Heiferweizen
Olds College Teaching Brewery

 

Shared a growler on Father's Day.
From the info card given with the take-out:
"We kept true to our rural roots and had some fun creating Heiferweizen as one of our new spring seasonal ales. With its banana and clove notes, it is both easy-drinking and refreshing. So don't have a cow...have a Heiferweizen!"
This beer is cloudy, hazy yellow gold color. Short but tight, shiny white head. Foam lasted the whole glass, leaving spiderwebs of lace.
Smells of some grains and wheat malt, clove and pepper are predominant, banana aroma is present but subdued.
The taste is on the sweet side, and all the hefeweizen character is there, wheat, clove, pepper. Very flavorful.
Medium body, smooth, crisp. Nice and refreshing on a hot day.
Well done for the style.

Overall, pretty decent, and in line with most of the greats of the style, if only lacking in complexity, as such. A few more iterative improvements, and I'm certain that these student brewers will have a winner on their hands - something to challenge Gunther in Alberta, at least.

16oz glass at the Underground during the Alberta happy hour special. Great name for a beer of this style coming out of a farming community, I gotta say.

This beer appears a cloudy, murky medium golden yellow colour, with one skinny finger of wispy and frothy dirty white head, which leaves some streaky bleeding cloud lace around the glass as things quickly sink away.

It smells of semi-sweet, grainy wheat malt, subtle clove and white pepper spice, further estery yeast, chewed out Hubba Bubba, and faint leafy and weedy hops. The taste is sweet, somewhat sugary wheat malt, spicy clove and/or coriander, banana cream, the plain bubblegum proclaimed in the advertising blurb, ethereal table pepper dust, and well reduced noble hops.

The bubbles are fairly laid-back in their understated fizziness, the body a solid middleweight, and well smooth, with a tame creaminess that seems present from the very beginning. It finishes a bit on the sweet side, as the wheat, banana, and bubblegum continue their pleasant, if sort of unholy triad.

Overall, a pretty decent wheat beer, and in line with most of the greats of the style, if only lacking a bit in complexity, as such. A few more iterative improvements, and I'm certain that these student brewers will have a winner on their hands - something to challenge Gunther in Alberta, at least.