Wise Guy Weizen

I opened up my buddy Pete's homebrew the other day.  He recently gave me three and this one was a dark sour wheat and named Wise Guy Weizen.  And, yes, all have a Three Stooges theme.

Fluffy head that dissipated quickly.  I smelled bananas, some caramel and a tiny bit of tanginess.  First sip and my thought was, "Wow that's unique."  Bananas and an odd fruity edge followed by a musty wheatiness.  As it warmed, it had a pleasant sweetness mixed with a little sourness.  Kind of goes back and forth.  Not bad and certainly unique.  Nice Pete.

Friday Night Beers

Had two great beers last night.

The first beer was Sierra Nevada's Summerfest.

This beer was surprisingly excellent.  I had always read about how excited people were that Summerfest was available but never really knew why since it seemed like such a generic summer.  However, with all the hype I figured I should try it out just to see what all the fuss was about.  The beer poured a nice looking orange with beautiful head and smelled mildly of oranges.  Taste wise, it started very clean with some mild sweetness and finished with a smooth flavor of orange and citrus.  There was basically no hoppiness to this beer and it would make a great session beer on a hot day.  The Summerfest totally lived up to the hype as well which was really satisfying.  When this comes out next summer I'm definitely going to be on the lookout for it because both Jo and I really liked it and on a hot summer day it will be great to kick back with a glass of this.

The second beer I had last night was Voodoo's White Magick of the Sun.

Where the Sierra Nevada was smooth and unassuming, this beer is totally in your face.  The base of it is a wheat ale but because of all the spices they threw into it the style isn't terribly recognizable.  However, for one beer in the night, it was a very good attempt at something different.  I thought the spices blended pretty well and made for a nice experience.  I definitely don't think I'd order a whole pint, but I enjoyed 12oz of it.

Bell's Oberon

I'm not a huge fan of wheats in general but Bell's Oberon was actually quite good for the style

As you can see, it is a nice orange color with a small amount of head.  The most interesting part of it was all the particles floating around in the beer.  This is definitely an unfiltered, bottle conditioned beer.  Bottle conditioning mostly just amounts to adding a small amount of yeast to the bottle before capping it which allows the beer's flavor to age a bit, usually mellowing out all of the flavors.  I'm pretty sure Bells bottle conditions all of their beers which is a nice facet to their brewing.  The taste was of wheat, malts, and a little citrus.  Basically a nice, mellow wheat beer.  On a hot day, it would be really refreshing to drink this.  All in all, not my favorite Bell's beer, but still a good offering from them that's better than most other beers out there.