Les Trois Mousquetaires Marché Joannette Rauchweizen

Formerly brewed at Les Trois Mousquetaires
Style: Smoked
Brossard, Canada

Rather muddy yellowy brown covered by a quickly fading beige head. Gently smoky, well integrated aroma with soft wooden notes that never dominate the obvious wheat beer base. This is not your bacon type of smokiness, just soft AND omnipresent leafy, wooden notes that never rush at the strong wheat cracker feel. Apparently a high proportion of wheat in there because the quenching character is direct. Perhaps a bit thinner than expected in mouth, the carbonation is foamy and wheat-beer like. Underlying fruity undertones include banana, orange tea and pear. Well done... again!

My Bottom Line:
This harmonious Rauchweizen delivers its humble wooden smokiness and chewy cereal sweetness onto a parsimonious blend of tropical fruit esters. Crafty, intelligent, and quenching, this is a session beer like few others.

Further Personal Perceptions:
-A veil of foam covers the hazy yellow amber.
-The weizen yeast offers some banana/plantane esters, but the overall effect is more of a fruit salad than your typical estery profile for the style.
-The body is marvelously plump.
-The finish is a slow fade out of the nose and flavor profile.
-The smokiness won’t bowl you over, as it is subtly inserted into the beer’s many other flavors, leaving some dry trails in the finish.

Bottle.

A hazy dark amber weizen with a thick collapsing white head. A lightly smokey aroma, with fusel alcohol. In mouth, a sweetish malt with smoked bacon, light bananas, andlight sour points. A very classy beer. Bought and tasted Oct. 8, 2007.

The Welcome beer at our quarterly gathering. Greatly sessionable and one of the most drinkable smoked beers I have had. A moderate smoke and medium mouthfeel. Small crown head on a slight brownish yellow, good lacing.

Bottle (750ml - corked & caged). Shared with blankboy, GregClow, mds and tupalev - mds’ bottle. Hazy pale amber pour, small creamy off-white head. Fairly sweet grainy aroma, with overtones of smoky peat, earthy spice, and lemon juice. Taste follows the aroma right on, more sourness, plenty of bandaids - as tupalev says, there is perhaps too much going on for such a light-bodied beer. Light, yet somehow a bit thick, body, with a fast finish and peaty, tangy taste notes lingering after, wondering where the party went. I liked it quite a bit, though.

Bottle. Hazy golden body with a small white head that fades. Very mostly smokey in the aroma. Moderately sweet flavour, only vaguely smokey. Light fruity wheat beer esters are fairly modest. Average palate. I don’t know if this suffered from the more assertive beers that preceded it, but I never thought I would be complaining that a smoked beer was too bland.

750mL bottle shared by Rastacouere on 9/30/07
No head/lacing, for the most part. A thin white layer of foam is coaxed initially, but dosent last. The liquid is a cloudy straw-golden, with sparse, large bubbles in the liquid.
Soft bubble gum is matched to vanilla and pleasant, muted sugars (honey, light cookie dough, bits of caramel) keep things very smooth. The rauch part is definitely subtle here, with more of a medicinal/smoky phenolic character on the finish, than an actual heavy, salty/meaty smokiness. That’s fine in my book, subtle is good too. Something of a spicy ending as well, with definite grassy/dusty hops (saaz?) and more of the smoke phenols giving a little zip. The cloudiness and obvious yeast and wheat in solution definitely mute the aroma, as expected, but there are no flaws, and what does come through is represented excellently.
Very smooth, chewy, comforting texture washes soft wheat and barley grains across the palate, depositing vanilla and honey sugars that are balanced by a surprisingly flavorful (though minimal) hoppiness. Spicy herbs and dry grass give way to light campfire smoke and almost a sweet mix of ester and phenol (smokiness meets vanilla meets cotton candy and bubblegum), with a touch of sticky-sweet malt. Not terribly cohesive, the huge amount of protein/yeast in solution and lower carbonation helping see to that, but all the individual flavors are interesting/enjoyable. Finishes wet and slick, with moderate wateriness. No alcohol or flaws noted. Maybe this needs to rest warm in the bottle and develop more carbonation. Would like to try it with more of the solute dropped out too.

Bottle thanks to Puzzl. Gold with hardly any head. Lavender aroma to go along with a light smokiness. The flavor though has a nice smokiness to it without being ’meaty’. Nice carbonation.