Big D, Little A, Double L, A, S – Spells Viking (Viking Weathertop Wheat)

I wonder what proportion of the population of the United States carries the title "head brewer." I would be willing to bet it is less than 2 in 604.

But, up in tiny Dallas, Wisconsin (pop. 604), the Lees, Randy and wife Ann, brew about 20 beers and two bracketts (brackett, aka "braggot", is a mead brewed with honey, malts and hops). Mead is probably best associated with the Celtics, though references to mead show up in pre-Hindu teachings dating back to 1700 BC (by the way, completely unrelated and totally interesting, the last wooly mammoths walked the earth in 2000 BC, a mere 300 years before mead was first described in these sacred Vedic hymns – one would think it existed far before anyone bothered recording it, which makes mead an old, old drink). It also plays a significant role in the epic Beowulf where the villainous Gredel, a descendant of Cain (Christianity's first murderer), is attacking (raising Cain in?) the Viking mead halls only to be thwarted by the hero, Beowulf. Anyway, the point is, the explicit link between Vikings and mead go back almost 900 years.

The link between Vikings and Dallas, WI is a bit harder to trace, but probably relates to mead.

Viking Brewing Company is a bit of an enigma to me. The first puzzling thing is availability. With over 20 different beverage choices, including around 12 to 15 seasonal beers, one would expect to see more than four choices in any one retail establishment. Or more particularly, one would expect to find a different selection during different parts of the year. It seems that few retailers in the Madison area, however, carry more than three (of Viking's five) year-round (Blonde, CopperHead, and Vienna Woods – in the winter sometimes the year-round Whole Stein is treated as a seasonal). The fourth shelf-space location is typically one of the dozen or more seasonals that Viking produces. Yet, the seasonal availability bears little relation to the actual season. For instance, the Morketid (a black bier), Invader, Abby Normal, Rauch, or Berserk seem to never be available. Yet the Lime Twist (a May seasonal) and Weathertop Wheat (the March seasonal) are almost always available. My best guess is that this is a product turnover (aka sales velocity) issue. In other words, I'm not entirely sure that Vikings product is exactly flying off the shelves – the result being that March seasonals are still on shelves in August (and possibly September or October or November). This means that if, for example, Star buys the Weathertop Wheat in March and it doesn't sell out until November, we miss April through November's seasonal products.

The other curious thing about Viking is its sale in four-packs instead of six-packs. Typically this four-pack arrangement is reserved for special or limited releases – to wit, New Glarus' Unplugged is packed in four packs, Sprecher's Special Reserve series is in four-packs, Tyranena's Brewer's Gone Wild series is in four-packs, etc. But all of Viking's beers are in the four-packs. This is neither inherently good, nor inherently bad – it is just different.

Finally, it is my experience that while the vast majority of Viking's beer is great – sometimes it seems that it goes bad on the shelf, as I had a pretty brutal run a few months back (maybe last August and the spring before that) of less-than stellar quality. This can be due to any number of reasons – a bad bottling run, oxidation, etc. – none of which are related to actual brewing quality. In that regard, I've found Viking's beers to be creative and fun and I like that they take a unique approach to brewing. Not only is their beer pure, reportedly containing no fining agents, chemicals or preservatives (it is rather common practice even among small brewers to use chemicals to adjust water characteristics and to use fining agents to clear the beer of "floaty bits"), but in many cases each style has its own yeast or yeast blend. But this purity of style and technique can also lead to widely variable quality. For another of example of a high-quality brewery with widely variable quality, one need only to look to the wild yeast breweries of Cantillion and Jolly Pumpkin where even the slightest variations can cause wildly divergent results. Similarly, Viking's dedication to purity of technique is to be applauded and encouraged, but one must also then expect that some batches may just not turn out. Moreover, with as long as these packages seem to sit on shelves, it is just more time for problems to mount. As is to be expected, ratings for Viking beers are all over the map (BA. RB.).

Viking Weathertop Wheat

Appearance: a deep copper body, and a foamy white head – the head is smaller and denser than your typical weisse beer, but it still gets a good two fingers before falling down
Aroma: caramel malt and soft cloves; a faint scent of wheat dust and slightly musty; no hop aroma detectable – not a strong aroma
Flavor: not a flavor I was expecting at all – not like the aroma in the slightest; an amazing brightness, almost like lemon or lime was added; soft with some banana before the inexplicable citrus hits; the finish lingers with no hop profile to clean it up
Body: lean body with definite build but is undercut and thinned by the flavor sharpness
Drinkability: It takes a little getting used to as it is very different from any wheat beer in recent recollection, but it's an interesting beer to throw into the mix
Summary: I could definitely see people enjoying this beer; I can also see others not enjoying it all. I'll enjoy finishing the four-pack, but I wonder what this would have been like back in March when it was fresh – would there have been any hops? Would the grains have been a little more noticeable? The website marketing material claims that the aroma and flavors are "toffee, (light) honey and dark fruits. Finish is mildly sweet with light bitter hops." I didn't get any of that, except maybe the honey and the mildly sweet finish. But the toffee, fruit and hops definitely did not come through. In any event, certainly more enjoyable than Leinie's Sunset Wheat.

A Beer That Capital Could Have Made With Its Wheat (Hacker-Pschorr Sternweisse)

First, a correction. Last Friday I published a rather scathing review of Capital Brewery and derided the choice to use Washington Island wheat to make lawnmower/golf-cart beer instead of more traditional German styles.

Capital seems intent on exploiting Washington Island wheat for all that it is worth, yet, inexplicably, has not used it to create any German lagers like a hefeweizen, weissebock, or a dunkelweisse; but have instead used it for Island Wheat, a lawnmower ale that replaces a very popular traditional wheat-based lager (kloster weizen) and the Rustic Ale that supplements a popular traditional lager (Wisconsin Amber – next on the axe list?), not to mention the replacement of the summer-time Fest with the, almost, but not-quite inadequate Prairie Gold.

It was subsequently pointed out to me that these traditional German styles are not actually lagers. Ron Extract, one of the smartest beer people on the planet and Brother and Director of Sales and Distribution for craft beer importers, Shelton Brothers notes:

Weissbier and its close variations are always top-fermenting. The unique banana-clove flavor is not so much from the wheat as it is from a particular strain of top-fermenting yeast, and the production of those esters requires a rather warm primary fermentation, even by ale-brewing standards. Some Weissbiers may undergo cold aging later in the brewing process, but this isn't uncommon in ale brewing and isn't really cause to think of them as a kind of hybrid style. If anything, Weissbiers are among the more extreme examples of ales.

Bockbier, in Germany, normally indicates a lager. Terms like "Weizen Bock" or "Weisse Bock" were initially applied metaphorically, to mean something like "Weissbier's answer to bock". Having said that, there probably were top-fermenting bocks in Germany at one point, since historical records of Bockbier predate the specific use of bottom-fermentation. Also, most Dutch bokbiers are top-fermenting, though the connections of some of these to German bock are somewhat tenuous, at best.

So, please remove "lagers" from the above pull-quote and substitute instead the word "beer."

Capital seems intent on exploiting Washington Island wheat for all that it is worth, yet, inexplicably, has not used it to create any German beers like a hefeweizen, weissebock, or a dunkelweisse; but have instead used it for Island Wheat, a lawnmower ale that replaces a very popular traditional wheat-based beer (kloster weizen) and the Rustic Ale that supplements a popular traditional beer(Wisconsin Amber – next on the axe list?), not to mention the replacement of the summer-time Fest with the, almost, but not-quite inadequate Prairie Gold.

Of course, the point isn't that Capital is making ales, not lagers, but rather that it has gotten away from its roots in a not entirely competent manner.

So, today we are tasting a drink-from-the-bottle/golf-cart beer purchased at the West-side Woodman's that Capital could have chosen to make. It comes in a gorgeous presentation in a 500 milliliter bottle with a flip-top and fancy silver label with dark blue and red accents. It's a relatively recent import into the US, sold on the website as a blend between a white and an amber wheat beer. BA only has 10 reviews (for a B+). RateBeer has a few more reviews (64) with a slightly more mediocre rating (64th percentile).

Hacker-Pschorr Sternweisse
Appearance: poured from a nice flip-top 500ml into a 20oz wheat beer glass; huge, huge, huge head on top of a murky, sandy-ish, camel-ish, dun-ish colored unfiltered body
Aroma: banana and clove-ish yeast is primary; eventually the yeast aromas settle (or you get used to them?) and the sweet malts start to come through
Flavor: not nearly as hugely flavored as the aroma would suggest; malts, some biscuity carameliness comes through - primarily from Vienna and Munich malts; the yeast adds an earthiness; very little hops
Body: thin - in fact almost too thin; the flavor dissipates quickly, though not cleanly
Drinkability: very refreshing; a nice summer treat
Summary: One MBRer thought it smelled like used sweaty socks; the flavor is a little thin, but for a summer beer it works well in 90 degrees and humid; In fact, given the thin flavor, this beer might be one of the few that I might actually recommend an orange wedge - which is an interesting development as many of these "new" weisse beers are developed with the specific intent of being supplemented with fruit as is the popular modern custom.

There is some suggestion that perhaps this beer is intended to be consumed straight from the bottle - hence, the flip-top bottle for easy and solid re-closure. But, more interestingly, that makes it even more like something Capital could shoot for, as it is very definitely a quality "drink from the bottle" beer.

What? A Review of A Beer? Who Would Have Guessed?

Yeah, so, despite being named "Madison Beer Review" and our promise to review more beers, we've been extremely negligent in actually reviewing beers. Part of the reason is the paucity of the late-spring seasonals. Most of the breweries around here run their lighter, summery beers as year-round offerings, so there have been few "big seasonal releases" like we get with the Oktoberfests, porters and stouts, and bocks. New Glarus has released their Edel Pils, but that's it for them until July when they release the Dancing Man Wheat. We will review the Edel Pils soon. But not today. The Capital Fest, a summery light festbier will be out soon, if it's not out already; but Capital seems more interested in ratcheting up the hype (and distribution) for the Island Wheat. Leinie's has their Summer Shandy out, but it seems like they've kind of jumped the shark on that one and we may not get around to reviewing it; although, you never know, we just might throw it in a blind tasting sometime this summer for kicks. To my knowledge, the Tyranena Fargo Brothers Hefeweizen is not yet available.

And so on. Like I said, late May is kind of a down time for beer releases. The bocks are done, the hefeweizens have not yet made their arrival. Although, like all of those May flowers planted in a ritalin-fueled frenzy last weekend, the hefes will soon appear and make our summers light, yeasty and subtly fruity (even without the ever-present lemon wedge that bartenders insist on shoving on the top of my glass).

So, in anticipation of those Hefeweizens, we bring to you a hefeweizen that is available a few places around town, although this copy was procured at the West Side Steve's: the Kapuziner Bavarian Hefe, brewed by the Kulmbacher brewing group. Weighing in at a mere 5.4% ABV it is the ultimate summer beer. The website proclaims: "... tangy, fruity, with a typical, highly-fermented note. Naturally cloudy. Out of the beer cellar." Beer Advocate has only one review for this beer, while the folks at RateBeer seemed to have found it on a shelf.

Appearance: a dense, three-finger bleach white foam sits atop a slightly cloudy golden-yellow beer with numerous small bubbles for carbonation; the head falls away surprisingly quickly
Aroma: musty, with slight pear or earthy apple aroma; not a strong aroma at all;
Taste: crisp and slightly tart, with a faint bitter sourness; like biting into a beer-tasting granny-smith apple; quick finish leaves a faint yeasty fruitiness on the sides of the tongue
Body: light bodied with only a slight bitter-y, yeasty aftertaste
Drinkability: if this beer is your thing, it would be pretty easy to drink more than one of these things
Summary: the surprising tartness of this beer makes adding a lemon-wedge completely superfluous; taken on its own it's an interesting take on the hefeweizen style, foregoing the banana and cloves for an apple-like tartness; after a long day outside, or sitting out on a patio on hot summer day this beer could really hit the spot.

Audience Participation - Random Beer

I'm going to keep at this until we actually get some audience participation here.

So, what's the best or worst random beer you've had? A beer that you've ended up getting at the store because the retail help recommended it and was right or very very wrong. Or, beer that someone brought because they know you like beer that either hit the spot or completely missed the mark.

My interest was piqued on the first grilling day of the year yesterday. We went to Brennan's to pick up some stuff to throw on the grill and while there we got some beer. While I was at the car, the other person came out with a beer that the beer guy had told her was a "good brunch beer." What qualified that for a grilled steak dinner is beyond me, but it was under his recommendation.

It was the El Toro William Jones Wheat Ale. (BA. RB.) It was actually all right - not about to make me give up hope for the recommendations at Brennan's. A run-of-the-mill American Wheat Ale. Unfortunately, we're kind of spoiled in Wisconsin, and the wheat ales available from our own in-state breweries outshine this every day of the week.

So, what's the best, or worst, random beer you've had?

A Trove of New Beer - Day 2 - New Glarus Imperial Weizen

New Glarus' latest release in the Unplugged Series is upon us. Virtually every past release in this series has been fantastic, and there is little to reason to believe that this will be any different. Having said that, it falls prey to one of my biggest irritations: "imperial" versions of beer styles that are known for their subtlety. Of course, as you might expect, this phenomemon is unique to American breweries. Never content to leave well-enough alone, everything has to be bigger, and bolder, and more upfront. Subtlety is not exactly our forte. It, therefore, comes as no surprise that we want to kick up the grain bill on the pilsner, double the hops on an already bitter beer, and throw in the spice rack on the wit. Where will the madness end? Not at the weizen, it appears.

Before I get the comments that say "Bah, you sourpuss, we Americans are experimenting, playing with convention, taunting and flouting the traditions that the continentalists hold so dear. In the supreme tradition of the Boston Tea Party, the Declaration of Independence, Manifest Destiny, the Industrial Revolution, WWII, the Lunar Landings, and the Fall of Communism, we are sticking up our middle fingers to those on the other side of the pond and saying 'we go where you don't have the balls to go'!" I understand that. Heck, I can get behind that. But what I think is silly is retaining the naming conventions and simply pre-pending "Imperial" to the front of it. In the first place, an "imperial" hefeweizen is not a hefeweizen; the additional alcohol, hops and flavor would destroy the whole, refreshing point. In the second place, it's just childish and uncreative. Show some gumption and come up with a new style; or, if it's a one-off development, be creative and use a non-style based name.

In any event, with my rant out of the way, let's get on to the tasting. By the way, you can read Nick's awesome review of the Imperial Weizen at his blog, Pint and Fork (he takes much better pictures than we ever do).

New Glarus Imperial Weizen

Appearance: A huge and rapid head prevents pouring the entirety of this beer at once, even into an oversized weiss glass; the white head is as wide as the palm of my hand incredibly dense; a cloudy yellow golden body with lots of rapid carbonation
Aroma: huge aroma of citrus and spice: grapefruit, oranges, lemons, cloves, banana; each smell brings one of these aromas to the forefront
Flavor: bitterness starts and finishes this beer; in between is a smooth strong banana and clove flavor; Nick mentions cinnamon, but I'm having trouble finding that, instead I sense a rounded flavor of grapefruit, clove and orange in the long finish
Body: smooth and surprisingly full (though definitely not full-bodied), the carbonation contributes to the head, but really does not seem to have any effect on the palate.
Drinkability: of course, the "big" nature of this beer erases some of the refreshing-ness typical of the style; however, it is very pleasant and I would welcome more of these -
Summary: it's a shame that this is a limited edition released in the winter, because one of these on a warm late-spring evening might be very nice - but, as the label notes, this beer won't age very well and will dull with time; it is definitely best consumed immediately, so saving this for later is not a very good option.

Hey Barkeep!

Yes, it's that time of the month again. Today we are fielding questions from the peanut gallery. This question comes to us from the deep recesses of The Great Dane at Fitchburg (proof positive that we have nothing against the Dane here - we drink at all three of them constantly), but inspired by their summertime Watermelon Weisse and the general practice with wheat beer:

Why is there fruit in my beer?

A good question. What does a lemon (or in this case a huge chunk o' watermelon) really add to the weisse experience? Why is it there? Are you supposed to eat it?

I will admit that I do not like chunks of fruit in my beer, so I always ask the bartender to hold off on the fruit - I often get a crazy look, but they usually comply.

But why put it there at all? Michael Jackson (the beer one, not the gloved one) has reported that he first encountered the practice in the 1960s in Bavaria (Southern Germany along the Austrian border). He indicates that his own investigations into the matter have turned up a few reasons:
1) the style was originally farmhouse style (similar to the Belgian saison or the French bier de garde), and the fruit had been added to mask uneven product quality - I agree with Mr. Jackson in his dismissal of this as a legitimate reason: the people who would have brewed these beers would have viewed the "uneven" product as natural and would have left it as is;
2) because of all of the wheat (as much as 50% of the grain bill for these beers) these beers generate huge amounts of foamy head - lemon acts to cut the head; while Mr. Jackson dismisses this because it flattens the beer this seems pretty reasonable to me, though is probably not the entire factor behind the practice, it certainly is a benefit when pouring - particularly if the practice began because the lemons were on hand "just in case" and when the foam became unmanagable the lemon was quickly added to prevent excessive overflowing; and
3) the tartness of the lemon accentuates the charateristic fruitiness of the drink - which seems a perfectly legitimate, if not slightly subjective, reason; thus, it seems to me, the bartender should ask if you want, not put it in by default.

Finally, Mr. Jackson, notes that this practice has fallen out of favor in continental Europe for two reasons: first, that the lemon rinds contain trace amounts of pesticides, and second, that styles more in favor are less and less filtered and contain significant amounts of yeast sedimentation in the bottle - this yeast adds a creamier texture and alters the taste such that the lemon becomes more off-putting.

Personally, I do not put a lemon in my beer because I like the taste of the beer - the popular American versions (Blue Moon, et al) are already so sweet and fruity that they hardly require the additions. And, of the craft versions, I prefer the continental style: more heavily sedimented and yeast-y and find that the lemon does not accentuate the flavors.