It's cloudy, unmistakably cloudy. It doesn't smell like beer &endash; it smells of bananas, cloves and bubble gum. Pour it just a hair too fast and it will geyser over the rim in a white torrent of foam. Its name is hard to pronounce, it requires special glassware, the bottle has visible sediment in the bottom. Brewers agree it's a horrible mess to make. Any marketer would despair of selling such a product.
If it's such a disaster, how come everyone loves it? Everywhere I go lately, bars are sprouting taps of this quirky, cloudy wheat beer. Retailers talk about a steady increase in sales over the past five years. And we're not talking about the relatively innocuous "American" hefeweizens made popular in the Pacific Northwest: Widmer, Pyramid or Redhook. This is the original kind of wheat beer, the unfiltered, unabashed, largely unheralded beer, which is finally coming into its own and has a very bright future.
"Seven years ago we walked into the bar across the street with our hefeweizen," said Greg Zaccardi, of the High Point Wheat Beer Brewery in Butler, NJ. "It was creamy and cloudy, smelling of cloves and apples. They looked at us like we were Martians. Now they know what it is and what it look likes, and they drink it. The light's starting to turn on. People are starting to understand wheat beer, trying it, not just ridiculing it."
Zaccardi founded the High Point brewery specifically to make his Ramstein brand of these Bavarian-style wheat beers. "I'm possessed, I guess," he said. "I love weissbier, even though it can be a pain in the ass to make. I don't know what the hell happened to me."
Ask the Germans Hefeweizen (pronounced 'HEFF-eh vite-zen') came out of nowhere to capture a quarter of the German beer market over the past 20 years, the kind of market piracy we've only seen with light beers in America. There may be more than a passing similarity there. Hefeweizens are often lower in alcohol and lighter in flavor and body than more mainstream German lagers - qualities that have made them popular with more health-conscious Germans.
But hefeweizen is truly different from most other beers. It's made with over 50% wheat malt, and fermented with special strains of yeast which take the carbohydrates and proteins in the malt and turn out wild flavors and aromas of banana, clove, cinnamon, plum, vanilla, and smoke. It can be hard to convince people that these things have not been added to the beer, but it's all coming from that magic yeast.
It's not surprising, then, to learn that "hefeweizen" is one of those German Erector-set words, sticking together the word for yeast, hefe, with the word for wheat, weizen, literally yeast-wheat, because that's what's in the beer. Just to be difficult, the Germans (and beer-aware Americans) may also refer to this kind of beer as "weissbier", (pronounced 'VICE-beer') meaning "white beer."
Why "white" beer? Wheat is gifted with more protein than barley, and the extra protein shows up as a whitish haze in the beer, an added turbidity on top of the suspended yeast - so, white beer. This leads to the beautifully German construction of dunkles weissbier (pronounced 'DOONK-less vice-beer'), a wheat beer made with darker roasted malts that laughably translates to dark white beer. There are also kristall weizen and weizenbock, filtered wheat beer and bock-strength wheat beer. All are brewed with at least 50% wheat, all use the same kind of crazy yeast. You now know more about German wheat beers than 90% of your customers.
Let's dig into it even more, to sell to the interested, motivated customer who's looking to learn about these beers. Why is it a wheat beer? Why add wheat? There are actually a number of reasons. First, it's a lighter grain, says Mark Stutrud, president of Summit Brewing in St. Paul, MN. "You can produce a beer that has a lighter mouthfeel than one with all barley malt," he said. "It's lighter on the palate." That's one component of wheat beer's popularity in an era of lighter tastes, and also some of why these beers are popular summertime tipples.
There's a bit of cut to wheat beers, a slight tartness which is welcome in hot weather. That's also from the wheat. "Wheat has a little more acidity to it," Zaccardi said, "and it makes a more acidic malt, which provides a little tartness in the finish." Wheat beer brewers have to do the same balancing act as other brewers to keep the beer from being too sweet and flabby, or too bitter and astringent. But they're doing it with one hand tied behind their backs - they can't use the amount of hops other brewers do.
Zaccardi explained. "If we loaded up to pilsner levels on the hops," he said, "it would mask the flavor of the yeast, and that's the key thing. Weissbier is yeast. If the yeast isn't right, the beer falls apart. The wheat provides the tartness for a balance. The tartness is a perception from the wheat."
As previously mentioned, wheat has a higher protein content than barley, which adds to the haziness. Is that a positive? Stutrud thinks so. "There's a sensation to looking at this turbid beer," he said, "when you're sitting in a beer garden or sidewalk cafe. You've got this cloudy beer in a nice tall glass, and it really differentiates itself from the other beers out there. To some people it's a real strange thing, but to others, it's a thing of beauty to see this hazy beer with the yeast and protein suspended in it."
The protein also helps with head formation and retention, building that blocky, bouffant crown of foam that is the signature of hefeweizen. Pour it in the traditional hefeweizen glass, a tall, curvaceous glass pipe with a buxom swell at the top, accented by a tapered nipping-in at the very rim, and you've got a towering beauty - beer in a WonderBra.
"The glasses are taller to accommodate that foam," said Stutrud. "The size and the shape accommodate a half liter bottle and the expected huge head. When you look at that glass, it's like an odd tulip - the skinny base so you can get your hand around it, then a flared top so you can get your whole face in there and enjoy it. When you watch people pour hefeweizen from the bottle, it's different
- you have to disturb it, and there are consequences."
Don't, by the way, ever bring up the idea of doing an all-wheat beer to a brewer. They'll cry. Wheat is an uncooperative malt in the brewhouse. Marc Worona, the brewer at Stoudt's Brewing in Adamstown, PA, loves his Weizen ("Weissbier is my favorite," he says, "I'll admit that."), but even he notes the difficulties of brewing with the grain.
"I do all the wheat brewing here," he said. "The other guys think it's a pain in the ass. It's gummy. You just can't be in a hurry, it's a real gummy mash. That's why some people go through the protein rest, but I like it. The mash gets very sticky and it's hard to draw the water through it. You have to rake it through and make sure you create pathways for the water to percolate through. Otherwise liquid won't come through the lauter tun." He shrugged, and smiled. "I still love the stuff," he said.
Brewers will sometimes add "chaff" to the mash to allow the wheat to have some separation for that percolation. "Wheat doesn't have a hull like barley," Stutrud noted. "Some brewers add spent whole hops to the mash to get a different porosity in the mash bed, some use rice hulls or oat hulls. Adding all this 'roughage', so to speak, makes it easier to get that liquid through. We run up around 67% wheat malt, we're one of the knuckleheads that push it that far. So we add rice hulls. Makes your life easier that particular day."
There are other wheat beers, such as the Belgian spiced witbiers and exotic lambics, American wheat ales (which are sometimes unfiltered and called "hefeweizens"), and the tart, lactic, Berliner Weisse. If wheat is a real component, these ales should taste somewhat similar. Is there a commonality of wheat character?
Zaccardi says no. "I've seen the gamut from heavily yeasty to Sierra Nevada and Anchor, both filtered," he said. "But could I say 'that was a wheat beer?'. No, I can't taste that in Widmer or Pyramid or Anchor. They just wanted something light and crisp for a summer beer."
Worona thinks there is a strong similarity. "They're all lightly hopped beers". But that there's a very big difference, too - yeast. "It's basically the yeast," he said of the different beers' characters. "We're talking about grain and yeast."
What about the yeast? It is the heart of hefeweizen, the origin of all those wild aromas. German though it is, it's an ale yeast, a top-fermenter that's happier at warmer temperatures. "The traditional southern German weissbier yeast is a top-fermenting yeast," confirmed Zaccardi. "It ferments quickly. But it's very temperature-sensitive. It ferments in the 60s, and you get a lot of difference along that scale. Ferment it near 70 degrees and you get a lot of the fruity esters, in the mid-60s you get more of the phenols, like cloves." He chuckled. "At 60 you get a stuck fermentation."
Thanks to its peculiar nature, it is a strain to give a brewer pause, and some are nervous about having it around. As experienced hefeweizen brewer Artie Tafoya, of Appalachian Brewing in Harrisburg, PA, put it, "If you had two regular ale strains and one infected your brewery, you might not even notice. But if you get a contamination from this yeast, it's so vibrant in its characteristics you'd notice it in everything you brewed."
I had heard, from a couple sources, that FX Matt, the tough patriarch of the Matt Brewing Company in Utica, NY, refused to allow a hefeweizen yeast in the brewery, despite requests from contract brewing customers. True or not, it was amusing to note that a year after FX died, the brewery brought out their own true-to-type Saranac Hefeweizen, complete with the signature yeast effects. "There wasn't anyone sitting around at the brewery with a stopwatch," laughed John Brennan of Matt's. "We're proud of it, we think it's pretty close to the German originals."
Marc Worona downplayed the whole idea of the yeast invaders. "We don't do open fermentation," he said, "and our lagers are in a separate room. If you follow basic yeast handling and sanitation practices, you shouldn't have a problem." Worona actually uses two different strains of hefeweizen yeast. "I like the fruity, tart character, the banana, the bubble-gum, and the vanilla, as well as the clove," he said. "I haven't found one yeast that will give it all to the beer."
The yeast is important, that's for sure, but . . . why leave it in there? Plenty of beers have yeast characteristics, but they don't ask you to chew your way through them. Tom Pastorius of Penn Brewing makes an excellent Weizen, and has definite opinions on why the yeast stays in there, and on what it does. "When you filter anything," Pastorius said, "it removes body and flavor. The yeast gives a lot of flavor to the beer. We've tried it, filtering it, and you notice dramatically less banana and clove flavor. Personally, I'd rather have beer without the yeast, because of the activity in your GI system!, but you sacrifice some of the flavor you get from the unfiltered beer. It's a trade-off." Pastorius's point about the GI system is familiar to any weiss-lover - live yeast makes for some definite nether rumblings.
That's all interesting stuff, and it might help make a sale. I remember back ten years ago when the delicate Australian wheat beer, Redback, was imported here. I saw a case in a local beer store, and asked the retailer if it was more like the German wheats or the Belgian wheats. "No," he said, waving his hands about, "that's one of your Australian beers, like Foster's." I didn't know much about the beer, but I knew more than that, and I decided I didn't need to buy beer from people who didn't know anything about it. I haven't been back there since.
But your best bet on selling it may not be to not dwell on the process, but present the outcome. Matt Guyer, owner of the Beer Yard in Wayne, PA, likes to catch the companions of beer buyers with hefeweizen. "It's a great beer for people who think they don't like beer," he says. "You just offer it to them - here, try this. 'That's not beer,' they'll say." Guyer smiles big. "Yes, it is," he confirms, and closes the sale.
It's true. Get a smooth hefeweizen like Summit or Ramstein Blonde, or an import like Franziskaner or Weihenstephaner, and just get people to try it. You'd be amazed who might lap it up, and suddenly you've got a regular sale for an $8 six-pack.
(You shouldn't be amazed, by the way. For years, the Anheuser-Busch pilot brewery in St. Louis made a batch of hefeweizen for the company picnic. They released a true hefeweizen in the early 1990s, Crossroads. Crossroads was actually a pretty good hefeweizen, at a reasonable price, but the usually deft A-B marketing team dropped the ball. The beer had no direction, no hook to its market, and quickly disappeared.)
If you can get people to try hefeweizen, they'll buy it. Then you can talk to them about things like food pairings. The classic is weisswurst, the delicate sausages Germans like to have for a mid-morning snack with a big glass of hefeweizen.
Weissbier goes well with light foods: dessert cheeses, fresh fruit, plainly-prepared fish and chicken dishes. "Fish goes well," said Stutrud, a little excitedly. "Here in Minnesota, I could see broiled walleye, or even a lightly breaded fried walleye. And that's got me thinking about potato salad . . ."
Pastorius is a little different - he likes his Penn Weizen with Mexican food, quesadillas and chile rellenos. "I think it would also be good with a big Indonesian rijstaafl," he said.
Zaccardi has the luxury of offering a range of weissbier in his Ramstein brand. "The Blonde goes really well with grilled meats, seafood or Chinese food," he said. "The Dunkel, I'd say grilled meats. There's a little more roasted malt, so you get the roasted edge. It's a great beer to cook with - with the low hoppiness, it's great for cooking. Cooking concentrates bitterness. Then the doppelbock goes great with smoked cheeses." The doppelbock is Ramstein's oversized winter beer, and it's a killer indeed.
Have fun with hefeweizen as the weather warms up, it's a natural in the summer. And once your sales start to climb, you'll probably want to grab some of those glasses, too. "The beer sells the glassware," said Guyer. "It really gets the people into the beer - having the proper glassware. And sometimes, depending on what you pay for the glass, you can make almost as much on the glass as on the beer." A good thing to keep in mind as you educate your customers about the foamy, cloudy beer that smells of bananas and cloves.- http://64.233.167.104/search?qÊche:Yye38h24hXAJ: