Beer Pick: Halfway Crooks SHELL German-style Schwarzbier now available in cans

Halfway Crooks SHELL German-style Schwarzbier  CONTRIBUTED BY: Shannon Vinson.

Halfway Crooks SHELL German-style Schwarzbier CONTRIBUTED BY: Shannon Vinson.

Yesterday, Halfway Crooks in Summerhill released the first batch of canned beer from its brand new canning line.

The first two 16-ounce cans for sale at the taproom are METRIC, a German-style Helles, and SHELL, a German-style Schwarzbier.

Both beers are packaged with cool labels that include somewhat mysterious notes about what to expect from the tasting experience.

And with that, Halfway Crooks SHELL German-style Schwarzbier is this week’s Beer Pick.

Beer Pick 

SHELL German-style Schwarzbier

Halfway Crooks Beer, Atlanta

Available on draft and in 16-ounce cans at the Halfway Crooks taproom

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In true schwarzbier style, SHELL is brewed with German malted barley and German roasted barley. Most importantly, it’s krausened — the German process of adding a proportion of active wort to tanks containing fermented beer —lagered for six weeks, and packaged unfiltered.

The result is a truly black beer that’s surprisingly light in alcohol at 4.8%, but full of flavor. On draft at the brewery, or at home in the can, it pours with a big frothy head. As you would expect, it’s malty and lightly roasted, with coffee and chocolate notes, and a clean, bittersweet finish.

Pair with 

Schwarzbier is a great style for hearty food. In “The Brewmaster’s Table,” Brooklyn brewmaster Garrett Oliver suggests pairing it with grilled steak or sausages, blackened Cajun dishes, dirty rice, or Jambalaya.

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