Cloud Break
Apex Brewing

I was skeptical, I admit, when I first heard about this beer and it's style. I'm not a hefe fan, as a general rule. However, the hop treatment with this one is spot on.

 

 

1L howler from Keg 'n Cork - good to see you again, Chris! And nice to 'meet' you, I suppose, unnamed Teutonic dude. This brew is a hoppy hefe, or 'hopfenweizen'.

This beer pours a rather opaque, medium banana (of course) yellow colour, with three fingers of puffy, rocky, and somewhat bubbly off-white head, which leaves some decent thick arc-weld/lightning strike lace around the glass as it lazily bleeds away.

It smells of gritty and grainy wheaten malt, damp banana chips, a bit of free-range simple syrup, understated earthy yeast, ethereal clove/white pepper spice, and very tame leafy, weedy, and musty floral green hop bitters. The taste is grainy and crackery wheat malt, a lesser caramel sweetness, sort of meaty yeasty notes, banana cream pie, muddled earthy spice, and more weak leafy, herbal, and dead floral verdant hoppiness.

The carbonation is average in its palate-pandering frothiness, the body a solid middleweight, and mostly smooth, with very little getting in the way of a good time here. It finishes off-dry, the cereal wheatiness, yeast, banana, and mixed spice making a day of it.

Overall, this is a fairly well-made version of the style (even if the proclaimed hoppy nature didn't really pan out), the adherence to the German way made only better by discussing Brauerei Fahr with the aforementioned terse employee whilst it was being poured earlier today. Good, good stuff, once again, people, and well, other people, get out there and check this one out!