Beer of the Weekend #80: Ayinger Bräu-Weisse
The preseason Top 25 was released today. The Hawks are 21st.
Four more weeks, baby. Just four more weeks. September 5th is the first college football Saturday, but the season kicks off two nights earlier on the 3rd. Needless to say, I’ll be in heaven.
The beer this weekend is Ayinger Bräu-Weisse brewed by the Brauerei Aying of Aying, Germany.
First off, I wanted to give kudos to the Johnnie Walker Red Label box the cashier at BevMo! gave me last week.
Half liter bottles are an anomaly in the US, especially since they’re sold individually and not packaged together in four- or six-packs like most beer. (A lot of domestic microbrews, though, are also sold individually, but in 12-ounce bottles.) The BevMo! cashiers always seem to be unsure what to do when I bring six halfers to the counter. Should they put them in a plastic bag? A paper bag? Most of the time they do both, dressing each bottle in its own skirt and placing three in a plastic bag. Last week, though the cashier got creative. She rang up my six Erdinger’s, walked away, and came back with the Red Label box. The halfers fit nicely in the cardboard grid inside. No paper and no plastic. I felt special, and even said, “Oooh. A box.” Reusing something for another purpose is, in my opinion, the best form of recycling, so I appreciated the gesture not only as a beer enthusiast but also as an environmentalist. Tonight I took the box back to BevMo! and used it to carry out my six bottles of Bräu-Weisse.
Serving type: Six 16.9-ounce (.5 liter) bottles. I’m adding the metric measurement for the hell of it. Someday, hopefully, this country will make the conversion.
Appearance: Poured a very attractive cloudy lemonade color into my .5L weizen glass. Minor carbonation is evident at the bottom. Two and a half fingers of white, fluffy head developed and dissipated to a thick layer of lacing that lasted throughout.
Smell: I immediately get enticing banana and spicy cloves. Very yeasty, and there is a prominent scent of fruity bubblegum.
Taste: Much like the aroma, though the taste is slightly subdued. Bananas and clove spice dominate. Smooth yeastiness is also complimented with hints of lemon.
Drinkability: Top-notch brew. Thirst quenching and appealing. It’s a match made in heaven.
Fun facts about Ayinger Bräu-Weisse:
-Serving temperature: 46º-50ºF. I’ve been a bad boy recently, drinking my BotW brews straight from the fridge; I haven’t been letting them sit out and warm to their serving temperature. It’s a minor sin, but one I’m going to correct from now on.
-Alcohol content: 5.1 percent ABV.
-Food pairings: Beers of the World recommends “The regional specialty, weisswurst.” What’s weisswurst? The translation is “white sausage,” and according to its Wikipedia page it “is a traditional Bavarian sausage made from very finely minced veal and fresh pork bacon. It is usually flavoured with parsley, also known as beiderl, lemon, mace, onions, ginger and cardamom, though there are some variations. The mixture is then stuffed into fresh, clean pork casings and separated into individual sausages about ten to twelve centimeters in length and about two centimeters in thickness.” Served with a pretzel and special sweet mustard, weisswurst is traditionally made in the morning and eaten between breakfast and lunch because it is very perishable. Eaten just about exclusively in Bavaria, weisswurst has become symbolic of the cultural and linguistic differences between Southern Germany and the rest of the country. As the US has the Mason-Dixon Line, Germany has the “Weißwurstäquator” (white sausage equator).
-Price: Here’s something I never list, but should. Each bottle of Ayinger Bräu-Weisse cost $3.29. All together my “six-pack” cost $19.74, before tax. Yeah. Don’t become a beer connoisseur unless you have a job.
-Founded in 1877, the Brauerei Aying started small, but production quickly grew. A rail link to Munich was opened, bringing tourists to the brewery not only to drink beer, but also to stay overnight at the Brauereigasthof (brewery guesthouse). Maybe I should stay there when I travel to Europe next year.
-Here’s an interesting discovery I made today. The one Ayinger beer I tried before tonight — BotW #30: Ayinger Altbairisch Dunkel — is not, as I’ve recently thought, a hefeweizen. It’s what BA classifies as a “Munich Dunkel Lager.” Apparently I knew that when I reviewed it, but I thought it was a wheat beer last Friday when I was scrambling to figure out what to get. BevMo! offers three different Ayinger brews, and I knew I’d had one before. However, I couldn’t remember which. How embarrassing would it be if I unwillingly bought a beer I’ve already reviewed? Really embarrassing, at least for me. (Though, I’ve wondered if I should someday start re-reviewing certain beers.) To be safe I chose Erdinger. Today I checked to see which Ayinger variety I drank and realized it wasn’t a hefe. Well, that opened the door for me to buy one of Ayinger’s wheats.
-I know: that was a stupid story. But I feel like writing a lot this weekend. Along with this, my writing queue contains a Bookworm post, another BotW tomorrow night, and a letter to my grandma. She fell and injured her hip earlier this week, so I’m writing a letter to accompany a “get well” card. (She got out of the hospital today, after receiving a new artificial ball joint, and is walking around.)
The Quiet Man’s grade: A-.
Four more weeks, baby. Just four more weeks. September 5th is the first college football Saturday, but the season kicks off two nights earlier on the 3rd. Needless to say, I’ll be in heaven.
The beer this weekend is Ayinger Bräu-Weisse brewed by the Brauerei Aying of Aying, Germany.
First off, I wanted to give kudos to the Johnnie Walker Red Label box the cashier at BevMo! gave me last week.
Half liter bottles are an anomaly in the US, especially since they’re sold individually and not packaged together in four- or six-packs like most beer. (A lot of domestic microbrews, though, are also sold individually, but in 12-ounce bottles.) The BevMo! cashiers always seem to be unsure what to do when I bring six halfers to the counter. Should they put them in a plastic bag? A paper bag? Most of the time they do both, dressing each bottle in its own skirt and placing three in a plastic bag. Last week, though the cashier got creative. She rang up my six Erdinger’s, walked away, and came back with the Red Label box. The halfers fit nicely in the cardboard grid inside. No paper and no plastic. I felt special, and even said, “Oooh. A box.” Reusing something for another purpose is, in my opinion, the best form of recycling, so I appreciated the gesture not only as a beer enthusiast but also as an environmentalist. Tonight I took the box back to BevMo! and used it to carry out my six bottles of Bräu-Weisse.
Serving type: Six 16.9-ounce (.5 liter) bottles. I’m adding the metric measurement for the hell of it. Someday, hopefully, this country will make the conversion.
Appearance: Poured a very attractive cloudy lemonade color into my .5L weizen glass. Minor carbonation is evident at the bottom. Two and a half fingers of white, fluffy head developed and dissipated to a thick layer of lacing that lasted throughout.
Smell: I immediately get enticing banana and spicy cloves. Very yeasty, and there is a prominent scent of fruity bubblegum.
Taste: Much like the aroma, though the taste is slightly subdued. Bananas and clove spice dominate. Smooth yeastiness is also complimented with hints of lemon.
Drinkability: Top-notch brew. Thirst quenching and appealing. It’s a match made in heaven.
Fun facts about Ayinger Bräu-Weisse:
-Serving temperature: 46º-50ºF. I’ve been a bad boy recently, drinking my BotW brews straight from the fridge; I haven’t been letting them sit out and warm to their serving temperature. It’s a minor sin, but one I’m going to correct from now on.
-Alcohol content: 5.1 percent ABV.
-Food pairings: Beers of the World recommends “The regional specialty, weisswurst.” What’s weisswurst? The translation is “white sausage,” and according to its Wikipedia page it “is a traditional Bavarian sausage made from very finely minced veal and fresh pork bacon. It is usually flavoured with parsley, also known as beiderl, lemon, mace, onions, ginger and cardamom, though there are some variations. The mixture is then stuffed into fresh, clean pork casings and separated into individual sausages about ten to twelve centimeters in length and about two centimeters in thickness.” Served with a pretzel and special sweet mustard, weisswurst is traditionally made in the morning and eaten between breakfast and lunch because it is very perishable. Eaten just about exclusively in Bavaria, weisswurst has become symbolic of the cultural and linguistic differences between Southern Germany and the rest of the country. As the US has the Mason-Dixon Line, Germany has the “Weißwurstäquator” (white sausage equator).
-Price: Here’s something I never list, but should. Each bottle of Ayinger Bräu-Weisse cost $3.29. All together my “six-pack” cost $19.74, before tax. Yeah. Don’t become a beer connoisseur unless you have a job.
-Founded in 1877, the Brauerei Aying started small, but production quickly grew. A rail link to Munich was opened, bringing tourists to the brewery not only to drink beer, but also to stay overnight at the Brauereigasthof (brewery guesthouse). Maybe I should stay there when I travel to Europe next year.
-Here’s an interesting discovery I made today. The one Ayinger beer I tried before tonight — BotW #30: Ayinger Altbairisch Dunkel — is not, as I’ve recently thought, a hefeweizen. It’s what BA classifies as a “Munich Dunkel Lager.” Apparently I knew that when I reviewed it, but I thought it was a wheat beer last Friday when I was scrambling to figure out what to get. BevMo! offers three different Ayinger brews, and I knew I’d had one before. However, I couldn’t remember which. How embarrassing would it be if I unwillingly bought a beer I’ve already reviewed? Really embarrassing, at least for me. (Though, I’ve wondered if I should someday start re-reviewing certain beers.) To be safe I chose Erdinger. Today I checked to see which Ayinger variety I drank and realized it wasn’t a hefe. Well, that opened the door for me to buy one of Ayinger’s wheats.
-I know: that was a stupid story. But I feel like writing a lot this weekend. Along with this, my writing queue contains a Bookworm post, another BotW tomorrow night, and a letter to my grandma. She fell and injured her hip earlier this week, so I’m writing a letter to accompany a “get well” card. (She got out of the hospital today, after receiving a new artificial ball joint, and is walking around.)
The Quiet Man’s grade: A-.
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