Traverse City Cherry Wheat, Atwater Brewery

Apparently it was a bad year for tart cherries in Michigan.  Unusual weather left pie and jam lovers either coughing up more for their treats or trying recipes that call for less of the fruit.  (Sundae aficionados were left unscathed.  Sweet cherries were fine.)  The area around Traverse City is the largest producer (usually) of tart cherries in the U.S. and Atwater Brewery tries to capture its spirit with today’s beer.  Wheat and fruit adjuncts have a long working relationship as just about any non-Belgian fruity beer contains the grain.  Sometimes it’s a hint, sometimes it’s the main event.  It all depends on the brewery.  Let’s pop the top on Atwater’s Traverse City Cherry Wheat (sorry it's just a brand page; today's beer isn't included in their super sweet sliding scale).

That is indeed a dark wheat beer!

The head gives off a bready feel but with something else, as if the alcohol content is going to be higher than your average wheat.  It’s not.  That’s just the tartness of the cherry variety they used, likely montmorency because that’s what you get around Traverse City.  Atwater Brewery prides itself on having imported all of its equipment from Germany as a claim to the centuries old traditions there.  American beer makers trying to piggyback on the history of Europe is often cliche as well as questionable.  But Eurobeer purists should be fair here and acknowledge that at least the wheat beer component is pretty damn close to the pragmatic mouthfeel and flavor profile of a true Bavarian Weiß Bier.  Not bad for a fifteen year old brewery in Detroit.

A lot of the reviews floating around complain of a lack of cherry flavor, but I think this stems from the tart vs. sweet argument.  Which type is better suited for beer?  Well, it comes down to what your preferences are.  If you enjoy lighter fruity beers, go with sweet for that shandy-like playfulness.  If you’re not really fruit beer person to begin with, it’s tart all the way.  Traverse City Cherry Wheat tastes less like it skimped on the red drupes and more like it used a different variety than what you know from eating as a snack.  Given that observation, it may well be a good thing they didn’t add much more as it would have just made the brew drier and tarter.  Like brewing with real coffee beans, subtlety can sometimes be necessary.

Erdinger Hefe-Weizen

Today’s beer comes from a mid-sized city just east of the relatively young Munich Airport.  The airport brought with it new economic development, but Erding is still most famous for Erdinger Weissbier, which has been brewing since 1886.  What it has made is a beer that typifies a quaff on a summer day in Bavaria.  That sounds delightful.

Do I need a bigger bottle or smaller glass?
Bigger bottle.

Everything about this beer is text book hefeweizen.  The color of the beer and head are spot on, the aroma has that peculiar sharpness that stabs you like a cotton ball, that oh so Bavarian game where a hint of sweet fruitiness plays with the alcohol is in full swing and the mouthfeel against which all wheat beers are judged is right at home.  Drinking this beer transports you to Southern Germany the same way Radler and Kaisershmarrn do.  You could say that this is the way wheat beer is supposed to taste, but that’s a whole other conversation about where the line is drawn between historically accurate and apocryphal and what exactly constitutes “pretentious.”  Should we try to maintain the hefeweizen style as it was originally conceived?  Should we poo poo musicians that play Bach on modern pianos or use the sustain pedal in a Mozart piece?  Who knows?

To press or not to press?  WWMD?

Just a quick word on that head.  The head on a wheat beer usually should be light in texture, almost fluffy.  The bubbles are all different sizes and seem to not care what the others are doing.  This is sometimes referred to as “rocky,” but that word generally goes with other styles.  The head is an important part of what constitutes a wheat beer and it is lost when you garnish with lemon or orange.  I’m not saying you’re a bad person for doing it, but be aware of what you’re missing.

Pock-marked, not uniform, almost white.

The reviews online of Erdinger Hefe-Weizen aren’t spectacular but hey, the answer key for the test doesn’t get extra credit.  If you already know all the styles and are looking for a wheat beer to blow you away, go to Belgium or America.  If you want to know from where all the other wheat beers came, grab an Erdinger Hefe-Weizen.  Just pour yourself a glass and enjoy the simplicity such a complex concoction can offer.  Servus!

Trout Slayer, Big Sky Brewing Company

 Before I started my review of Trout Slayer, I took a peek at what other people thought of it.  Of all the words used to describe it, one seemed to stick out.  Wheat.  A page of Ratebeer with ten reviews produced the word sixteen times.  The first ten reviews on BeerAdvocate clocked twenty!  This is even more surprising when you take into account most of these reviews follow the basic ASTMO format.  That format usually results in words like fruity, citrus, bitter, grassy, etc.  What does it mean for something to taste like wheat?  It sounds so benign, like ordering fried rice and having the dominant flavor actually be the rice.  On the other hand, the Italians would argue in favor of the main ingredient being a large portion of the flavor.  The question here is whether this Montana beer is Chinese or Italian.  That wasn’t too much of a logical leap, was it?

It's German.

By the way, ASTMO stands for Appearance, Smell, Taste, Mouthfeel and Overall.  It’s used by many as a standard format, ensuring all the bases are covered and making it easy to compare reviews.  I personally like substituting Appearance and Smell with Pour and Aroma.  Not only does it make the acronym classier, but it turns it into PATMO, which just sounds much more revelatory.

Hang in there Johnny!  Just write what you see!

But enough with the musings over a beer’s ethnicity and biblical references, on to Big Sky Brewing's Trout Slayer.

That head looks pretty fine.  Although it dissipated quite rapidly.  It still exhibits all the smooth, small bubbliness of the style, just at a half centimeter thickness.  It smells... like wheat.  I still don’t know what that means, though.  Any esters are sharp and faint.  Okay, who used lager yeast on a wheat beer?  Seriously, how did you make the beer so clear, crisp and lager-y?  It even tickles my nose when I burp!  I bet it’s the stronger than average hop notes for a wheat beer.  I guess weird things happen out in the wilderness of Montana where nobody’s looking.  (With fewer than 7 people per square mile, that’s understandable.)  It’s not bad, I think.  I don’t really know.  No!  I do know!  It is not bad!  Past that I don’t know, though.  Hmm...  Give it a try and let me know what you think.  Really, I need to know where to put my fingers.