Category Archives: Witbier

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Blanche de Chambly

I love the Sugarbowl. Love it. So many great beers. Sometimes I can’t remember which ones I’ve tried. So I decided to try them all. Not all at once but eventually. The easiest way is to start at the top of the list and work my way down! It’s a tough job but someone has to do it!

At the top of the beer list is Blanche de Chambly. It is a white beer from Unibroue in Chambly, Quebec. It’s nice and light at 5%. Has the banana and spice taste you’d expect from a witbier. I like it and would drink it again. In fact I will soon, I bought a 750ml bottle and will give it a shot!

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Weihenstephaner Hefe Weissbier

Weihenstephaner. The worlds oldest brewery. It started as a monastery brewery of the benedictine monks, and thankfully for all of us, it’s still brewing today as the Royal Bavarian State Brewery. I’ll cut the history lesson short.

If you like weiss bier, or wheat beer, you owe it to yourself to pick some of this up. Their class, not mass approach results in a very refreshing beer. As you might expect, it pours golden and cloudy. What sets it apart from other weiss bier for me is the incredible balance. You can probably smell or taste citrus, banana, cloves, wheat and some yeast. I also pick up a bit of coriander, as you’ll tasted in some other notable weiss bier. However, none of the others you’ll have tasted will balance it nearly as well as Weihenstephaner.

I will certainly be drinking this again, rather than my typical Hoegaarden.

Thanks for Scott for both the history lesson and the introduction to this great beer!

Rieder Helle Weisse

It’s summer. It’s hot. And so we put away our stouts and whisky cask aged beers, and raise a glass of beer that light will almost certainly pass through.

One of the standout types of summer beer for me has long been wheat beer, which is broken down into weissbier, witbier, and the sour varieties, such as lambic, Berliner Weisse and gose. The basic translation from German or Dutch (still the unrivaled masters of this top-fermented beer) is white beer. You might also have noticed hefeweizen, which is simply an unfiltered white beer which will appear cloudy when poured.

The selection tonight is Rieder Helle Weisse, out of Austria.

It pours nicely with minimal head and decent aroma. It’s a bit cloudy, and a brilliant golden wheat colour. The flavour is smooth, with a hint of citrus and banana, and a very clean finish. Not an astounding wheat beer, but certainly a very good one.

I’ll be drinking it again!