Want to brew a helles from 50 years ago? For a snapshot in the evolution of pale lager, here is a Bavarian helles recipe from 1967. It comes from Brauerei Erharting in Upper Bavaria, courtesy of Florian Kuplent, founder and brewmaster of Urban Chestnut Brewing in St. Louis, Missouri. Kuplent started his career at Erharting in 1994 and later copied the recipe from the brewery’s archives.
We’ve translated the recipe into English and then into homebrew-ese, scaling it down to 5 gallons (19 liters). It essentially follows a Hochkurz decoction mash, with no protein rest. Nice and simple—as simple as double-decoction gets, anyway. Also note the long boil.
Vollbier means “whole beer” or “entire beer.” Until 1993, that was just a tax category—it meant the beer was middle-strength, with an original gravity between 11° and 14°P (1.044 and 1.057). These days some German breweries still use the word—maybe because of tradition or maybe because it has an old-fashioned ring.