Hefeweizen
Collective Arts Brewing

 

 

473ml can - another offering from this Hamilton, Ontario brewery that I'm glad I waited for the inexpensive tall-boys to arrive!

This beer pours a hazy, yet bright medium golden yellow colour, with a near-teeming tower of puffy, finely foamy, and somewhat creamy bone-white head, which leaves a bit of droopy paint swath lace around the glass as it quickly sinks out of sight.

It smells of semi-sweet, grainy wheat malt, banana pie, pink bubblegum, a bit of phenolic yeastiness, ethereal earthy spice, and some very tame leafy and weedy generic hop bitters. The taste is bready and doughy pale malt, a still cereal-forward wheatiness, banana and overripe apple fruity notes, played-out chewing gum, a hint of clove and black pepper spiciness, faded yeast esters, and more very understated leafy and floral hoppiness.

The carbonation is quite active in its palate-taunting frothiness, the body a decent middleweight, and mostly smooth, with a nice airy creaminess evolving as things warm up a tad around here. It finishes on the sweet side, but moderated just enough by fruit, spice, and yeast alike.

Overall, this won't knock your Weihenstephaners or Ayingers off their perch atop the hefeweizen style leaderboard, but it's still a respectable stab at the style. A bit more complexity, a little less sweetness, and this would be great, but as it stands, I will have no problem putting back the rest of this one.

 

 

Excellent version of the style. Muskoka Summer Weiss was my favorite, and I think still is. But this is a close second. The main difference is that this is a slightly pale looking beer, where the Muskoka has a nice rich golden yellow-y hue, which makes my mouth water. But this is a winner for sure. Cheers!!

Purchased at the brewery for $3.45 473ml can. Served at 4deg C in a draught glass

A- Opens well and pours a mighty head nearly 2in high that films out within 3mins or so. Lighter gold colour and unfiltered

S- Bubble gum. Loads and loads of hubba bubba. Wild!!

T- Bubble bum! LOL man this one is nice. Super great in a different way. Candi sugar and banana in there for sure. Nice yeast. Like it!!

M- Creamy and tart at the end

O- I like this one. Will buy again on sight. Try this one!!

Food Pairing

This wonderful brew went well with........ Bacon and eggs!

Enjoy

Bottle from the lcbo for around 2.35.

 

A solid hefeweizen. Nothing surprising, but the banana and clove flavours are there and the beer goes down very nicely. It's a hard sell in a way, since obviously superior offerings such as Weihenstephaner are regularly available at good prices, but it is still a nice beer. Now that I think about it, the easy availability of Weihenstephaner has made this style pretty impossible to successfully brew- why bother when the best is so easy to get? To get back on topic, this is another solid beer from a brewery that is successfully expanding its output.

 

Genuinely a fan of this offering, further proof that Collective Arts ought to be in any conversation about Canada's best breweries--after a flurry of hop-forward offerings, their latest summer seasonals (hefe, gose, saison) show they can other styles well, too. Huge clove, banana flavour, almost juicy texture, a bit of grainy bite on the finish. This is so tasty and pretty spot-on authentic--one of the best Ontario hefes I can recall, even if it's not quite up to the standards of its true Germanic counters.