Kellerbier

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.

The bottle says St. Michaelsberg very prominently. When I first glimpsed at this bottle I though, "No way that's St. Michaelsberg from Bamberg..." I'd lived in Bamberg for a year in college and have fond memories of the place. It's a medium sized town in Franconia, halfway between Munich and Berlin. Bamberg had nine breweries serving a population of about 80,000 people back then. It's definitely a town known for its beer, and for good reason... Rauchbier is a style that put Bamberg on the map but Weissbier is what kept me coming back to visit. I knew St. Michaelsberg as a hilltop abbey, not a modern brewery, so I was very surprised to see this bottle and I wanted to know more about the story behind it.