A (wheat) beer tasting

A (WHEAT) BEER TASTING

A wonderful evening to each and everyone once again! As you might have noticed by the title, I planned a wheat beer tasting for me & my friend last weekend. The reason I put the "wheat" in parenthesis was I miserably failed at choosing beers! :D From the picture the second from the right is in fact not a wheat beer at all! I accidentally took it while browsing (wheat) beers at the local retailer so what we ended up was three wheat beers and one rosé bock (lager)!

Nonetheless, I pulled it off and with two friends abroad we tackled them like pros.

But first the "scientific" part. For the sake of this blog, let's pretend I never chose the lager for the collection :D. As we know, there are many types of wheat beers out there, Hefeweizens (unfiltered), Kristallweizens (filtered), dark wheat beers, Dutch witbier, Berliner Weisse, lambics and so forth. I could've chosen one type (un/filtered/dark/speciality) from one brewery (e.g. Franziskaner) but then realized how silly that would be in a world filled with different wheat beers! Instead I wanted to choose two unfiltered ones, one dark and one "specialty", which indeed turned out special (not a wheat beer at all!)

Beautiful, beautiful, beer

As I reserved way more beer than originally meant to be drunk, here's the list of what we used in drinking order (left to right):

• Paulaner Hefe-Weissbier (Munich) 5.5%
• Kloster Andechs Weizen (Andechs) 5.5%
• Schmucker Rosé Bock (Mossautal) 8.0% (not a wheat beer at all but a lager!)
• Schneider Weisse Aventinus (Kelheim) 8.2%

All of these beers hail from Germany. As with the weizens, they all had their unique "banana" flavor to it. A positive note on Aventinus, even with the 8.2% ABV it didn't taste strong. On the contrary, the Rosé Bock was not only bitter as f**k, the alcohol level was way to potent, at least for me. (the reason why I'm not a big fan of Belgian Trappist beers; their alcohol level is too much for me to enjoy them thoroughly)

I liked the Andechs beer the most. Its taste was fresh and less malty in comparison to Paulaner and Aventinus. The Aventinus had surprising, sweet (honey) notes to it. The lager was...well, bitter in all aspects. As we can clearly see, the Paulaner was maltier as well, its caramel-color when compared to its cousin the Andechs.

Since we only needed to pop one bottle/three drinkers, we saved the rest for the glorious movies Expendables I and II, which we watched before going to town to see the third. Truth to be told, the trilogy got worse after each movie but heck, these were meant to be seen! 

One HEAVENLY combo to be enjoyed!

After the third movie, one of my friends headed home but the other one stayed for a drink at the pub next door:

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Of course I had to order a Weizen and their local noisette/nut schnapps!

The night "ended" at my place for an after party and sauna. Was good, so good!