Wonderful wheat
Ben McFarland looks at wheat beers in all their forms, and how to pair them with different dishes.
Most brewers are wheat intolerant. Not because it puffs up their faces, bulges their eyes and makes them come over all weird and queer, but rather because it’s a nightmare grain with which to work. Wheat, you see, is a messy little blighter. The husks that allow barley to self-filtrate are absent from wheat which means it causes mash-tun mayhem – hence the slightly sniping saying among German brewers: “weiss bier: sheiss bier.” It’s worse for the Germans than it is for the Belgians as German weiss beers get their distinct fruity flavours from a special strain of yeast (nothing gets one’s lederhosen in a twist more tightly than chopping and changing yeast) while to make Belgian witbier, brewers muck about with herbs and spices such as coriander and orange peel.
America and Britain may boast some superb wheat beers (Willi from the Alpine Beer Co in San Diego and St Austell’s Cloudy Yellow from Cornwall to name but two superb examples), the majority of wheat beers can be roughly divided into two camps based on their provenance: either Bavaria or Belgium.
Bavarians tend to be drier and hoppier interpretations with a higher proportion of wheat and are either filtered (kristal) or – far more flavoursome – unfiltered (hefeweizen).
Belgians, meanwhile, are sweet and spicy little devils made with at least 50 per cent wheat and are never filtered.
Weissbiers are the funkier and fruitier of the two with bananas, bubblegum, cloves, vanilla and grapefruit all unleashed by the yeast wh.....
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By Ben McFarland
Section : Beer and Food
Page number : 40
