It’s the wheat that makes the treat
By Mark Tichenor and Bruce Lish

One of the indicators of how fast the craft beer movement is growing is that most of you readers know what Hefeweizen is. That might not have been the case as recently as a couple of years ago.

Of course, a couple of years ago, the overwhelming majority of this opaque, tangy wheat beer was imported from Germany, with only a few American indie brewers making more than a halfhearted stab at the style. That has now changed. Apparently, Americans get on well with a beer that Munich residents will tell you is intended for breakfast. They drink it in companionship with the local Weisswurst (white sausage), traditionally before 11am.

Indeed, since the beer is cloudy with yeast when served, one could make the argument that it is more nutritious than other beers, and thus the superior choice to jump-start your day. Lord knows we’ve made that rationalization on certain weekend mornings. But Hefeweizen, with its light, crisp body and bright flavor, is a fitting and elegant summer refresher.

Hefeweizen tastes like no other beer style. In addition to the wheat lending a spritzy brightness to the texture, there should be noticeable banana and clove aromas and flavors, it should also be a rich, deep goldish-orange in color, not pale or watery in appearance with a fluffy, foamy head.

The process of nailing that visual and taste profile is one of the reasons many US brewers have avoided the style, or only dabbled in it.  Wheat is more difficult to work with than barley. And to get the proper color brewers must use a decoction mash, separating a portion of the liquid and bringing it up to a higher temperature before adding it back into the main kettle. This is a time-consuming pain in the butt.  To get the flavors right, careful attention must be paid to the fermentation temperatures. This is also a step not all brewers are willing to take.

Fortunately, many indie brewers relish a challenge, and American Hefes are becoming common now. California’s Pyramid Brewing Company relies on the style as the backbone of its business. Closer to home, the Rooster Fish Brewing Company of Watkins Glen makes possibly our favorite domestic example of the style.

While you might find a few of the well-established brands, such as Paulaner and Erdinger, on draft, it’s more common to find Hefeweizen in bottles. This is because it’s typically served with the yeast in suspension, a feat difficult to accomplish when the beer is being pumped from kegs in the basement. This might be a bummer for drinkers fixated on ordering draft beer, but it’s the typical serving method even in Germany. If it’s any consolation, the bottles are considerably larger than your average beer bottle; they have to hold a full half-liter.

Oh, and as silly as it sounds, we also have to talk about the garnish. Somehow people got it into their heads that it’s traditional to serve Hefeweizen with a slice of lemon on the rim of the glass.  This really isn’t done in Germany. Personally, we don’t care one way or the other, but do this in front of a German and you might as well keep your ears peeled for the inevitable snort of derision. To purists, the lemon obscures and clashes with the flavor of the beer.  We’d suggest that citrus fruit is more complimentary toward Hefeweizen’s domestic cousin: American wheat ale.

Hefeweizen is only one type in the broader category of Weissbier, or ‘white beer’ (German being a funny language, it also translates to ‘wheat beer’). There’s also Dunkelweizen (dark wheat), Kristllweizen (clear wheat,) and Weizenbock (bock wheat). Those variants are rarer in pubs, but usually available for purchase at specialty beer stores.

In Other Beers
The Rohrbach Brewing Company’s Buffalo Road location is brewing again. Formerly the site of all the company’s brewing, the place has been a regular ol’ restaurant since the transplant of its beermaking equipment to the new Railroad Street facility.

Rohrbach has assembled the brewing system last used at its fondly remembered Gregory Street location and brewed its first beer two weeks ago. The reincarnated Buffalo Road brewhouse will supply beer for the brewpub as well as produce a range of specialty and seasonal beers.

Bruce is a certified beer judge and commercial brewer. Mark owns a laptop and likes beer. For more on beer, check out the beercraft blog, updated regularly, at http:://www.beercraftsite.com. Send your questions, suggestions, or comments to beercraft@rochester.rr.com.

You know us. We’re on a never-ending quest to bring you, the reader, closer to the world of great beer. And we can’t always accomplish this by sitting on our lazy butts at home. With this in mind, I’ll be driving up to Nova Scotia next week for a ten-day oddyssey of natural beauty, craft beer, and perhaps the occasional moose.

Nova Scotia is the home turf of Alexander Keiths, a large and much-praised Canadian brewer, but I’m going anyway. My commitment is to bring you insight, interviews, and the type of mediocre photography you’ve come to expect from Beercraft.  So stay tuned as we go on the road yet again.

-Mark

So I’m up at my local soccer bar watching the 2008 European Championships. My plan was to order a Heineken while I watched the Dutch team steamroll Romania (which hasn’t happened yet…we’re about 12 minutes in). “But Mark,” some of you are saying, “Didn’t you slam Heineken as an overrated beer? You freakin’ hypocrite.” I did, and it is, but sometimes an overrated beer is the right beer for the moment.  A Netherlands-Romania game in a tournament played once every four years is one of those times.

In the same vein, a Budweiser, the scourge of craft beer lovers nationwide, might just hit the spot in the sun-baked bleachers of a baseball stadium. It would certainly be more appropriate than an Imperial stout or double IPA. To me, since beer is primarily a social beverage, the environment in which it’s enjoyed can skew the palate of the drinker.

That’s why I caution people who arejust starting their exploration of beer not to get hung up on just one style, and not to judge the quality of a beer solely on its bitterness or alcoholic strength. The vocabulary of beer is as broad as that of language, and to limit oneself to only the biggest words makes one a pompous speaker indeed (as does using ‘oneself’ when ‘yourself’ would probably do).

Unfortunately, the bar was only showing the concurrent Italy-France game, and with no Peroni or Kronenbourg in sight, I did what any red-blooded American beer lover would do. I ordered a Spaten Helles.

I really want Germany to win this tournament.

-Mark

Here we go again. Our beer-besotted pseudo-Irish band will take the ’stage’ at Monty’s Krown this Friday, the 13th. We sing classic songs about things that go great together: Being dumped, being convicted, being deported, dying, and beer.

So come to the Krown on Monroe Avenue in Rochester and lets share a pint or two. Trust me, you’ll need ‘em.

PS, this blog will get good again soon, I promise.

-Mark

We’re back with more beer for you. This week, Bruce and I shall be exploring and explaining the mysteries of Bavarian wheat beer. Monty’s Kroner, Thursday, 7:30. Oh, and there will be pizza.

-Mark

Sorry I haven’t posted in a while. Work has had me jumping (shut up, KROC), visiting such exciting far-flung places as Olean, NY. However, that does not mean I haven’t had time to enjoy good beer. My pick for the week: Brooklyn Keller Helles by the Brooklyn Brewery.

Now the phonetic nature of this surprisingly light-colored and clear Kellerbier dictates the inevitable corruption of one’s order to ‘I’ll have a Hellen Keller.’ Apparently, some people (the women who stared daggers into my temple when hearing me order this at the Tap & Mallet, for example) find this insensitive. But what can you do? I turned to her with my charmingest smile and said “You know, one thing Helen Keller did have was a sense of taste.”

Usually, Kellerbier (literally “Cellar Beer”) is unfiltered, so it appears cloudy, and amberish in color. BKH is not a true Kellerbier though, more of a hybrid combining Kellerbier’s hoppier flavor with the maltiness and appearance of a Munich style Helles. As such, the beer is deep golden and crystal clear. The taste is reminiscent of a hoppier Spaten. It’s quite nice as an outdoor summer beer and my intention is to sample this gem often.

In the Soccer world, the Euro 2008 tournament is starting up. And anyone with any sense is supporting the German team, or at least quaking in fear of their superior skill and tactics. I’ve been a Germany supporter since I was a little kid, and I’m pleased at the strong team they’re bringing to the tournament. Apparently, Tap & Mallet owner Joe mcBane has also seen the light. As you can see from the pic, the England native, obviously disgusted with the pitiful performance of the disqualified English team, has switched allegiances.

Naturally, watching the German team will require copious amounts of German beer. We’ll be watching the games at Monty’s Korner, and I know they have Spaten Optimator on tap, but if I consume too many of those I might wake up in the lades’ room, sans pants, so I’m gonna harass manager Jen Clark to pick up a gentler alternative, like Spaten Helles or Gaffel Koelsch.

The Sisters of Murphy will be playing on Friday, June 13. My Irish band, featuring Bruce Lish, brewer for the Rohrbach Brewing Company, will be making a mockery of Irish culture at Monty’s Krown on Monroe Ave in Rochester at 10:30pm. This is our first show since the big St. Patrick’s Day extravaganza, when we played to a packed High Fidelity, and we’d personally prefer if you opted not to miss it.

-Mark

This week’s column got squeezed out of the pages of Freetime Magazine by coverage of the Rochester Jazzfest. Freakin’ musicians get all the play. Anyway, it’s only available online. -Mark

Glassware revisited
By Mark Tichenor and Bruce Lish

Beer, the workingman’s drink. It’s the least pretentious of alcoholic beverages. Perhaps that’s why some people get so bent out of shape when it’s served in a fancy-schmancy glass. Add a bit of elegance and it jars the sensibilities.

But good presentation heightens the enjoyment of beer as it does anything else, and frequently, pouring into the correct glass will allow for greater enjoyment of the beer with all five of the senses.

“Bullcrap guys,” you’re saying. “Special beer glasses are just marketing devices for reinforcing a beer’s brand image.”  That’s certainly a part of it, but that doesn’t change the fact that beer in its proper glassware is far superior to beer poorly served.

When you drink from a bottle or can, you’re shortchanging yourself. You can’t smell the beer. Smell is such a huge component of taste (some people who actually do research would say up to 80%) that you’re virtually eliminating the entire flavor, with the exception of the aftertaste when you breathe after swallowing.  Also, brown bottles and cans mask the beer’s color and head.

If you’re drinking a frat-boy pounder or one of those Mexican fake-o import lagers, this is desirable. For anything else, it’s a waste of good beer and hard-earned cash.

Obviously, any glass will let you see the beer’s color and carbonation, but using the correct glass for the style will also help release and retain all those compounds and oils that give beer its aroma and flavor.

Heat transference also plays a role. A stemmed goblet will function like a wine glass, inhibiting the beer’s warming from the hand’s heat when held from the stem. A traditional straight pint will warm the ale within it more rapidly due to conduction. Or convection. Or whatever we learned back in 7th-grade science class that hasn’t been useful until right now.

“For new staff, glassware can be a little overwhelming,” says Chris Schultheis, bartender and server at the Tap and Mallet. Schultheis, who in his other capacity as a beer vendor at the Blue Cross Arena faces no glassware choice more complicated than “small or large plastic cup,” points out that certain styles not only make for a nice presentation, but they’re essential to the enjoyment of the beer.

Take Hefeweizen, for example. “It usually comes in half-liter bottles. A normal pint glass can’t hold the entire beer, let alone the huge head which gives the smell. And it can’t give you the yeast separation in the pour.” That’s why weizen glasses are big, tall, flared things. They contain the beer, bolster the head, direct the smell to your nose, and collect the yeast in the bottom.

Some glasses came about as a result of the culture in which their beer style was born. In Cologne, Germany, the light-bodied (and colored) local Koelsch ale is served in .2 liter glasses. They’re like oversized shots of beer.

It sounds like a pain in the butt, and it is. In Koelsch houses, the bartenders run around with huge slotted trays of overflowing glasses. Keeping track of your total by making a mark on your coaster for each glass, they don’t even ask if you want another, instead automatically replacing your drained glass with a fresh, quenching measure.

According to the bartender for one of Cologne’s Irish-themed pubs, the locals would anger visibly when he served the beer in less labor-intensive pints. He explained that it ruined the cultural aspect, and thus most of the point, of drinking the beer.

And there’s a practical purpose served by the dinky glasses. It allows the fun loving, silly Germans to precisely control their beer intake. Suddenly, “one for the road” doesn’t mean the difference between a successful journey home and waking up in the gutter without one’s pants on.

Sometimes, hefting the right chunk of glass just feels right; it completes the beer drinking experience. A pint of English or American ale is just that: an honest measure of good, hearty brew. You know exactly what you’re getting, and it’s enjoyable in every way.

In Other Beers
Look for a special cask-conditioned, dry-hopped version of the Tap and Mallet’s house beer, McBane’s Best Bitter, sometime next week.  Their last 10-gallon casked McBane’s went dry within 24 hours of tapping, and this one will be no different.

Bruce is a certified beer judge and commercial brewer. Mark owns a laptop and likes beer. For more on beer, check out the beercraft blog, updated regularly, at http:://www.beercraftsite.com. Send your questions, suggestions, or comments to beercraft@rochester.rr.com.