Kolsch yeast strain, which works wonderfully in this beer.
Adam
