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08-12-2016, 12:17
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‘Why aren’t more British breweries tackling German-style wheat beers?’ Adrian Tierney-Jones (http://maltworms.blogspot.co.uk/) has asked more than once. Intrigued by that question, we rounded up a few and gave it some thought.Now, clearly, this isn’t one of our full-on, semi-comprehensive taste-offs — we didn’t have the time, inclination or, frankly, budget to get hold of a bottle of every Weizen currently being made by a UK brewery.*One notable omission, for example, is Top Out Schmankerl, recommended to us by Dave S (https://twitter.com/Ramblin_Dave/status/796686769437757441), which we couldn’t easily get hold of.
But we reckon, for starters, six is enough to get a bit of a handle on what’s going on, and perhaps to make a recommendation. We say ‘perhaps’ because the underlying question is this: why would anyone ever buy a British Weizen when the real thing can be picked up almost anywhere for two or three quid a bottle? The most exciting German wheat beer we’ve tasted recently was a bottle of Tucher in our local branch of Wetherspoon — perfectly engineered, bright and lemony, and £2.49 to drink in. How does anyone compete with that?
We drank the following in no particular order over a couple of nights, using proper German wheat beer vases of the appropriate size.*What we were looking for was cloudiness, banana and/or bubblegum and/or cloves, a huge fluffy head and, finally, a*certain chewiness of texture. That and basic likeability, of course.
1. Moor Claudia | 4.5% ABV | 330ml can | £1.88 from Ales by Mail
What a confusing beer to start with. The can has gothic lettering and Bavarian colours but, in small print, is described as*‘A Hoppy Wheat Beer’. There’s some irony in the fact that it was almost impossible to pour cloudy given Moor’s role as pioneers of unfined beer — the best we managed was haze, which meant that it immediately looked wrong. We thought there was a hint of banana in the aroma but then decided we were kidding ourselves — it was a trick played on us by the packaging. It really just tasted to us like a slightly off-kilter pale ale — citrus, that trendy onion character, and some coconut. It was great, actually — not too dry, a bit of background funk, like the Magic Rock/Lervig Farmhouse IPA we loved a couple of years back. But why burden it with*Bavarian national costume if that doesn’t reflect the beer? As a Weizen, it’s a miss*for us.
2. Meantime Wheat | 5% | 330ml bottle | £1.75 from Ales by Mail
This is a beer we once knew well — enough to observe its constant changes, its ups and downs. In the days before blogging, c.2005, we once lugged an entire case from The Union back to our house in Walthamstow, on public transport, so smitten were we. It looked and smelled the part as we poured it, chucking up a cloud of foam and pumping out banana aroma. It was properly cloudy, too, and on the toffee-coloured Schneider side rather than glowing yellow like Erdinger.*But the head disappeared almost immediately and the lack of carbonation became apparent in the thin body. Where was the Champagne creaminess? Most disastrously, it also had a dose of acidity which we’re sure should not have been there:*‘It’s like somebody’s squeezed a bleedin’ lemon in it!’ Aren’t big brewery takeovers supposed to improve quality and consistency? It’s almost there but not quite*and is therefore*a*miss.
3. Thornbridge Versa | 5% | 500ml bottle | £2.67 from Ales by Mail
https://i2.wp.com/boakandbailey.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/1st_place_tpt.png?resize=124%2C124We had high expectations of this beer — there’s a clear sense that German styles are Thornbridge head-brewer Rob Lovatt’s first love and, in general, Thornbridge is a slick operation that makes at the very least clean, technically correct beers. It got off to a good start with a huge, almost comical bubblegum and banana aroma. If we didn’t know better, we’d suspect it was artificially enhanced. The head gave a perfect imitation of the real thing, like a scoop of some impossibly light vanilla mousse. The body of the beer was cloudy and a darker shade of gold, hinting again at the highly regarded Schneider as the key influence. It tasted somewhat sweet,*milkshake thick, full of pop art exclamation marks. We’d buy this over several of the blander German wheat beers and it is enough its own thing to warrant further inspection. A solid*hit.
4. Brodie’s Whitechapel Weizen | 4.5% | 330ml can | £2.33 from Ales by Mail
This was the first Brodie’s packaged beer we’d had in a while and the very first of their cans we’ve tried. We were concerned it might be a bit dirty-tasting the way some canned craft beer (def. 2 (http://boakandbailey.com/guides-lists/when-we-say-craft-beer-we-mean/)) can be but it wasn’t at all. Pale yellow, barely hazy, thin, light, dry and bitter — all desirable characteristics in a session IPA, of which this struck us as a good example. So why call it a Weizen? Again, in itself, a hit, but for the purposes of this exercise, a big fat (or rather small, light)*miss.
5. Bristol Beer Factory Bristol Hefe | 4.8% | 500ml bottle | £3.08 from Beer Ritz
This is a brewery whose beers we invariably enjoy and often really love. We have had this before and vaguely recalled having been rather impressed it. This time, however, disaster struck: it had abandoned its roots, headed into Belgium, and transformed itself into some sort of gueuze in the bottle. The sourness was mild but distinct — apples, a slight burn, even a touch of cider vinegar about it. In its own way, it was rather wonderful, but we can’t believe it was meant to taste this way, and it certainly didn’t bring Bavaria to mind. When we finally managed to rouse some yeast from the bottle, it did get better, balancing the acidity a little and bringing out a bit of the expected banana and bubblegum, but not enough to save the day. Which makes this a*miss, sadly.
6. Sam Smith Organic Wheat Beer | 5% | 550ml bottle | £3.29 from Beer Ritz
We’re not certain but we think this, or rather a previous incarnation, was the first German-style wheat beer we ever tasted, c.2001. Back then Sam Smith was brewing Ayinger under licence and this would seem to be, if not exactly the same, then similar enough that it would take lab analysis to tell them apart. It is certainly absolutely convincingly German, both cosmetically (pale gold, un-moving meringue head) and in its flavour (soft, grainy, balanced, restrained). It’s sweet rather than spicy and it won’t cause anyone to swoon but you could serve it up to an elderly Bavarian with breakfast in Munich and no-one would complain. It’s probably just about better — that is, more exciting — than Erdinger, putting it into Paulaner territory, but short of Weihenstephan. It’s a*hit but a low-key one.

* * *What have we gathered from this small scale exploration of the territory?
First, that*German wheat beer is more subtle than we had realised — an end-of-level-boss technical challenge for brewers. Too much of those characteristic aromas and flavours and it tips over into caricature, or just becomes sickly. Despite looking*dirty, it actually needs to be really clean to work: acidity knocks it right off course, and there’s no room for*funk or earthiness. The carbonation has to be exactly calibrated, too, or the beer simply flops: bubbles are body.
Secondly, we suspect that classical Weizen is fundamentally too polite a style for the post-2005 double IPA crowd. If we do start to see more beers ostensibly in this style (as with saison and gose) many are likely to be subversions: hoppier, flavoured with fruit, and otherwise mucked about with.
Perhaps that answers Adrian’s question: it’s too difficult, and not worth the bother.
MINI TASTE-OFF: British Takes on German Wheat Beer (http://boakandbailey.com/2016/12/mini-taste-off-british-takes-german-wheat-beer/) originally posted at Boak & Bailey's Beer Blog (http://boakandbailey.com)


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