Yumm, Hefeweizen

[MindGoneHaywire]

Hoeegarden is I think a "White Beer." Which is different from a wheat beer, though a bit similar...but you can get confused since in some places a white bear is called a Weissbier, so I think somewhere there's a common usage. Before I'd developed a taste for the White--I've been drinking Hefeweizen for nearly 15 years--I asked for a Weiss someplace & they brought me a White. It wasn't what I expected. But I believe both are considered to be summer beers. I don't do the lemon, though. I'm not really into citrus in my beer. I like the taste of beer. A wedge of lemon is okay in a diet soda, but...

...if there's something that goes well in a Hefeweizen, it's a dollup of raspberry syrup. I have been relegated to mostly light beer for the past few years for health reasons, but the only beer stronger than that that I'll actually seek out is Paulaner Hefeweizen, which I believe stands up to bottling as well or better than any of the others, though SchneiderWeisse I think claims to be the original, and then there's Wiehenstephaner, which is also excellent. Those are sometimes a bit more expensive, though. Anyway, there's a place in Yorkville, on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, which was once a primarily German immigrant neighborhood, a restaurant called Heidelberg, where they carry a beer I wasn't familiar with called BerlinerWeisse that they do this with...but even better is a place in Hoboken called the Brass Rail that uses Hacker-Pschorr, and it's fantastic.

There may be, at this point, an American product that tastes like Hefeweizen. It's been awhile since I tried a new one, but I gave up a long time ago as none of them ever tasted like a Hefeweizen, or anything like it, to me. And I've had a lot of beers that say 'Wheat Beer' on the label, but don't taste anything like what I consider a wheat beer to taste like, either. So I stick with the ones I named, and maybe one or two more...Aventinus is a great dark wheat, but...very strong. Way past what I can drink, but back in the day I had more than a few & I recommend that one heartily.

If I had to choose only one beer that I could drink for the rest of my life--the issue of being able to drink only light beer, really, aside--it would be Paulaner Hefeweizen. I mean, Belgian Abbey ales are obviously superior, but you can't drink them on a regular basis & they don't exactly go down well on a hot summer afternoon. Wheat beer a summer beer only? Not for me.

[Zombie]

...it would be Paulaner Hefeweizen.

Yeah, like I said I'm not that big on the Hefes, but I do love those German pilsners from Paulaner and Spaten. Those are my real favorites. Used to get a lot of that Paulaner Premium in the big bottles. Same with Spaten, but there are a quite a few places these days with the Spaten on tap too, and it's usually great. Everything else is just a placeholder or flavor of the week for me