Smoked Hefeweizen
Steel & Oak Brewing Co.

 

 

 

 

Pours a somewhat bright cloudy orange, with great white head with great lacing and retention. Aroma is equal parts smoke, banana, and clove with nothing overwhelming each other. Taste is more of the same, with smoke strongest in the finish. Feels a little chewy for a hefe. Overall an interesting and drinkable beer butI'd like to see more fruit and clove flavor.

 

 

Looks, smells, and feels like a pretty conventional German hefe--they've got the yeast and the recipe down (banana, clove, texture, etc., etc.). Indeed, first sniffs don't reveal much (if any) smoke at all, and it's only on the palate that that bacon-fat kind of smokiness asserts itself, doing battle with the banana/clove. Finish leans back to the traditional hefe flavours. Carbonation and body are great for the style.

I'm torn, though: for me, a hefe is a summertime staple, and the smoke here--however restrained, and however interesting/unconventional a combo--beefs and thickens things up here a bit, making it a bit less appealing for a summer session. Good beer, but I'll stick with the stars of the style as traditionally interpreted.

 

 

 

 

650ml bottle, the first for me from this still newish Lower Mainland brewery, other than that collaboration they did with Parallel 49 earlier this year.

This beer pours a cloudy, medium golden yellow colour, with three fat-ass fingers of puffy, densely foamy, and kind of creamy off-white head, which leaves some eroding desert artifice lace in places around the glass as it slowly and evenly recedes.

It smells of roasted, somewhat meaty wheat malt, singed pithy banana flesh, white pepper and clove spice, prickly yeast, and a faint earthy bitterness. The taste is bready, doughy wheat malt, a small caramel sweetness, wet ash, more blackened banana (from heat, not the passage of time), muddled savoury spice - the clove hard to really tell apart - fading earthy yeast, and a simple bitterness whose provenance I don't really care to parse.

The bubbles are adequate in their supportive duties, as well as in providing a genial and playful frothiness, the body just on the light side of yer typical middleweight, and actually more or less smooth, if you don't mind a hint of cinders in your upper palate, that is. It finishes trending rather dry, the wheat having bled out, and the smoke 'n spice administering last rites.

Overall, a surprisingly pleasant smoked hefeweizen, and a hell of a lot more approachable than that overly burnt kellerbier that I alluded to earlier. The terse side label really says it all, and in the correct order of descending influence in this offering: 'Banana. Clove. Smoke'. Full stop.

 

L: cloudy golden, off white head
S: fruity, banana, sweet, spicy belgian yeast, clove
T: follows smell
F: light
O: very nice hefe flavor, very minimal smoke(if there)

 

 

 

A really great dark hefe that uses the smoked malt to bring a great counter point to the banana and clove notes