AleNearly lost
Grodziskie
Brewed entirely from wheat malt dried over oak smoke, then bottled before fermentation finished so the yeast carbonated it hard in the glass. Very low in strength, very high in carbonation, brilliantly clear and firmly bitter — the clarity and the bubbles earned it the name Polish Champagne.
Grodzisk Wielkopolski, Poland
Origin
By the 15th century
First appears
2.5–3.3%
Typical ABV
2
In the archive
4.0%
Average ABV here
Oak smoke behaves nothing like the beechwood smoke of a Bamberg Rauchbier: it is lighter, drier and closer to a clean campfire than to bacon. Commercial production stopped in the 1990s and the style existed only in books for roughly two decades before craft brewers rebuilt it from written descriptions.
Covered in Era 6 — The Styles That Nearly Died.
01
2 breweries across 1 country
Grodziskie in the archive
Other ale styles