Brewing with Wheat

237 Pages·2010·3.29 MB·English

by  Stan Hieronymus

brewing with
WHEAT
The ‘Wit’ and ‘Weizen’ of World Wheat Beer Styles
by Stan Hieronymus
Brewers Publications
A Division of the Brewers Association
PO Box 1679, Boulder, Colorado 80306-1679
www.BrewersAssociation.org
© Copyright 2010 by Brewers Association
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form
without written permission of the publisher. Neither the authors, editor nor
the publisher assume any responsibility for the use or misuse of information
contained in this book.
Printed in the United States of America.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
ISBN: 0-937381-95-0
ISBN-13: 978-0-937381-95-3
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hieronymus, Stan.
Brewing with wheat : the “wit’ and weizen” of world wheat beer styles / by
Stan Hieronymus.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-937381-95-3
1. Wheat beer. 2. Brewing. I. Title.
TP577.H464 2010
641.2’3--dc22
2009048851
Publisher: Kristi Switzer
Technical Editor: Ashton Lewis
Copy Editing and Index: Daria Labinsky
Production and Design Management: Stephanie Johnson
Cover and interior design: Julie Korowotny
Cover Photography by Jon Edwards Photography and ©iStockphoto.com/
Valentin Casarsa
Special thanks to Sahm and Boelter for the glassware provided for the cover
photos.
Interior Photos: Stan Hieronymus unless otherwise noted.
To the memory of Michael Jackson, because
all books that would broaden what we know about
beer should be so dedicated until further notice.
This page intentionally left blank
TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements ..............................................................vii
Foreword ..............................................................................ix
By Yvan De Baets
Introduction ...........................................................................1
About the Book .....................................................................6
Part I – Wheat, the Other Brewing Grain
1 Wheat, Beer, and Bread........................................................15
2 Wheat Basics: Why Is My Beer Cloudy? ..............................25
Partly Cloudy to Cloudy - 28
Twenty-First Century Solutions - 29
You Say 4-Vinyl Guaiacol, I Say Clove - 30
The German View - 31
Part II – The White Beers of Belgium
3 In Search of the Real Belgian White Ale ...............................37
Bière Blanche de Louvain - 40
Peeterman - 44
Bière de Hougaerde (or Hoegaerde) - 45
4 The Six Degrees of Pierre Celis ............................................49
It All Started With a White - 56
The Best-Selling American Wheat Beer Ever - 59
Treating the Spices Right - 62
Acting Green and Looking White - 64
Two Times White Is Still White - 67
A Taste of Leuven? - 68
5 A Recipe for Wit ..................................................................71
Part III – The Weiss Beers of Southern Germany
6 A Fallen Style Returns to Glory ...........................................77
7 Bavarian Tradition With a Wyoming Accent ........................89
Meet the Other Schneider - 94
The Beers Are Smoked, The Wheat Isn’t - 96
An Open Fermentation Policy - 97
Making Adjustments in New Jersey - 99
Don’t Be Nice to Weiss - 102
8 A Recipe for Hefeweizen ....................................................105
Part IV – The Wheat Beers of America
9 A Hefeweizen By Any Other Name ...................................115
10 Brewing in a Melting Pot ...................................................123
Beer From America’s Breadbasket - 127
A Midsummer Night’s Dream - 132
Summer Ale on the Oregon Coast - 134
Wheat Wine: The Beer - 136
A Beer for the Punk Comic Crowd - 138
11 Two Recipes for Wheat Wine - 141
Part V – Wheat Beers From the Past
12 Beers the Reinheitsgebot Never Met ..................................149
13 The Care and Brewing of Relics ........................................163
14 Four Resurrected Recipes ...................................................171
Part VI – Putting It All Together
15 Better Brewing, Judging, and Enjoying ..............................181
Belgian White/Wit - 183
German Weizen Beers - 185
American Wheat - 189
Berliner Weisse - 190
Gose - 192
Appendix –Yeast charts......................................................195
Bibliography ......................................................................201
Index .................................................................................207
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My advice to anybody writing a book is to start with a group of people to help
you who are as generous as those in the brewing community, and then
line up the best copy editor you can find. I would not have started this
project had I not known my fastidious wife, Daria Labinsky, would be
at the end to help make sense of what I wrote. She and our daughter,
Sierra, are the best traveling companions a man could wish for. Thank
you, Sierra, for spending part of your birthday at Bayerischer Bahnhof
Gasthaus and Gose Brauerei in Leipzig, not a dream location for most
girls turning twelve.
Dan Carey of New Glarus Brewing likened me to the television de-
tective Columbo. “You are leaving, then there is always one more ques-
tion,” he said. I am particularly grateful to all those who answered
the extra questions. There are far too many to list, but the particularly
patient included Carey, Hans-Peter Drexler, Eric Toft, Steven Pauwels,
and Jason Perkins.
To write about these beers requires understanding the history be-
hind them and the culture surrounding them, not a slam dunk for an
Brewing with Wheat
American who grew up in central Illinois and struggled with high school
German. Were it not for the generosity of Ron Pattinson and Yvan De
Baets this would be a much lesser book technically and culturally. Mar-
tyn Cornell, Carl Miller, Derek Walsh, Bob Hansen, Don Bechtel, and
Gordon Strong further helped in matters related to history and brewing
science.
Thanks to the brewers who contributed recipes: Jean-François
Gravel, Bill Aimonetti, Todd Ashman, Pauwels, and Kristen England.
And double thanks to England for additional insights.
The final step, producing a book, was made easier by Kristi Switzer,
who took the reins at Brewers Publications from Ray Daniels, and Julie
Korowotny. I sleep much better at night because Ashton Lewis agreed to
be the technical editor, and particularly value the suggestions he made
to make the book more understandable.
I can’t overstate my appreciation for everything Yvan De Baets con-
tributed, including the Foreword, but also all the work he put into the
third chapter at a time when he was busy getting his own brewery going.
It’s not easy keeping the brewing world honest, but he’s doing more than
his share.
VIII
FOREWORD
When my friend Stan asked me to participate in his new book, I had two reac-
tions. The first one was pride. Being asked to contribute to the work of
such a knowledgeable beer writer is definitely something! The second
was: “Wheat beers? How boring!” Indeed, if the German weizens are
without a doubt a fascinating style, and if it is really easy to find plenty
of exquisite examples of them, the same is certainly not true with their
Belgian or “Belgian-like” counterparts. Far from that. In my country,
wheat beers (witbieren in Dutch, bières blanches in French) have been
considered as a sort of commodity for a few decades. The big boys have
to have one in their range, with as their main target the people “who
don’t like beer so much” and the women (yes, a lot of brewers still have
outdated macho views of their own customers). And, as always, a lot of
small brewers just imitate them. In turn all those are then often imitated
by foreign brewers. As a result, and even if very nice examples do exist,
far too many of the white beers to be found around the world are sweet-
ish coriander soups resembling spicy lemonade with some alcohol in it.