Verbatim: Schöfferhofer Hefeweizen. 5.0%, 500ml, $?, at home. Bottle conditioned, cloudy light-brown gold. Enduring head. Light but sharp yeast smell. Sharp taste, but not at all John Williamsy.

Afterthoughts, October 2010: I’m still a big fan of this Hefe, but here I’m most pleased to see the beginnings of my particular style of tasting note. By “John Williamsy”, I mean things that are big and brash, fleetingly impressive, but really rather obvious when you get down to it, and then increasingly annoying as you realise how overwrought it really is. I often complain that his film scores might as well be just his own voice, quitely burbling “tense little quiet scene, there’s tension and quietness, quietness…” or screaming “BIG DRAMATIC MOMENT, MMM-OOOH-MENT!”, as the script requires. In many ways, really, he’s the perfect partner for that hack George Lucas. Anyway. I don’t like that approach. And this beer doesn’t go there, bless it.

That’s a terrible effort at one of those ‘ß’ characters in my handwriting. But hey, at least it’s not as hideous as my 5s. I can never figure out where they went wrong.

Verbatim: Erdinger Weißbier. 5.3% 500ml $? At home. Batch. Brewed and bottled @ Erding, Germany. Cloudy pale gold. Crisp and clean. Not overly wheaty. Enduring head. Very slight banana note. Super bloudy end: bottle conditioned? Smells like a brew vessel, in a good way.

Afterthoughts, October 2010: Again with the bottle-conditioning fixation, but rather embarrassingly not picking up that this one so obviously is. It’s hefe, after all. And I’m not quite sure what I was mentally comparing-against when I said it wasn’t ‘overly wheaty’ — possibly Tuatara Hefe, which is definitely moreso, and has more in the banana department. So to speak.