Schwarzbier Gets Its Chocolate and Coffee Without the Weight

Of the six beers Guggman Haus has put on for Oktoberfest, the Schwarzbier is the darkest by a wide margin and one of the lightest in build. It is 5.3 percent, which is exactly where the Czech pilsner alongside it lands.

That gap between appearance and weight is the defining trick of the style. Schwarzbier is a German dark lager with a long history in the eastern part of the country, and it is built to look far more serious than it drinks. The color reads as stout. The body does not.

Guggman Haus is brewing it with a blend of German Munich and specialty roasted malts. Munich malt supplies the bready, lightly toasted depth that carries the middle of the beer. The roasted malts are there mainly for color and for the notes the brewery describes as light chocolate and coffee, and the operative word in that description is light. Used in quantity, roasted grain brings the drying astringency and burnt edge familiar from a stout. Used in a small proportion, and often in a dehusked form, it gives the color and a cocoa suggestion without the harshness following it in.

The lager fermentation handles the rest. Where an ale yeast would add fruit esters of its own, a clean cold ferment leaves the malt exposed and the finish tidy, which is how the brewery arrives at a dry, crisp landing on a beer this dark.

It also fills a specific gap in the Oktoberfest lineup. Guggman Haus has a Festbier, a Czech pilsner, a NEIPA, an altbier and a radler running at the same time, and the Schwarzbier is the only one of them built on roasted malt.

The Schwarzbier is on tap now for the brewery's Oktoberfest.