Hell - Surly Brewing Company, Brooklyn Center

This can of Surly Hell has been in my beer fridge for close to two months now. After a long morning of running errands and realizing its just barely seventy degrees outside I realized maybe I won't have much time left this season to drink a lighter beer. This can is a mostly an unpainted polished aluminum color with some late 90s green tribal tattooing going on... The lettering reminds me of the Ed Hardy style honestly, and it says LAGER in big white letters. It isn't done in a tongue in cheek manner, and that's a little bothersome. My expectations are pretty low at this point.

Pouring this beer into my tall glass it seemed a bit darker than I was expecting. Given a name like Hell, I was expecting a Helles style lager. Helles beers are pale, golden lagers with a slight sweetness and light body. Surly's Hell is listed as a Kellerbier by the brewer... I found this a bit odd as the Kellerbiers I've had were generally a lot stronger in ABV and much darker in color. It seems the Hell name may be a little bit of a play on the contradiction here, but I'm a little concerned this won't meet my new expectations of what a Kellerbier should taste like...

After taking a few sips of the Surly Hell I'm ready to sway back over to the Helles camp... This beer is more full bodied and a little darker than most Helles beers but it is nowhere near what I'd expect from something labeled Kellerbier. There's a lot of semantics here, on both sides... What I can tell you for certain is that this beer is quite good for a Helles. It's mostly light all around but medium bodied. The Helles sweetness is here in the form a nice lemon twang.

I have a lot of problems with this beer, but flavor isn't one. The flavor of this beer is solid, it's pale but more complex than a light Helles or Pilsner. There is a lot of malt flavor and that lemon zing that really is satisfying... but, that's all there is. It's a bit simple in the end, not that that's a bad thing when you're looking for a Helles style beer on a warm summer afternoon. The problem here is this beer is "technically" a Kellerbier, something I wouldn't drink during the warmest months... Surly needs to figure out what style they want to sell this beer as and then rethink their marketing appropriately. If it were up to me I'd go full on Helles with this beer because it's a great example of a light but flavorful beer. If you're in the market for a Kellerbier there are at least a dozen better examples of that style I can think of off the top of my head.