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We all know that agriculture is integral to being craft beer fans so it is really good to see that Brewjeria along with Norwalk Brew House and South Central Brewing have a collaboration that benefits the United Farm Workers. It is a pineapple and mango wheat beer appearing on March 30th.
Freigest Bierkultur comes up with some excellent spins in German beer standards and they have collaborated on a couple new ones that caught my fancy…
…and…
This would be a cool tasting duo. Also, I like the DDH play on words too. Bet some hop head will buy it and get a snortful of elderflower.
Pasadena was set to get a new brewery in May, but now Cerveceria del Pueblo is soft opening with to-go sales of their (4) core beers including a variety pack that allows new customers a taster tray of sorts.
I drove the much quieter streets over to their location on Bellevue to pickup some beers but also to take a safe peek into their little but brightly painted space.
The next post will cover capsule reviews of the Kolsch, California Common, Pilsner and Wheat beer but you should check out this L.A. Times piece that talks about the brewery as the opener and closer to the article.
Whilst window (of the coolers) shopping at Sunset Beer, I spied a new set of arrivals from SanTan Brewing of Chandler, Arizona so I picked up a can and it so happened to be the one that was selling the fastest. People like pineapple I guess.
Mr. Mister pours a hazy light orange. Sweet fruit notes hit the nose. Pineapple is there as is, strangely, banana. It has a very smoothie-esque consistency and taste to it.
I was expecting more wheat and a brighter fruit taste but on the flip side, I was worried that the pineapple juice would totally overwhelm the proceedings. Neither happened and I was kinda disappointed with the the more Radler effects that seemed to take over. More wheat and a little more carbonation would have made this better for me.
As part of a Twitter Tasting hosted by the Fresh & Easy Market chain, I had the opportunity to sample a beer new to me, Shore Break Hefeweizen.
This is a “phantom” craft as it depicts bucolic surf scenes and is sold here in California but is brewed by Rheinlander in Wisconsin.
It pours an orange golden color with not much aroma to speak of at all. First sip comes and goes without any banana or clove so you can safely assume this is not a real hefeweizen. But even worse, this beer is watery. Not much there, there. Grain taste is practically non-existent.
Not only is this not a “craft” beer it isn’t a German hefe and it is flat out a really poor example of a wheat beer. I do not recommend this beer and I would avoid other Shore Break and Underworld brands at Fresh and Easy and focus on the tried and true you can get there.
Our 45th Session will be hosted by Bruce Tichnor, who runs the Canadian BeerTaster.ca. He’s taking us back to our roots, to spend a cloudy afternoon with wheat beers, or has he describes it:
We wanted to get back closer to the roots of the Session and pick a topic which was simple and yet gives a wide range of interpretations so we chose, simply (or perhaps not so simply), Wheat Beers.
Feel free to take this topic in any direction you like, specific reviews, historical information, or any other twist you’d like to use. Wheat beers are a pretty wide topic and actually cover German style Weizen, Heffe Weizen, etc. along with Belgian style Witbier and even Flavoured Wheat beers.
There are very few guidelines here, just have some fun drinking Wheat Beers in the fall instead of the summer.
Whenever I see or hear the words “wheat beer”, my steel trap of a mind heads straight to the first beer that made me think that beer could be more than plain and watery. Thomas Kemper WeizenBerry which the RateBeer sites describes thusly, “This wheat-brewed beer is bursting with refreshing all-natural raspberry flavor.”
I drank a lot of that beer. Mainly because it was sparkly and fruity and low in alcohol. I did not care one bit of the Weizen part of the equation. It was all about the berry.
At the time it was probably one of the better NW beers out there. Nowadays, it would probably not rank high due to the prejudice against fruit beers and most wheat beers. And truth be told, if I was handed a bottle today, it probably would not taste or rank as well as I remember. Part of me is glad it is not made anymore. A treasured memory can’t be tarnished by your own self or made fun of by others.
Now, wheat beer conjures up a more complicated stream of thought. Which sub-style are we talking about? Is it German or American? Sessionable or not? All good questions and part of my evolution in craft beer but sometimes I wish I could go back to that first WeizenBerry and just really enjoy it, unencumbered by all the thought.
Thanks to the fine beer emporium known as Brewforia, Utah is now complete. Intermountain Wheat from Epic Brewing is not your normal plain, vanilla wheat beer.
If you haven’t had Southern Tier before, this summer refresher might be the place to start.
Firestone-Walker has a new six-pack entering the world. A wheat beer. I am glad that they are moving in this direction. They have IPA’s and specialty releases in bottles but this marks a broadening of the portfolio. And I am all for that.