and Summer
to Spicy Foods
Pasta Sauce
Stephen Beaumont on
Wheat Beer and Summer
In all of its American, Belgian and German incarnations, wheat beer has developed a reputation in North America as a summer beer, and it is a role it serves well. On a hot summer day, with the sun beating down relentlessly upon your back, there are few pleasures that compare with a nice, cold pint of well-made wheat.
Curiously, however, wheat beer has also developed several alternative personalities. In Oregon, for example, Widmer Brewing's yeast-dense Hefe-Weizen came from nowhere to become the brewery's surprise year-round best-seller, accounting for some 80% of Widmer's production. In Canada, Labatt markets a bottom-fermented, sweet-and-sour wheat beer, John Labatt Classic Wheat, as a tasty, if untraditional, fall specialty brand, purportedly brewed to celebrate the harvest. Recent years have seen a surge in the popularity of wheat bocks such as the sweet and somewhat fruity Pyramid Wheaten Bock from the Washington Hart Brewing and, in what is perhaps the oddest incarnation of all, Niagara Falls Brewing applies the "wheat beer" tag to their 8.5% alcohol by volume Maple Wheat, a stunningly complex brew flavoured with maple syrup and pure maple extract.
But still, the balanced banana, clove and light citrus of a weizen or the gentle spiciness of a wit are tough to beat when the weather warms and northern folk like myself emerge from their winter hibernation. When added to this ferocious pleasure are the charms of a brewpub patio, the combination proves almost impossible to resist, which is one reason, I believe, that wheats thrive more in the continent's northlands than in the always-balmy south.
There are exceptions, of course: the Celis Brewery's Celis White from Texas must surely be considered the finest Belgian-style wheat in North America and, indeed, one of the top wits in the world, and the Market Street Wheat from Nashville's Bohannon Brewing, while not in the same grandiose class as the Celis, is nonetheless quite pleasant and immensely drinkable. For the most part, however, one must look northward for choice wheat fare.
One such fine northern wheat comes from the Denison Brewing Company in Toronto, Ontario, a brewpub partially owned by Prince Luitpold of the Kaltenberg Brewery in Bavaria. It is also a weisse that well illustrates the many seasonal and annual variables that make brewing such a fascinating, and often frustrating, art.
Each spring, Denison's brewer and president, Michael Hancock, eagerly awaits his new shipment of the prince's special German wheat beer yeast so that he might commence with the brewing of the seasonal weisse. This is no ordinary yeast that Hancock has delivered; it is one of the oldest strains in Germany and a wheat yeast with a particular propensity toward the production of banana esters in beer. Not that such flavours are uncommon in German-style wheats -- they actually form part of the backbone of the style -- but the prince's yeast seems to possess a genuinely cantankerous personality and Denison's weisse has, in some years, been known to carry an almost overwhelming banana character.
In the summer of 1994, however, Hancock's considerable brewing ability met with just the right temperament of the prince's yeast and a minor classic was born. The banana esters hit the perfect level, the clove flavour balanced beautifully and the weisse proved to be the finest example of its style brewed outside of Germany that I have ever had the honour of tasting. Although not hugely refreshing (a beer of such fruitiness can only be so quenching), that 1994 weisse was a true warm-weather treat. Many times, though not as often as I would have liked, I relinquished myself to its pleasures, most often on a breathtakingly sunny day following a casual Saturday stroll arm-in-arm with my wife. In that context, not even the absence of a patio from the Denison's configuration could detract from the enjoyment of so fine a beer. As seasonal brands do not, and should not, foster absolute consistency, it is hard to say when the weisse will again reach such a pinnacle of taste, but for that one summer, Denison's gorgeous weisse was beer enjoyment itself.
A Taste for Beer © Stephen Beaumont, 1995
For Ordering Information, Please See Merchandise
