May 25 2008
Great Minds
A couple of years ago a buddy – let’s call him Kyle since that’s his name - and I visited the Great Divide brewery in Denver. We were looking at the tee shirts that they had for sale. Kyle refused to buy any of them because every shirt had the brewery’s motto on it – “great minds drink alike.” He couldn’t bring himself to wear such a patently false statement because, he argued, he knew some really smart people that drank really bad beer.
This is how I feel about American style wheat beer. Bavarian wheat beer or hefeweizen is a lovely drink. Its distinct flavor and aroma of bananas and spice come from a particular strain of yeast. Wheat, which contributes much less flavor than barley, serves to reduce the malty flavor of the brew and give this yeast a place to shine. But American style wheat beer doesn’t use this yeast. Instead it uses a common, clean fermenting ale yeast. So the beer has very little malt flavor, low hops and much less flavor from the yeast than its German brother. In other words it is a flavorless beer.
But the kick in the head here is that so very many craft beer lovers also love American style wheat. Beer lovers whose taste in beer I respect always amaze me when they order and savor this particular style. So, in the end I suppose Kyle was right.
(By the way, this is not an indictment of all of the wheat beer brewed by American brewers. Many great wheat beers are brewed by them. American style wheat beer is a particular style. How can you tell the difference? Ask what kind of yeast that they use to make the beer.)
