Wheat Your Whistle

Find choosing one of the 400 beer options from the Grocer’s platter daunting therefore disregard the foreign varieties that you can’t pronounce, then choose again. Germans have been brewing since 1400s so should know a wee bit about it by now. They started off by brewing with wheat fostering one of Germany’s greatest and most distinctive beer styles

If you have been put off by the unusual slightly acidic taste of wheat beer then you should try a genuine “Weissen bier” (wheat beer) and the best way to partake is with the world’s best wheat works – ‘Schneider Weisse’

These guys make it simple for none-German speakers by naming their 7 different beers simply Tap 1 through to Tap 7.

Tap 5 has a slightly sour but smooth creaming soda like body that tastes of overripe apricots and pears. A balancing wheat taste comes through that reminds me of Paeroa without the lemon and gives a refreshing afterburn.

Tap 6 is the bottom jump (biggest) of the Schneider Weisse and pours like pear pulp with a serious amount of beer pollution. It’s recommended to swill the bottle when pouring to extract all the tasty murk flavours. This is one fruit cake with plenty of sherry and could almost be used as a dessert flambé with its 8.2%abv.

Tap 7 is a thinner bodied sourish brew with light wheat, nuts, clove and cinnamon flavours that grow on you the more you drink.  The effervescence is extremely refreshing.

Another famous wheat works from Germany is Hofbrau who is one of the big six breweries in Munich that supply beer to the famous Oktoberfest beer festival that celebrates autumn.

They brew a complex Schwarze Weisse (dark wheat) that brims with walnut and banana bread flavours and is equally at home as a BBQ refresher or complimenting a dessert. It’s harsh at the start but mellow at the finish.

The Hefe Weizen (yeast wheat) brew has a lazy haze with notes of bananas and spices that only the real German yeasts produce.

All these brews fizz and you don’t need no thigh slapping Oompah band to enjoy em!

Denis Sommelier Cooper (not pronounced smellier).

Happy New Beer!!!

New Year, new beer, new cheer and perhaps a new dare?   Dare to try something different that might challenge your beer buds?  Maybe you’re intimidated by the plethora of craft beer variety available, most with bold outlandish flavour variations, so you therefore stick loyally to the reliable bland Beer Baron brews?  Fortunately the ‘Lakefront Brewery’ from Milwaukee, USA may have this conundrum sorted.  With their easy-drinking flavourful but not over the top beers that quietly massage the taste buds without ripping them out like some craft brewers pride themselves on, Lakefront may transition you into the craft beer market.

The ‘Klisch Pilsner’ - named after the two brothers who founded the brewery from a homebrew kit like all successful beermeisters seem to do - is a refreshing summertime brew. Tasting like a crisp sharp clean lager only with a slight Belgium bent via twists of fruit and subtle yeast flavours.

The ‘Fixed Gear’ is red ale with rye grains that create colour, caramel flavours and whiskey overtones combining with big American hops resulting in a tingly tang.  This one will keep your pedals going round while looking for the gear shifter.

And, like all good bike riders, get your coffee hit with ‘Fuel Café’.  Tasting like a cold vanilla espresso, this will definitely give you some mojo for the sprint finish with its 6.4%abv.

‘Eye P A’ wafts of hops, and tastes of grapefruit and brown sugar.  Initially the hop bitterness curls the tongue to the roof of the mouth then the smooth malt flavours flatten it back to normal.

So if you’re a binger or sipper these ’transition beers’ cover all the four seasons we seem to be having this summer!  I can’t think of a better dare?

Bellynote:  Must mention another tongue curler from America but this one is made solely with NZ green bullet hops and funnily enough it’s called ‘Green Bullet’, from Green Flash Brewery.  It’s a seasonal release triple IPA 10%er and man, the strong piney hop taste is as bitter as an Indian O.D.I. player!

DC, doing the drinking for you!