Tag Archives: Wheat

Hofbrau Munchner Weisse (et. al.)

Hofbrau Munchner Weisse
Diary entry #37, Hofbrau Munchner Weisse

Verbatim: Hofbräu Münchner Weisse. 500ml, 5.1%, 20/8/07. Reward for fixing the German flatmate’s ‘puter. Nice cloudy straw wheat. Not overfly fruity or flowery. Clean and smooth.

Afterthoughts, October 2010: Oh yeah, in addition to being a Beer Nerd, I’m something of a Regular Nerd too. Sometimes, the two “talents” come together nicely.

The Schneider Aventinus will crop up much later in its (gloriously mad) ‘Eisbock’ form, but that’s my first confirmed Malthouse Diary entry. For rather-obvious reasons, it’s destined to be the site of a ludicrous chunk of the book from here out.

And there’s Renaissance ‘Stonecutter’. Also set to turn up later with a lovely photo. So, so tasty. Just go get one, now, if you’ve never had it.

Wigram Hefe-weizen

Wigram Hefe-weizen
Diary entry #35, Wigram Hefe-weizen

Verbatim: Wigram Hefe-Weizen. 500ml, $5, 5%, 19/1/07. Increasingly liking this brewery. This one is nice and cloudy, with sediment. Good that they don’t hid it. A damn solid, straight-up wheat beer. No peculiarities, but no flaws, either. Bananas ahoy.

Afterthoughts, October 2010: And blam, we’re in January 2007. What the hell happened to the rest of 2006? I honestly have no idea. May seems to be an oddly-lucky month, for the early Diary; I’ll have a slack patch, then a (relatively) frenetic May, then… nothing. I really should make some graphs.

Emerson’s Weissbier

Emerson's Weissbier
Diary entry #32, Emerson's Weissbier

Verbatim: Emerson’s Weissbier. $5, 5%, 7/5/06, 500ml. Not too shabby a wheat at all. As you’d expect. Nicely cloudy, a little bit of fruitiness, but none too strong. So: everyone’s wheat beer, really.

Afterthoughts, October 2010: See what I mean by patchiness? A six-week gap, then a new entry the very next day. Weird that I seem so nonplussed and half-hearted in my praise, though; I was fairly sure I loved this stuff. Must have another…

Carlow ‘Curim’ Golden Celtic Wheat

Carlow 'Curim'
Diary entry #13, Carlow 'Curim'

Verbatim: Curim Gold Celtic Wheat Beer. 12oz, 4.3%, <$5, 20/08/04, at home. Dark-gold, slightly cloudy. Bubbles gone already. Nice, lightly yeasty nose. Smooth, with just a bit of sharp to stay interesting. It’s Irish, so not the wheatiest, but none too bad.

Afterthoughts, October 2010: Here’s a good / terrible example of how forgetful and badly-habited I was in the early days of the Diary; a four-month mysterious gap since the previous entry. Shameful. And yeah, I’m not sure quite how I thought the “it’s Irish, so” bit really followed.

Jamieson ‘Mountain Ale’

Jamieson 'Mountain Ale'
Diary entry #12, Jamieson 'Mountain Ale'

Verbatim: Jamieson Mountain Ale. 330ml, 4.9%, $3ish, 11/4/04, at home. “Dark wheat beer”. Brown-black. Weird. Seems stuck halfway. Not bad, per se, but not wheat and not dark. Can’t see it winning friends. Stick with La Rossa.

Afterthoughts, October 2010: Oh, so very far to go until proper Beer Nerdery, still. Here’s me totally confused and confounded by the thought that “dark wheat beer” might be a thing unto itself and obviously under the impression that “dark” was basically a style, rather than just a colour, into which territory many beers may wander. There are some particularly-lovely dark wheats much later in the Diary, so I did eventually get the point.

Holgate Brewhouse ‘White Ale’

Holgate Brewhouse 'White Ale'
Diary entry #6, Holgate Brewhouse 'White Ale'

Verbatim: Holgate Brewhouse White Ale. 5.0%, 330ml, $16/6pk, at home. Bottle conditioned, but the tiniest amount of sediment. Wheat beer, very mild taste. Refreshing on a 40° day. Not gold, light, cloudy. Like flat L&P or some random chemistry set piece. Matches our couch. Bubbles don’t stay.

Afterthoughts, October 2010: I do remember finding this almost ridiculously mild, especially as I was a bit of a wheat beer drinker at the time. Then again, in weather like that, it still did the trick. How on earth did I survive those kinds of temperatures, you may ask, if you’ve seen me in even a relatively-mild Wellington summer — just goddamn barely, I can assure you. (And yes, we really did have a couch that was roughly the same colour as L&P.)

Schofferhofer Hefeweizen

A real crash-course in spelling, Schofferhofer Hefeweizen
Diary entry #5, Schofferhofer Hefeweizen

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.

Erdinger Weissbier

The non-standard-English letters get started early, Erdinger Weissbier
Diary entry #2, Erdinger Weissbier

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.