Psst!

Dampfbier. Now there's a beer style you don't see very often, at least in the commercial sphere. Many a home brewer is drawn to the idea of using a cool-fermenting yeast in a warm-fermenting environment, because fridges are expensive and take up space. But it's not one of the old German styles that the contemporary craft beer movement has adopted and abused. How gose and Berliner weisse must envy it.

I found one, Borbecker Helles Dampfbier, on the shelves of De Bierkoning in Amsterdam, so I bought it, just for the rarity value. The typically taciturn German label gives nothing away about what one is to expect from a dampfbier, other than it is venerable. Ingredients are listed and it's just water, malt and hops. I suspect they're not really going for the geek market.

In the glass it's a bright and clear pale gold, looking like a standard Helles lager. Nothing in the aroma tells me any different, though there's a snap of the plastic hop-extract element that tends to spoil mainstream German lager. Surely Herr Borbecker uses the real stuff?

Hops don't feature much in the flavour. It's a big and chewy fellow, despite an extremely modest 4.8% ABV. And while there's no wheat, I get the fruity weissbier esters, suggesting that indeed warm fermenting has been happening, whatever the predilections of the yeast strain used. Madeira cake, blancmange and nougat all feature in the middle, with a touch of courgette around the edges, finishing on a slightly harder grass or cabbage bitterness. While it's very obviously A German Beer, it is subtly different, conforming to none of the familiar flavour profiles.

This is a bit of an insight into what German beer might have been in a slightly different timeline, which is fun. The brewery is in Essen, between Dortmund and Düsseldorf. I'm well overdue a visit to that part of the world.

edit: And after all that, a helpful commentator points out below that it's just a lager using the brand of an old brewery which once had a steam engine. They're an unromantic bunch, your Germans.