Sierra Nevada Kellerweis Hefeweizen
Several years ago I spent part of a summer studying in Mainz, Germany. All in all, an incredible experience. It was the first significant amount of time that I spent outside of the US, and what better place than Mainz, a university town with a mix of historical old buildings and city center, and more modern, contemporary architecture around the university itself.
One of my most distinct memories is of the beer gardens along the Rhine River. Mainz is located in central-western Germany, and the Rhine runs right along its eastern boundary. I quite clearly remember evenings spent sitting at the long picnic tables in these beer gardens, listening to the conversation and trying desperately to figure out what the heck people were saying. I mean, let’s face it, my German wasn’t the greatest, and drinking beer didn’t really help. Although, I definitely remember feeling more fluent after a couple glasses.
The beer left its impression too. Each beer garden offered just two or three styles, with a lager and a hefeweizen being the most common offerings. I was already a fan of wheat beers, and it was during this time in Mainz that I really came to appreciate hefeweizens as sterling summer beers.
German brewing is governed, of course, by the Reinheitsgebot – the German beery purity law stipulating that only four ingredients can be used for brewing: malt, hops, water, and yeast. From this arises the beauty of hefeweizens. Using only these four ingredients, brewers in Germany have produced a style of beer that offers a wealth of aromas and flavors in the glass. Classic traits of German hefeweizens are their cloudy appearance (due to the amount of wheat used and the yeast that remains in suspension), the spicy nose, and the rich, sweet, and spicy flavors. That nearly all of these flavors are derived from the yeast alone is just remarkable.
American brewers have generally taken a different approach to brewing wheat beers, producing beers that on the whole are much cleaner and brighter than Germany’s hefeweizens. Very few American breweries have produced a German-style hefeweizen as a year-round beer, and so it was a pretty big surprise when Sierra Nevada announced that the newest addition to their lineup of year-round beers was going to be a classic, German-style hefeweizen.
Before rolling out Kellerweis Sierra Nevada conducted a wealth of research into how to brew a style of beer that their brewery really wasn’t outfitted for. In particular, they had to introduce a whole new strain of yeast, and figure out how best to ferment a hefeweizen using their existing facilities. As it turns out, the same open fermenters that they use to produce their Bigfoot barleywine each year were perfect for fermenting a hefeweizen, a style whose yeast strain actually prefers open fermenters in order to fully develop the range of aromas that the beer is so well known for.
With the yeast and fermenting process in place, Sierra Nevada was ready to unveil Kellerweis, and in spring of 2009 the new beer hit the shelves. The reception since then has been very positive, and today the only thing preventing Kellerweis from being readily available is the limited production capacity on account of the small number of open fermenters they have.
Tasting Notes
Sierra Nevada uses a blend of pale, wheat, and munich malts to arrive at an original gravity of 1.052, and Sterling and Perle hops to reach 15 IBUs. The beer finishes at 4.8%.
Kellerweis pours a hazy, golden yellow, with 2-fingers worth of fluffy, white head. The nose has strong notes of clove, grains of paradise, lemon, and just a hint of leafy green, noble hops. The palate bursts with effervescent carbonation and sweet flavors of bready malt, yeast, citrus, honey, and spices. The beer finishes off with notes of honey and malt. This beer is a clear case of beauty in simplicity.
This is an excellent, classically styled hefeweizen, and is right up there with the best examples I’ve tasted, either in bottles here or on-tap abroad. The bottom line is, if you’re a fan of hefeweizens then this is a must-try beer for you. Sierra Nevada has done a great job of recreating this style.
No comments yet.