Tuesday 25 February 2014

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).

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