Can’t Beat the Wheat!

At it’s base, beer is malted grain fermented in water by yeasts and bittered by hops (99% of the time). The most popular grain to malt for beer, by far, is barley. So much of your beer is the product of so many different types of barley malt. However, there are other maltable grains, the most popular of which is wheat.

The reason why more beers are made from malted barley than wheat is that wheat is harder to brew with. The way the proteins and starches bind in wheat, it’s harder to extract the sugars for fermentation. (Maybe this fact is one of the reasons that wheat beers are usually a blend of barley and wheat malt.) Still, once you do break wheat down and ferment it, wheat beers have a slightly different taste than barley-made beers — cleaner, in a way, often with a slight tang.

Different countries have wheat beer traditions. Germany has a whole wheat beer history that’s linked with ruling houses and royal bans — it’s all a thing! Germany has a number of different styles of weissebiers (white beer), the most famous of which is the Bavarian Hefe-Weizen — an unfiltered wheat beer invented by Georg Schneider in 1827.

Belgium also has its own wheat beer tradition. Like Germany, there are different styles. However, the most iconic is the witbier (also “white beer”). Originating (probably) from 14th century monks in east-central Flanders, the witbier is unfiltered and spiced, most commonly with coriander and orange peel.

American home brewers and early craft brewers started experimenting with wheat beers in the 1980s. Starting with attempts to replicate Bavarian Hefe-Weizen, American brewers quickly started fermenting with their ale yeasts and filtering the resultant ales, coming up with the clear, simple but still variable, American Wheat Ale.

This week, we taste some wheat ales. Please join us any time between 5:00 and 6:30 PM for this free walk-up tasting.