Ayingerbrau Hefe Weizen

Brewed by Samuel Smith
Style: German Hefeweizen
Tadcaster, England

On Tap at Sinclairs Oyster Bar, Manchester 21/12/2007 Some spice aroma. Golden coloured hazy in appearance hoppy and fruity banana flavour with a crisp and dry lasting malt finish.

Å Sim/Elena rate (draft at the Duke of Argyle): Very very wheaty aroma with a bit of vanilla. It’s like a freshly mowed lawn. Tastes like that milk bread. Very fizzy. Kinda like traditional lemonade. Looks like that coudy apple juice but with foam on top. Ooh, and it comes in a cool glass.

As Samuel Smith Wheat beer. Hazy yellow with thick white head. Much banana and coriander in the aroma. The taste is sweet but spiced up by coriander and ginger.

Aroma i lightly banana, quite a bit of wheat. Taste is light not very carbonated, weak body, though maybe a bit chewy at times.

Tap. I much prefer the regular Ayinger (you know, the one from germany). This just tasted like a diluted version, soft clove and citrus, a little dull, but it is drinkable.

Keg at The Cheshire Cheese, Fleet Street, London. Hazed, cloudy lemon with keged head. An unfortunate attempt at a Hefe Weizen, there are cloves and a sweet false banana flavour/perfume but it is fairly poor. Cloyng throughout with a mouthcoating spicy mush. Tis a shame and this was the first time I’d managed to find this historic pub open, what a place, even on the Friday evening crush from the City Suits.

God, I dislike Sam Smiths intensely. They have a really old and traditional brewery but (notwithstanding their highly regarded, but in my view over-rated, bottled beers) make just one mediocre cask bitter and insist on filling great old pubs with pissy keg bitters and fizzy lagers. So here we are at the historic former Courage brewery (long since gone) tap in South London, at the end of the RB London pub crawl on a Joeh inspired quest to try every one of those depressing products. At least I’ll get them all out of the way in one fell swoop. To be fair, the wheat beer is not the worst of the bunch. It looks OK and there’s even a hint of estery banana, but the butterscotch is definitely not authentic and entirely unwelcome. Not good, but drinkable.

C.loudy golden with a lasting white head. Aroma of spices and banana. Dry and slightly tart spicy flavour.