Looking for excuses to crack open a beer during the summer, whether you’re having a cookout, sitting on the stoop watching the traffic jams, or just celebrating another Monday well-done. Consider a wheat craft beer — the mellow, citrusy brews that are many people’s first foray into craft-beer drinking. As an overarching label, “wheat beer” can mean an awful lot, and this is likely something that craft beer drinkers who are just beginning to explore the world of beer wouldn’t fully understand. Ultimately, all the term “wheat beer” really implies is a brew where more than 50 percent of the fermentables are derived from malted wheat, although some also make use of unmalted wheat, which delivers a subtly different profile. But beyond that, there are a plethora of styles: American pale wheat. Hefeweizens, both American and German in style. Belgian wits. Berliner weisse. Gose. The list goes on. Peaks and Pints presents five wheat beer for our beer flight Craft Beer Crosscut 6.26.17: A Flight of Wheat.
North Coast Tart Cherry Berliner Weisse
3.4% ABV
The name of the style, Berliner Weisse — a light, sour wheat beer — is protected by German law, which states that a beer should only be called by that name if it is brewed in Berlin, just as a Kölsch must be brewed in Köln. At the height of its popularity during the late 19th century, Berliner Weisse was the most favored alcoholic drink in Berlin, and nearly 50 breweries were producing it. However, it fell by the wayside, as pale lagers became the beers of choice worldwide. Currently in Berlin there are only about three makers. North Coast Brewing Co. has embraced the centuries old Berliner Weisse style, debuting a new, special release brew this week. Just in time for the season, Tart Cherry Berliner Weisse is with the juice of Montmorency cherries sourced from orchards in central Michigan. It tastes like cherry pie.
Wingman Razma Attack
7% ABV
Razma Attack is Wingman Brewers’ Berliner weisse recipe brewed with a copious amount of raspberries. That finished beer is then blended with the Tacoma brewery’s house mixed culture Saison to provide a more complex Brett and Pedio backbone. Make no mistake this isn’t some commercial-grade raspberry wheat ale that tastes like it was made with the leftover topping from a frozen supermarket cheesecake. This is a quality, dark red Berliner weisse that has been enhanced with tart, slightly sweet raspberry flavor with perfect carbonation.
Ordnance Bloops Blueberry Wheat
4.6 % ABV, 21 IBU
What’s a Junior Daffodil Parade without bloops? Who cares if Ordnance Brewing’s Bloops started as an accident. It’s reminiscent of blueberry pie. Ordnance did a pretty remarkable job with this much-maligned style; creating a cloudy, juicy blueberry wheat that delivers everything you could ever want from a fruit wheat. The secret is in the berries, grown by Ordnance owner Craig Coleman on his farm. Ordnance does use some berry powder to increase the intensity of the flavor — made partly with berries Coleman sells to a fruit processor.
Omnipollo Mackaper Pale Ale
6% ABV, 38 IBU
Mackaper — an Omnipollo pale ale built from equal parts malt, wheat and oats plus hopped profoundly with Mosaic and dry-hopped with Galaxy — isn’t just a beer, it’s also the name of a Stockholm-based band fusing jazzy, proggy, organ instrumentals with dreamy synthesizer pop and punctuating it all with chaotic ramblings. Bitter grapefruit pith emerges immediately, along with resin and passionfruit — the beer, not the band.
Hi-Fi Headphone
5.1% ABV, 50 IBU
Hi-Fi Brewing summer seasonal Headphone hoppy wheat’s citrus notes swim to the nose, like a Hawaiian flower shop teeming out of a big, foamy head. It’s a citrus bomb on the tongue, too, with sweet lemon and juicy orange riding on soft wheat; a little pine threads the sip. The finish is incredibly dry, with just a little bit of bitterness in the far back of the mouth. This hoppy wheat beer is refreshing, crushable and packed with citrus flavors.
