Helles

The helles that won gold at the 2025 World Beer Cup was a collaboration between Cinder Block of Kansas City, Missouri, and Blind Tiger of Topeka, Kansas. The objective? To craft a high-quality helles without a traditional decoction mash.

Here, five gold medal–winning breweries share their top tips on shaping the perfect Bavarian-style helles.

On his two-vessel brewhouse in Duluth, Georgia, Good Word owner-brewer Todd DiMatteo hand-lugs buckets full of mash to make his decoction happen for their house helles—a process that he says is worth the effort.

Using information provided by brewers Stefanie and Helmut Bayer, we’ve pieced together a homebrew-scale recipe for the Franconian country lager at Brauerei-Gasthof Bayer in Theinheim.

Brewing a helles is a worthy challenge. If your process is consistent and your ingredients fresh, you can make this beer sing on command.

A great helles is simple in composition—but simple can be surprisingly hard to get right, especially when there’s nowhere for mistakes to hide. It's a worthy challenge, and the payoff is a beer that pretty much everyone is happy to drink.

From Otherlands Beer in Bellingham Washington, this evolving recipe represents a snapshot of head brewer Ben Howe’s ongoing quest to crack the code of Franconian lager.

This German-style helles is a year-round beer for the lager specialists at Enegren Brewing in Moorpark, California, and a favorite of cofounder and head brewer Chris Enegren and his team.

At Enegren in Moorpark, California, the team’s favorite beer is the (Lightest) one they keep working to perfect—and if you don’t want to order a second liter, they’ve done something wrong.

From Tom Beckmann, owner and brewer at Goldfinger Brewing in suburban Chicago, here’s a recipe for their smoothly smoky collab with Fair State Brewing Cooperative in Minneapolis.

Bierstadt Lagerhaus cofounder and brewer Ashleigh Carer describes their Helles as “the purest expression of malt,” best consumed by the liter. While it may not get as much fanfare as their Slow Pour Pils, it’s equally beloved among the brewers drawn to Denver’s Bierstadt during the Great American Beer Festival—or any time of year.

In this clip from their video course, Bierstadt cofounder Bill Eye explains the when and why of their “conservative” approach to hop additions in their pale lagers, aiming for fine bitterness while avoiding grassy flavors.

The Bierstadt brewers are back, as Ashleigh Carter and Bill Eye share deeper insights and more on their technical approach to German-style lagers that beg to be enjoyed in quantity.

Michigan’s Old Nation didn’t set out to brew hazy IPA. Yet when they tackled the project, they did it with the analytical rigor one would expect from disciplined brewers trained to brew lagers.

For the lager lovers, here’s a homebrew-scale recipe for the beer that won a gold medal for Munich-Style Helles at the 2019 Great American Beer Festival.

The Wyoming-born brewmaster of the Private Landbrauerei Schönram in southeastern Bavaria digs into the details of how they brew their captivating, award-winning lagers.

Altstadt head brewer Craig Rowan shares advice on sanitation, pitching, and fermentation control for a great Munich-style helles—tips that could apply to virtually any type of lager.

From malt choices to mash out, Altstadt head brewer Craig Rowan explains how they mill and step-mash their medal-winning Lager.

They’re not the stars of the show, but there are important considerations for hops and yeast selection when brewing a Munich-style helles. Altstadt head brewer Craig Rowan shares his recipe advice.

Altstadt head brewer Craig Rowan walks us through the grist and water profile of their award-winning Munich-style helles, Altstadt Lager.