Weizen
Colbitzer Heide-Brauerei

RB transfer

Cloudy, amber color. Big, white head. Wheat, banana, cloves, and flowers in the aroma. Sweet, yeasty taste. Not the best German weizen but good enough.

I pick these up in the supermarket for $1.25 a pint can. You really can’t go wrong. It’s solid. Great color. Notes of bread, banana. Nice head that sticks around for a while.

 

Pours murky, gold in color, with one inch head. Taste is white bread and clove. Medium body, slightly sweet with moderate light carbonation. Makes for a solid Weizen. Solid but I have had better foreign and domestic.

16oz can. Poured out a cloudy, straw-yellow color with a very large, off-white head of fluffy foam. It left sudsy rings of lace on the glass. It smelled of clove, banana, bubblegum and cracked wheat. Sweet bread-like taste with clove, yeast and spiciness. Mild bitterness.

 

 

Poured from a can into a pint glass
Appearance – The beer pours a hazy deep orange amber color with a billowy head of white foam. The head has a great level of retention, slowly fading over time to leave just a trace of lace on the sides of the glass.
Smell – The aroma of the brew is very strong of a wheat bread smell mixed with a decent showing of banana and clove as well as a bit of a white pepper and sweet orange smell. Overall the aroma is rather sweet and bready.
Taste – The taste begins very different from what I was expecting from the nose; it was much drier in its sweetness then I was anticipating. Now it begins with a decent showing of a dry and somewhat decently yeasty wheat bread taste, but with only a light level of banana and orange sweet taste upfront. As the taste advances the sweeter fruity tastes dwindle more and more, but are replaced by a very light caramel and some of the spice tastes that were detected in the nose. The spice are mostly of a clove nature, but there is a bit of coriander and nutmeg as well. The wheatiness gets just a bit weaker toward the end, and ends up leaving one with a dry, lightly sweetened and lightly spiced taste to linger on the tongue.
Mouthfeel – The body of the brew is on the medium to slightly weaker side in terms of thickness and creaminess with a carbonation level that is on the slightly lower side. A thicker body and slightly higher carbonation may have accentuated the wheat bread and the easy drinking nature of the brew slightly better, but overall the feel was decent.
Overall – It’s definitely not a powerhouse of flavor, with respects to yeast spice and sweeter banana/orange, but overall it’s a nice easy drinking brew. Not the best for the style, but it reminds me more of a lighter bodied hefe, which would be great for a nice summer day!

 

Colbitzer Heide-Brauerei "Weizen"
500ml can, coded "P 07.08.2019 03:55 E 07.09.2020". Produced at the Hofbrauhaus Wolters GMBH, Braunschweig, DE
$1.99 @ Roger Wilco, Pennsauken, NJ

Notes via stream of consciousness: It's poured a very hazy kind of yellow and brass colored body beneath a massive head of white foam that I'll have to let settle... OK, now it's a creamy cap that's about 12 millimeters tall. The aroma is fairly limited for a hefeweizen. There's some sweetish malt and a hint of yeasty spiciness and phenols but that's it. Hopefully the flavor will be fuller. Unfortunately not. It's definitely got a wheat character to the malt, and it's bready. It's sweetish but no sweeter than it should be, and there is a little bit of acidity to it that helps to balance it and dry it in the finish. There's a very mild touch of banana to it, and just as in the aroma, the spiciness and other phenols (mainly clove) from the yeast are limited. There's even a smear of what I'd call more leafy than herbal hops that come out towards the end and into the finish. It's OK. It's not exactly what you might expect from a German hefeweizen, but at the same time I've had plenty of hefeweizens in Germany that have varied from what most Americans think of the style. The questions are how's the quality, how well is it made, and how nicely is it balanced? Well, we're basically talking about the malt here as hops don't really come into play and the yeast is what it is until you get to how well is it made. I'd say it's a quality malt. It might not be the best but they're not using cattle feed either. So how well is it made? There's certainly nothing off in the fermentation. In fact, for my tastes they've fermented it a little too cool and without putting any stress on the yeast. The head retention, however is limited, as is the lacing. It's pretty poor to be honest, which is odd, but it definitely suffers in scoring due to that. The final question is how well is it balanced. It's medium to medium-light in body and crisp, but not as carbonated as it could be. Perhaps that's an issue with cans? Anyway, it's just a little bit of lighter weizen and so it makes sense that the yeast character is a little bit restrained due to that. The bitterness is spot on, working with the acidity that's there to allowing the malt to appear sweetish upfront but then dry in the finish. So how does it add up? It's not great but it's not bad. This is what I call a fernsehenbier, or bahnhofbier - a TV beer, or train station beer. You drink a cheap beer while you're just sitting around watching the telly, and you can only get cheap beer at the train station but it doesn't really matter as you're just waiting for a train.
Review #6,882

 

Poured from a 16.9 oz. can. Has a copper color with a 1/2 inch head. Smell is strong of bananas. Taste is wheat, bananas are present but much less pronounced than in the aroma. Feels medium/full bodied in the mouth and overall is a refreshing and solid beer.

I really enjoyed the 500ML can. It poured great in my weizen glass. I notice the great banana and Clove smell when poring the beer. The head was a wonderful white color with a great golden/yellow body. The taste was very clean and refreshing. Over all a wonderful surprise.

500 ml can - Poured into a weizen glass:

Pours clouded golden yellow with a lasting head that leaves lacing.

The smell is banana and clove.

The taste is of banana with clove in the finish. Strong flavor.

It is creamy and refreshingly smooth.

A nice example of a traditional HW. Banana with clove spicing in the finish.

A very good value for 1.25 (at Sun Devil Liquors in Mesa, AZ). An easy-drinking basic Hefeweizen.

CAN: 1 pint .9 fl oz. Standard pull-tab. Imported for U.S. by Iron Horse Beverage LLC.

5.3% ABV.

APPEARANCE: Interestingly, the body lacks a hefeweizen's signature haziness/cloudiness. Copper colour. No yeast/lees are visible within. Looks almost more like a Kellerweizen.

AROMA: Banana esters. Clove. Powdery spice (something close to nutmeg or even cinnamon). Pilsner malt. Vanilla/vanillin.

Fresh wheat isn't overt; I might not even know this was a wheat beer in a blind tasting.

I'm more of a orange peel/fresh wheat hefeweizen aroma guy over this beer's banana/vanilla aromatics, but it's generally appealing without promising a beer with really fresh flavours.

TASTE: Matches the aroma, emphasizing banana and faint vanilla instead of the orange peel and fresh wheat I tend to prefer. Clove works its way in, there's pale malt...it's fine. Balanced albeit simple like most hefeweizens, but I hoped for more depth and vividness of flavour.

Not real hoppy or even yeasty. I find no off-flavours.

TEXTURE: Soft, smooth, wet, medium-bodied, somewhat refreshing.

Not oily, rough, scratchy, hot, boozy, astringent, or harsh.

OVERALL: I'll enjoy polishing off the $4.29 4 pack, but I've had better budget hefeweizens (especially in Germany). Live Oak's Hefeweizen runs something like $7.19 a sixer at Total Wine in Austin, and it's a vastly superior beer for only cents more per oz.

C / AVERAGE