Bristol Edge City Wit Bier

(draft at the brewery). Cloudy yellow color. Small white head. Yeast and coriander aromas. Same flavors along with light citrus. Avg duration. Slightly dry finish. Thin texture. Moderate carbonation. Spare lacing.

On tap at the brewery. Crisp clean yellow color with massive white head. Light wheat nose. Faint coriander and banana. Spicy wheat body with a light finish.

Had this beer on 8/7/2004. Color is a hazy gold with good carbonation and nice head. Aroma is sweet with fruity back tones. Taste is very Hefe like. Starting with light medium body that goes down fizzy. Finish comes on with a mild sweet flavor that has banana like taste to it with hints of coriander. On the very end is a slight hop flavor with a mild bitterness. Its as good as any Hefe out there.

I’ve only recently come to an age where social gatherings at a brewpub are acceptable by law, and have found that it is at these brewpubs that the long lost art of conversation has been hiding. Unfortunate for those under 21, but for me, I felt like I had found a long lost brother. The Brewpub, as opposed to the bar, is not a social hub for quick hook ups and an exchange of phone numbers, or for drunkards to down their sorrows in cheap booze. The Brewpub, as opposed to the sports bar, is not a place for raucous fan boys to hoot and holler at wide screen plasma TV’s, or slug each other with their favorite sports teams’ merchandise. The Brew Pub is a place for man to meet beer and man to meet man, and that somewhere in that triangle there is found a wisdom of the ages, passed down from the first beer drinker to today’s modern, upright and cranially developed Homo sapien. It was here that a friend and I chose to discuss matters most fitting of two upright men (heterosexual mind you, lest the connotation of brotherhood and brotherly love strays too far into sexual liberality for you) in the company of two Edge Cities: the Wit and the Pilsner. My own glass held the Wit, which was a sort of dandelion pigmented brew with a captivating cloudiness beneath a bare and naked surface. One wonders whether the brew simply assimilated the head into its voluminous body. It came with an orange slice impaled on the rim, which perfumed the air about it, but not enough that I couldn’t detect the coriander rising from the glass. The palate is softer than a young woman’s cheek, softer than a newborn kitten’s fur, softer than a whole caravan of silk. What a texture it is! I can’t imagine anything so gentle and caressing as this Wit – a paramount example of delicate and dainty brewing, almost aphasia inducing. Thus it is with great dread I report that the flavors do not do justice to the nimbus-like vehicle upon which they rest. In that glass there is only a blank wheat flavor and some of the orange’s juices swirled in for sweetness, and nothing more to make it stand apart from the myriad Witbiers that crowd the market. The aftertaste makes an effort to revive the disinterested flavors, conjuring clove and coriander in a long peal that reverberates well after the gentle drink has journeyed down the esophagus. All in all it is a good beer for its extreme qualities. I only wish that they could accent the texture more with a more careful choice of flavor implementation. A gentle treasure deserves great care after all, even in the company of men whose conversational words may strike with iron hardness and acidic acerbity. Such is the nature of a Brewpub.

22oz bomber-Aroma of orange and coriander with no head. Has a citrusy taste with orange and a little coriander. Good wit.

Pours cloudy yellow with a white dissipating head. Smells of oranges, sugar and hints of coriander. tastes of oranges, grass and watery. Some spicy notes on the finish.

Bomber poured a hazy golden yellow with a small, diminishing white head. Aromas of yeast, wheat, and spice. Palate was light biodied and crisp yet smooth. Flavors of citrus, grassy hops, and a bit of spice with a crisp, dry lingering finish.

Bottle. Yellow-gold hue; slightly cloudy; thin head. Lively carbonation; lightish body, but it has a soft syrupyness to it. Sweet malts, with notes of fresh bread dough and sugar cookies. Yeast notes are far in the background. Heavy spice (coriander) and bold hops (stark grass, earthy herbs) hog the ball. Healthy amount of drying bitterness in the finish. Bitterness built in the aftertaste. A little stark and unbalanced in some respects, but I kind of liked its edgy boldness in a way.