My FAVORITE wheat beer

it, MAKE SURE you pour

Schneider Weisse kicks Erdinger's ass. So does Edelweiss from Austria. So do several other Bavarian wheat beers.

So what makes Erdinger your yelling-in-all-caps FAVORITE?

Why do Schneider and Edelweiss kick Erdinger's ass, Don? You're guilty of the same sin you're accusing the noob of.

My favorite is Victory's luscious, exotic Moonglow Weizenbock.

I thought Edelweiss was a Schneider product? Anyway - it's probably my favorite of the lighter hefes - spritzy, perfumy, sometimes nearly downright hoppy!

_Randal

My favorite Hefe (which I cannot get in CA) has always been Kuchlbauer. It was very easy to find in the Philadelphia area when I lived there. I think that the importer was in Jenkintown and may have been flying it in because it was really fresh. I remember it as just having "more" of everything that makes a Hefe good -- more carbontaion, chewier mouthfeel, huge aromatics -- totally dominated by the fruity esters. It was a magnificent (effing good!) beer.

This thread has me Jonesing for a Kuchlbauer.

That sounds awesome. A hefe is one of the few styles that I seem to be able to nail when homebrewing.

I always start to crave hefes around springtime when I cannot look another barley wine in the eye and just when I am starting to think that I may be getting burned out on beer. Then I drink huge amounts of hefe and in a few months I won't be able to face another perfumy estery drop and turn to clean lagers ...

_Randal

And Aventinus kicks SW's ass.

Sorry Lew! Would it help to say IMHO?

(And heck, I LIKE Erdinger too, and Tucher, etc...)

Hell with it, I think Edelweiss kicks all their asses. Aventinus is out of the league.

Comparing a Weizenbock to a regular-strength wheat beer?

Hey, no fair! Compare Aventinus - also brewed by the same folks who make Schneider Weisse - to Erdinger's Pikantus.

Well, sure, but ... why? Or, why not?

Eez my point, ya big lug. Okay, it's a wheat beer. It's got (ooh! aah! whee!) a web site. So, what makes it a favorite? Proof by blatant assertion?

Schneider is a benchmark of the Bavarian wheat beer style, with a substantial history as a commercial brewer of wheat beers, and a superb range, including a couple that are pretty much export-only; you won't find them in Bavaria, but they're exported to the USA. Those would be the Edel-Weisse and the Aventinus Weizen Eisbock (or is it Eis Weizenbock?). Schneider's wheat beers don't lack for flavor or body.

Edelweiss - yes, the Austrian beer brewed by national brewing conglomerate that's now just another chunk of Heineken - makes a solid, well-executed range of wheat beers, and the flagship pale Edelweiss has always been a personal favorite.

I could name others, but you get the idea.

dgs ( snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com) wrote: : Russ Perry Jr wrote: : : > (And heck, I LIKE Erdinger too, and Tucher, etc...) : : Well, sure, but ... why? Or, why not?

Why ask why? There are some things that are really extremely subjective and if we're not judging final rounds at GABF or WBC I think we all have the right to just say "I like X more than Y." or "I think Z sucks bigtime."

I'll agree that the absence of any supporting information makes these statements a bit thin but I have no problem seeking out and trying (or avoiding) a previously unknown product based on a one liner provided the source of the one liner is someone who has proven to be knowledgeable and whose taste is somewhat akin to mine.

That's strange. I usually agree with your taste, but I'd rate later batches of Edelweiss on near Erdinger-like level (yes, Erdinger, the most boring and industrial of all German hefeweizens). In fact I have plenty of Edelweiss left in my fridge from last year that I simply don't know what to do with.

I do remeber that I used to like the stuff years ago though.

// Per

Why not?

Avent> Hell with it, I think Edelweiss kicks all their asses.

I hope you mean like a pro-baller in a farm league, but I get the impression you don't.

But hey, I don't mind... We're all just spouting random opinions without any (given) basis. Prosit!

DAMMIT!

Oh, I did, I did.

It's like comparing an orange to a tangerine or something.

Just exactly so. ;-)

Say it ain't true!

Doesn't all beer have yeast?

If we're talking about weissbier / hefeweizen, you should refer to them as either of those names. Hefe is yeast. Weizen is the wheat. Hefeweizen is the German term and Weissbier is the Bavarian dialect for it. Weiss being white as the beer is somewhat white in complexion. blah blah blah. I know. People referring to wheat beers as hefe beers reminds me of the time I went up to a bar in Heidelberg and asked for "Three wiess." I figured, "of course I'm referring to beer. i'm not referring to crayons." Well after a few exchanges, he figured out I wanted Wiessbiers and not Wiess.

ok, enough bitching. Sorry.

Gerald

Maybe we could just lighten up a bit? Randal obviously knows what the hell the beer is. And cross-language beer taxonomy is a muddled mess anyway, particularly in this instance, where the Brothers Widmer have muddied the waters a bit by calling their unfiltered wheat ale a hefeweizen. I often refer to the Bavarian wheats as "hefes" when I'm talking with people who know what one is. We're not in Germany, we're not ordering beers, we're just discussing. No need to be the Beer Police. Oh, and yes, all beer has yeast, but most of it has that yeast filtered out (homebrews being (usually) an obvious exception).

Your story reminds me of going to Wilkes-Barre and ordering the local lager, Stegmaier. We walked into the first bar of the day, Dukey's, and told the tarbender "Three Stegmaiers, please." And the guy says, "Oh, three Stegs? Okay." We felt like we'd somehow screwed up. So when we went to the next place, we bellied up and sang out, "Three Stegs!" And the man behind the stick fixes us with the fish eye, and says, wearily, "You want Stegmaiers?"

Understood. Me too.