Light gold in hue and laid-back in character, helles (German for “light”) is Bavaria’s answer to a session beer. The humble helles is Bavaria’s most popular brew and is considered by many to be the refined zenith of south German brewing with its underlying maltiness, soft hop bitterness, and superb drinkability.
It is a testament to subtlety and simplicity that Bavarian helles endures.
Of Monks and Men
To understand the roots of helles, one needs to travel the centuries-old road of German brewing history. Northern Europe has been inhabited for several millennia, and the production of fermented beverages was a practice of those prehistoric tribes. The brewing center of what is now Germany was the unassuming settlement of Munich, a monastic outpost along the ancient trade route known as the salt road. Though Munich was home to an eclectic mélange of cultures, monastic influence might have been the greatest. The city’s very name is a derivative of monchen, meaning monks. Almost by default, brewing fell into the hands of the monks, who were generally regarded as the preeminent practitioners of the craft. They were also hop growers par excellence, with documentation of that as long ago as AD 768 by the Freising monastery.
Germany endured numerous political and aristocratic tussles beginning about a thousand years ago. Control of the brewing industry was often at the center of them, especially as secular interests entered the brewing landscape. To protect the quality of the beer and the rights of the brewers, guilds were formed and laws enacted that dictated brewing ingredients and methods. In 1447, the Munich City Council allowed beer to be brewed with only hops, malted barley and water. Such requirements led to passage of the famous purity law, the Reinheitsgebot, in 1516.
Brewers, being the astute craftsmen that they were, noticed that beers brewed in cool months and stored cold were far superior to those brewed during the summer. Yeast, as an essential brewing entity, became appreciated in conjunction with bottom fermentation. To ensure the superior standards of the Münchener beer, the brewing of bottom-fermenting beers was outlawed between April 23 and September 29: Only the top-fermenting wheat beers could be brewed between those dates. It was during this period that Bavaria, and Munich in particular, further distinguished itself as a brewing epicenter. Weissbier, bock, and the signature dark beer, dunkel, were the beers that made Munich famous. None of these even remotely resembled the beer we know today as helles, but the brewing revolutions leading to its development were looming on the horizon.
