In my endless preparation for brewing my first batch of homebrew, which I plan to make a hoppy weizen, I have been on the hunt for more heavily hopped wheat beers, be they wits, weizens, or American wheats. I really think that the balance of sweetness and spice in a good weizen could really be complimented by some seriously floral and citrusy American hops. Though this one is bittered with Hallertau and finished with Czech Saaz truer to the continental style, I had high hopes for it, as Southern Tier has a heavy hand with hops in most of their Imperial style brews.
It poured a rich and cloudy gold, but with nearly no head, even with a heavy pour down the middle. Banana and bubblegum dominated the smell with a little malty sweetness behind them, but where were the hops? Sadly this one didn’t deliver for me. Flavor was good, even balanced considering the high ABV, with a solid dose of spice to cut the sweetness. A few drops of lemon in the second half of my glass actually brought the spice further forward and helped tame the mildly metallic finish.
Really this is a good example of a traditional weizen done with a little dramatic flair, but I had hoped the dramatics would extend beyond the alcohol content. My girlfriend is a weizen fan who doesn’t like hoppy beeers, and she thoroughly enjoyed it, so I’d definitely recommend you try it if you’re looking for something slightly off-kilter. For me, however, the search for inspiration goes on.
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Yeah I’ve killed a bunch of the Hopfen Weizens, good stuff indeed. I did try the Hop Sun on draft at 4th ave and it seemed pretty insipid, but I had already had a pretty heavy DIPA so maybe it’s time to try it again. I’m definitely psyched to try the Uber though.
I wouldn’t go so far as to call the Hop Sun insipid but it’s a light bodied session beer it’s not looking to be a massive hop bomb, just something that’s an appealing brew to both those looking for something that is usually vaguely called “summery” and people looking for some hops. It’s actually fairly interesting in that the dates on the cases indicate it was either brewed or bottled in late February, which might indicate that it goes through a long period of cold conditioning and dry hopping. The Ubersun is definitely more along the lines of what you are looking for.
I’d be a bit wary of starting off homebrewing with a wheat beer. Wheat is extremely glutinous and will stall a fermentation easily. Often times there’s no coming back. The one batch of beer I brewed had a little less than a third wheat (I don’t have the recipe handy) and went pretty smoothly. You’d be looking at a something more along the lines of around 40%, which becomes a lot more iffy.
I heard from one of the guys at Sixpoint that they were shocked by how little hops they needed to use to get the Apollo as bitter as it is. Apparently they cut their hop additions by as much as a third from the original recipe, so you definitely want to be careful about trying something like this right out the gate.
Should be fun to drink either way.
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