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Bacon-flavored beer: How could it not be awesome? Rauchbier is a little-known German style made from smoked malts, meaning the grains are cured over burning beech wood before they’re brewed. Though a couple US breweries make smoked beer (Stone’s smoked porter is the best of them), the two most traditional varieties come from Bamberg, a kind of brewer’s Shangri-La in central Germany. Brewing goes back a thousand years there: a population of only about 70,000 gets to share nine breweries, two malting plants, and even a factory that makes brewing equipment. The two breweries specializing in smoked beer are Spezial and Schlenkerla. I’ve only been able to find Schlenkerla in the US. (The name, apparently, means something like wobbly or crooked—a reference to the brewery’s hunchbacked founder, crippled by a falling beer barrel as the practically required legend has it.)

Schlenkerla’s smoked beers come in two main varieties: a märzen and a bock. Traditionally, märzens are not as dark brown as bocks, and a tiny bit hoppier. In this case, the Schlenkerla bock is a little harsh, and tastes smokier than it smells. The märzen, on the other hand, is awesome: smells super rich and smoky, exactly like a nice slab of bacon. Tastes dark and rich, with only a hint of sweet smoke, kind of like Laphroaig, or another rich scotch. It’s breakfast in a bottle, and at only 5% alcohol, it makes more sense starting your day than a tumbler full of whisky.