The two advent calendar beers I got to enjoy with my tea tonight were both totally typical examples of a Bavarian pale Hefeweizen. Strangely, Einsiedler's Gutenberg Original Hefe-weissbier doesn't seem to be mentioned anywhere on their website. If it were, the tasting notes would undoubtedly go on about how theirs is the most typical wheat beer of its type. And that would be a reasonable description. Based in Chemnitz, Einsiedler brew with water from their own spring, but that's the only old thing about their brewery, which is modern, though small enough for them to claim the product is hand-made.
The brewers of Graf Arco Braubursch'n Weiße Hell, in contrast, give their wheat beers a web site all of their own. They stake a claim to great age by noting the long history of brewing locally, and they too have their own spring. Their own tasting notes proclaim that this, along with their choice of malt and yeast, gives their beer an exclusive flavour profile. To me, though, it's outstanding in the degree to which it conforms. Many other Bavarian Hefeweizens would be looked down upon by American beer judges for not sticking to their definition of the style. Not this. It's as if this is the only example that the people who came up with the style definition had ever tasted.
I should take a moment to draw attention to my new wheat beer glass that I got in Germany earlier this week. It's a design by Austrian cartoonist Auge, and was released by Ritzenhoff in 2014.
No comments:
Post a Comment