What have you achieved in the last 200 days?
I didn’t realise it was a duration of time we marked, but there are plenty of articles on the internet like: “How Journaling For 200 Days Changed My Life”, “Here’s What Working Out For 200 Days Did To This Guy’s Body”, “Meet The Woman Who Has Spent 200 Days In Space”, and my favourite, the simultaneously-inspiring-and-judgy “I Went 200 Days Without Buying Anything New And Learned How Toxic Our Need For Possessions Is.”
So what have you done in the last 200 days? If your answer is: “I just hung around doing not much at all” then you’re in good company, because that’s exactly what this German pils did at Helios.
Back in the day when monks were cellaring beer in ice caves over winter, six months wouldn’t be considered an outlandishly long time to lager a beer. But tying up a fermenting vat in a commercial brewery can have an actual financial impact on a business. Many brewers who want to lager a beer do so for three or four weeks. I’ve heard of the occasional eight to ten weeks, while in WA over the past couple of years there's been a lagering arms race; we think 123 days was as far as that went. When you get to more than 200 days (almost seven months), it’s downright impressive.
What you get is a beer that lager-lovers drool over. Brewer Jake Harrison was already ecstatic with this beer when it was lagered for a few weeks, but after half a year of resting it he's stoked with how it cleaned up even further (as you can see in this video*). There are certain things that only time can do.
This ain’t no where’s-the-flavour kind of lager; it’s all smooth and sweet malt run through with spice. At least that’s true for the first few sips. Because as you keep drinking, enjoying the bready sweetness, a truckload of clean bitterness rolls through and hits you front-on. And it sits with you for the next 200 days.
Mick Wüst
*I’m not sure if I’m relieved or disappointed that there wasn’t any finger-licking in this video, as there was in the video for the beer when it was first brewed. But I certainly enjoyed seeing the progress of Jake’s beard length.
Published October 13, 2023 2023-10-13 00:00:00
