Pilsner and Helles | History of Beers

Pilsner and Helles are one of the more recognized beer styles in the world.?

Almost every drinker has already tasted one of these styles. In this text, we will approach the history of these two sister beers.

Before the 19th century, German beers were dark, ale (top fermented), and acid taste. Several factors influenced the German Beer School's changes to what we know today. Two important law was created, the first was?Reinheitsgebot?in 1516, a law that, among other things, sets that beer can only be produced with barley malt, hops, and water. Click on the link below to read more about it.

Another important law was created in 1553 by Duke Albrecht of Bavaria and sanctioned that beer could only be produced between September 29 and April 23, in the Autumn and Winter. Even without knowing the existence of the yeast, the brewers artificially selected the bottom fermentation yeast over the top fermentation yeast ?(due to the temperature preference of each yeast specie), and excluded the acid profile in beers (out of the bacteria temperature range). Even though this law was repealed in 1850, the brewers started to take ice blocks from frozen lakes in the winter to store in the cellar and create the right environment for fermenting lager, even in the warmer seasons.

Another important event happened in 1833 when the brewers Gabriel Sedlmayr (Spaten, Munich) and Anton Dreher (Dreher, Vienna) traveled to England to study the new malting techniques using indirect heat and making possible the creation of pale malts without smoke notes. Back to their hometowns, in 1840 they created respectively the Munich and the Vienna malts that were used as the base for M?rzen/Oktoberfest and Vienna Lager. Despite these beers were not a completely pale beer, they were much brighter than all their contemporary beers.

Pilsner

The first real pale beer was not German but born in Bohemia, Czech Republic. In spite of Bohemia having good raw materials, their beer has suffered strong variation, to the point of the regional leaders discarded 36 beer kegs in front of city hall in 1838. To solve it, it was hired two Bavarian: the architecture Martin Steltzen to draw and manage the building of a new brewery, Bürgerbrauerei?(the brewery of the people), and the brewmaster Josef Groll to work on it.

Josef developed a pale malt using Moravia barley, a malt lighter than Sedlmayr’s malt, and supposedly contrabanded a yeast strain from a Bavarian monk. Using the soft?Plzeň?water, the pale malt, the Bavarian yeast, and the delicate Saaz hops, Gross created, in 1842, a golden lager called Pilsner. This beer quickly became famous in the Astro-Hungarian Empire and beyond. Even in the Bavarian market, people were preferring the Gross beer to the local darker lagers.

Helles

In 1894, the Spaten Brewery created the first Helles. Using local hops, harder water (than Czech Republic), and a double decoction (versus triple decoction used by Pilsner), Helles was a brighter, and dryer beer. The creation of the mechanic filtration in 1878 and the cooling systems helped Helles being a pale beer.

In the first years of their life, Helles was the target of discussions between German breweries, several were in favor of producing pale beer, but some disagreed. In time, Helles became preferred over Dunkel, and even Paulaner, which was against it, created his own version of Helles and became more famous than Spaten's version.

A few decades after the creation of Pilsener and Helles beers, dimple pint started to become a rule, and that impulsed even more pale beers.?

Sensory Profile

The Pilsner and the Helles have many characteristics in common, the straw-to-golden color, sweet malt taste, and translucid. Both are moderately strong beers with an ABV of 4 for 6% and high drinkability.

The Pilsner uses noble hops, with spicy and floral aromas, giving the protagonism to hop. On the other hand, the Helles have a good balance with malt.

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