Beer of the Weekend #244: Imperial Weizen
Though a daily dose of liquid bread is good for your heart, it is apparently bad for every other organ in your body. Regardless, these midweek samplings will continue — especially as long as I have oodles of New Glarus brew to savor.
The beer tonight is Imperial Weizen, brewed by the New Glarus Brewing Company of New Glarus, Wisconsin.
Imperial Weizen is part of New Glarus’ “unplugged” series of beers. From the brewery website, this verbage encapsulates the spirit behind the series:
Past “unplugged” beers are listed on the special “Beer We Have Known & Loved” page of the New Glarus site. I have another “unplugged” brew patiently chillin’ away, but thought the first few days of summer deserved a weizen.
Speaking of all things weizen, tonight I am introducing the sexy, 300 ml Schneider Weisse weizen glass I bought at The House of Glass (or whatever it’s called) today. As much as I do not need more beerware, I did need a smaller weizen glass for 330 ml and 12-ounce bottles. Once again, though: why just 300 ml? It cannot even hold a whole beer, which is especially important for weizens since the yeasty goodness at the bottom should be loosened a bit and poured in.
Serving type: Four 12-ounce bottles. There is a typical New Glarus batch code printed on the shoulder. (On all my New Glarus beers, I have noticed printing on the bottom of the bottle. However, I cannot make it out very well because I can only see it when looking down through the top.)
Appearance: Poured into a 300 ml weizen glass. The color is cloudy, dishwater lemonade with hints of orange. Three fingers of dense, white head dissipated slowly to leave trails along the glass and a fluffy, one-finger cap with a depression in the middle before dissolving to a spotted lacing. A little yeast sedimentation lingers at the bottom of the bottle.
Smell: Massive and classic. Tons of ripe banana, yeast breadiness, apple, clove, cinnamon, orange, lemon, and bubblegum. It is aromatic enough to be a Bubble Yum flavor. It also has a slight alcohol edge.
Taste: Thick and rich hefeweizen goodness…followed by alcohol. Unfortunately for the superb flavors — banana, apple, strawberry, a little clove spice, and citrus — the booze dominates. Though not overpowering, it is distracting and far outdoes all of the other flavors. It eases its grip a little as the beer warms, but continues to subdue everything else. Each sip leaves a perceivable bitter tingle on the back of the tongue, and the fruit flavors linger on the palate.
Drinkability: I love the style, but wish the alcohol was as well hidden in the flavor as it is in the aroma. I will gladly drink it, though — albeit slowly and responsibly. It packs a huge punch.
Fun facts about Imperial Weizen:
-Style: BA classifies it as a Hefeweizen.
-Price: $9.75/four-pack at the New Glarus brewery.
-Serving temperature: 45-50ºF.
-Alcohol content: A whopping 9.7 percent ABV.
-Food pairings: Oddly, there are no recommendations from New Glarus. But BA will gladly step in with its usual grab bag of vagueness. German cuisine, tangy cheeses (Brick, Edam, Feta), salad, poultry, fish, and shellfish.
-Nerdiness from the New Glarus website:
-Here’s some general bitching about BA. A couple weeks ago, I noticed the beer mug showing my status as a BA Initiate (one who has amassed more the 250 Beer Karma points) was gone. Had I lost points? Nope. I checked the Beer Karma explanation page and found the ol’ Alström brothers had double the points needed to attain each level of the Beer Karma hierarchy. What the fuck!? However, it is my own fault for not contributing more to the site (e.g. writing forum posts, adding pictures for beer, adding new beers).
-The thing is, it is hard to contribute pictures to BA when the site’s pic requirements are so strict. Each picture needs to be exactly 150x300 pixels and under 20 KB in size. Somehow people manage to upload pictures within those limits, but I can’t. (I have — one really shitty picture of Hefe’r’weizen — but have no clue how I did it.) For the past couple months I kept the bottles for three beers needing BA profile pictures, hoping I would figure out how to get the images cropped and sized correctly. It never happened. Frustrated, I decided to recycle them this week. Fuck it. Let someone else deal with BA.
The Quiet Man’s grade: B+.
The beer tonight is Imperial Weizen, brewed by the New Glarus Brewing Company of New Glarus, Wisconsin.
Imperial Weizen is part of New Glarus’ “unplugged” series of beers. From the brewery website, this verbage encapsulates the spirit behind the series:
A few times a year, we will cut Dan loose to brew whatever he chooses, uncensored, uncut, unplugged. Always handcrafted, this beer is brewed for the adventurous soul. This is a very limited edition and we make no promises to ever brew this style again.
Past “unplugged” beers are listed on the special “Beer We Have Known & Loved” page of the New Glarus site. I have another “unplugged” brew patiently chillin’ away, but thought the first few days of summer deserved a weizen.
Speaking of all things weizen, tonight I am introducing the sexy, 300 ml Schneider Weisse weizen glass I bought at The House of Glass (or whatever it’s called) today. As much as I do not need more beerware, I did need a smaller weizen glass for 330 ml and 12-ounce bottles. Once again, though: why just 300 ml? It cannot even hold a whole beer, which is especially important for weizens since the yeasty goodness at the bottom should be loosened a bit and poured in.
Serving type: Four 12-ounce bottles. There is a typical New Glarus batch code printed on the shoulder. (On all my New Glarus beers, I have noticed printing on the bottom of the bottle. However, I cannot make it out very well because I can only see it when looking down through the top.)
Appearance: Poured into a 300 ml weizen glass. The color is cloudy, dishwater lemonade with hints of orange. Three fingers of dense, white head dissipated slowly to leave trails along the glass and a fluffy, one-finger cap with a depression in the middle before dissolving to a spotted lacing. A little yeast sedimentation lingers at the bottom of the bottle.
Smell: Massive and classic. Tons of ripe banana, yeast breadiness, apple, clove, cinnamon, orange, lemon, and bubblegum. It is aromatic enough to be a Bubble Yum flavor. It also has a slight alcohol edge.
Taste: Thick and rich hefeweizen goodness…followed by alcohol. Unfortunately for the superb flavors — banana, apple, strawberry, a little clove spice, and citrus — the booze dominates. Though not overpowering, it is distracting and far outdoes all of the other flavors. It eases its grip a little as the beer warms, but continues to subdue everything else. Each sip leaves a perceivable bitter tingle on the back of the tongue, and the fruit flavors linger on the palate.
Drinkability: I love the style, but wish the alcohol was as well hidden in the flavor as it is in the aroma. I will gladly drink it, though — albeit slowly and responsibly. It packs a huge punch.
Fun facts about Imperial Weizen:
-Style: BA classifies it as a Hefeweizen.
-Price: $9.75/four-pack at the New Glarus brewery.
-Serving temperature: 45-50ºF.
-Alcohol content: A whopping 9.7 percent ABV.
-Food pairings: Oddly, there are no recommendations from New Glarus. But BA will gladly step in with its usual grab bag of vagueness. German cuisine, tangy cheeses (Brick, Edam, Feta), salad, poultry, fish, and shellfish.
-Nerdiness from the New Glarus website:
Do not waste time attempting to box this brew into some esoteric guide to styles. This is Dan's bold creation. His passion for unfiltered Weiss collides with Cascade Hops inventing our Imperial Hefe-Weizen. Dry hopping boldly rules over Wisconsin red wheat and our special strain of Bavarian yeast. At almost 20 O.P. this is the super mac daddy of Weiss beers. Decoction mashing was followed by excessive dry hopping to create a fierce onslaught of clove, cinnamon and citrus all in this living beer. Don't bother waiting to enjoy - the time is now.
-Here’s some general bitching about BA. A couple weeks ago, I noticed the beer mug showing my status as a BA Initiate (one who has amassed more the 250 Beer Karma points) was gone. Had I lost points? Nope. I checked the Beer Karma explanation page and found the ol’ Alström brothers had double the points needed to attain each level of the Beer Karma hierarchy. What the fuck!? However, it is my own fault for not contributing more to the site (e.g. writing forum posts, adding pictures for beer, adding new beers).
-The thing is, it is hard to contribute pictures to BA when the site’s pic requirements are so strict. Each picture needs to be exactly 150x300 pixels and under 20 KB in size. Somehow people manage to upload pictures within those limits, but I can’t. (I have — one really shitty picture of Hefe’r’weizen — but have no clue how I did it.) For the past couple months I kept the bottles for three beers needing BA profile pictures, hoping I would figure out how to get the images cropped and sized correctly. It never happened. Frustrated, I decided to recycle them this week. Fuck it. Let someone else deal with BA.
The Quiet Man’s grade: B+.
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