Beer Styles

What do people in Baden drink? Mostly Pils, the city breweries from Karlsruhe to Heidelberg list it as their flagship style. A German Pils is golden yellow, with a slender body and a distinctly perceptible hop bitterness that lingers briefly after the swallow. By BJCP style guidelines it runs 4.4 to 5.2 percent alcohol, similar to a Helles.

How does Pils differ from Helles? Helles is softer and maltier, modeled on the Munich original, with slightly more alcohol at 4.7 to 5.4 percent. Pils is more heavily hopped, with bitterness ranging from 22 to 40 IBU, versus just 16 to 22 for Helles. Both are bottom-fermented and belong to the lager family.

The second style is Hefeweizen, also called Weissbier. It's top-fermented, contains wheat malt, and is drunk with the yeast still in it, hence the cloudiness. The flavor recalls ripe banana and clove, with bitterness at 8 to 15 IBU barely noticeable. Kristallweizen is the same beer, just filtered, with no yeast in the glass.

Alongside these you'll find beers in the style of Kellerbier or Märzen, but they're a sideshow. None of these styles are legally protected; Pils and Weizen are generic names. In Mannheim and Plankstadt, both styles often sit side by side on the menu, and in Heidelberg, Weizen joins the lineup in summer. The figures above are competition guidelines, not recipe mandates, and an individual beer may fall outside them. Binding figures appear on the label. Drinking Pils this way lets you compare, on a small scale, how differently each house brewery tunes its bitterness.