Beer & Me

I’ve long complained about a style that rose out of the craft beer revolution known as American wheat beer. The original Bavarian wheat beer known as Hefeweizen uses a unique ale yeast that gives the beer a spicy flavor and aroma with strange but completely enjoyable hints of banana. The flavor is pronounced in the finished beer but it’s even more apparent if the brew is left unfiltered with the tasty yeast suspended in it.

American craft brewers took this idea of unfiltered wheat beer except that they didn’t use the same sort of yeast – they use a regular, clean fermenting yeast. So what is left was a largely flavorless, sweet beer with a lot of body (thanks to the wheat).

I’ve always complained about the style but rarely find an ally among other beer geeks.

But could I have been wrong? Tonight I tried a beer from Schlafly in St. Louis, MO that was labeled Hefeweizen. I expected the usual Amercan flavorless version and, as I expected, this one did not use the proper Bavarian yeast. But still it was very tasty. Spicy and sweet but very good. I may have to give this whole style a second look.