Iron Horse High Five Hefe

Brewed by Iron Horse Brewery
Style: Spice/Herb/Vegetable
Ellensburg, Washington USA

Bottle at blind tasting 5/09. Pours translucent gold, white head fades quickly. Aroma of pine hops and a touch of vanilla. Incredibly sweet hefe and not extremely balanced. Medium body, oily, and relatively flat. Decent beer, but not sure how true to the style it is.

22 oz. bottle- Pours golden with suprisingly no cloudyness, In my opinion a Hefe should be cloudy to the point of not being able to see through the beer, This beer appears to be filtered. The aroma is refreshing, ginger, lemon, and spruce or pine. I usually don’t like ginger but this beer is very good flavorwise, it also has a nice lemony flavor to is which mellows the ginger. After a few strong Stouts this beer hits the spot.

Hazy yellow with a fleeting white head. Big spicy clove citrus orange and lemon aromas. Medium body. Grainy pale wheat malt grist flavor with clove and fermented orange. Not bad.

Bottle from Archer Liquors. Pours hazy gold with a three finger bubbly white head. Light ginger aroma. Near medium body with mild carbonation. Flavor is a bit soapy ginger. Hint of banana ester. Finishes with a touch of paper. Actually pretty refreshing. Mildly sweet finish.

Sampled at the Metro Detroit October 09 tasting. Hazy, bright yellow pour with a small, short-lived white head. The aroma has a hint of sourness some subdued banana and clove with a hint of ginger. The flavor has some more ginger on the finish but not much of the hefe yeast quality. Slightly cloying too. The body is thin and aqueous for a hefe. I do give it some credit for being very drinkable with some unique aromas and flavors.

8/17/09 from 22oz bottle. Aroma is heavily bready/wheaty, with just a touch of ginger that gives it an almost citrus character. Appearance is a hazy blend of straw, orange and tan, like unpasteurized honey with a medium maintained white head. Flavor is very bready, but without the yeasty notes one might expct from an American wheat beer; it’s all sweet grain in this one, with ginger coming through in the slightly sour finish to just barely amp up the very mild bittering. Overall, a diferent brew that takes a couple of adjucts and uses them to compliment some natural malt character rather than sharpen it to where it’s unrecognizeable.

Picked up at Pike’s Place Market. I had not seen this before so I thought I would give this 22 oz. a chance. Haze yellow with a slight orange hue. Not really much head on this thing. Looks decent. Slight yeast aroma with a ginger spice to mix in. A weird sort of aroma if you ask me. Honey is also slightly noticeable if you give it a quick swirl around the glass. Fairly nuanced, but the ginger to me is a little weird. Aromatic brew. Nappy ginger aroma. It starts off decent, but then dies out to a slight honey sweetness. Not much in the way of yeast, or anything other than the honey flavor. The yeast shows up mainly towards the end. Overall, just a weak beer, with some ginger; not one of my favorites.