99 Bottles of Beer on the Blog - Schneider & Brooklyner Hopfen Weisse

Serious American beer drinkers have a justifiable lack of enthusiasm for wheat beers. American wheat beers tend to be lightly hopped, bland, and often a little sweet. They function as an "entry level" craft beer - a step up from Bud-Miller-Coors, but still very approachable. On a hot summer day, they can be refreshing, especially with a wedge of lemon.

One bottle of Schneider & Brooklyner Hopfen Weisse changes all that.

The result of a collaboration between the brewmasters from Schneider Weissbier Brewery and The Brooklyn Brewery, this beer marries the snappy hop tendencies of American brewers with the traditional yeasty banana and clove esters of the great Bavarian brewers.

Bavarian wheat beers are an entirely different beast from American-style wheat beers. The special yeast used in brewing them creates flavors of banana, cloves and citrus, without adding any of those actual ingredients. The result is a refreshing, effervescent, generally light beer. A Bavarian wheat beer is cloudy and has a fluffy, white head.

Schneider & Brooklyner Hopfen Weisse brings all that, and more. The flavors explode on your tongue - you get the full dose of banana and clove flavor, and the citrus flavor is enhanced by a completely non-Bavarian dose of post-fermentation hops. Where Bavarian wheat beer is generally light in alcohol, this one packs an 8.2 percent wallop.

This beer is a treat - I wouldn't want to drink it very often, and it probably is not a great introduction to the Bavarian wheat beer style, since it's so hoppy and big. But if you want to get jolted out of your Boulevard Wheat complacency, hunt up a bottle of Schneider & Brooklyner Hopfen Weisse and go to town on it. After that, expand your understanding of what wheat can accomplish in beer by picking up a Franziskaner Hefe-Weisse, or maybe a König Ludwig Weiss.

It's summer - time for the hefeweizens to brighten the picnic tables pub tables of beer drinkers.