New Glarus Unplugged Berliner Weiss

Brewed by New Glarus Brewing Company
Style: Berliner Weisse
New Glarus, Wisconsin USA

Pours a moderately cloudy golden yellow with a thin but dense head with some lace. Aroma is sour and slightly citrusy. Tastes sour with green grapes and light citrus. Champagne style carbonation but with a typical wheat-beer creaminess - very nice! This is a very nice refreshing beer. Thanks to Ughsmash for the trade!

Many thanks to beerbeagle on BA for sending me these. I have been serching forever and it is actually my first berliner weisse

Pours a clear straw yellow with an airy white head that fades fast and leaves no lacing. Smells of wheat, musty grain, light sour, lemon and some spice as well. Flavor is dominated by the slightly tart, musty wheat and lemon character with some nice spice and wine like character. Mouthfeel is spritzy and dry. A really refreshing beer and a style that I want to explore more.

Great Taste ’08. Pours a very lightly hazed faded golden yellow with a bit of a white head. The nose is tarter, as per style, but with more wheaty esters than I’ve noticed in the style. Lively mouthfeel, thinner, but crisp. The flavor is along the lines of the nose, crisp tart bracing refreshing. A good bit of lacto. Maybe something oaky? Maybe something vinous. A lovely beer any how.

Courtesy Cheeseman. Pours a clear, straw gold, with a pearly white head. Smells of a unique blend of spices, good doses of cinnamon, wheat, and funky citrus. The flavor was very nice for this style. Not overly sour, but tart, with good enough wheat characters where it balances it out nicely. The citrus fruit provides some zest to the party. Really nice for this style, which I havent had a whole lot of experience with.

Clear gold with a frothy white head that lingers. Salt n’ pepper, tart wheat aromas with some juniper berry sweetness. Has a frothy mouthfeel that stings your tongue. Nice medium tart flavors front to back are grainy, yeasty wheat bread with funky cheese curds, Wisconsin cheese i’d guess. Haven’t had a Berliner in a very long time, this one’s a tasty take on the style. Bottle thanks to Uhgsmash.

Hazy, glassy gold appearance; head zips away immediately. Nose is lactic, musty, wheaty. Curdled milk, banana, white grapes, and almond frosting. More simple tartness from the grapes than detailed sourness that might seem more citrus than wine-like if their presence weren’t declared. Sometimes cheesy, and even salty, but not in a sordid wild sense but more in a strange spoiled sweet sense.

Even regarding the flavor of grapes there’s quite a lot of this lime, green apple and lemon fruit character, which is at times salty, sour, or even sweet when it seems more lemonade-tilted, the latter lending a soda-like crisp sugar to the flavor that seems wholly out of step. Some strange appearance of cured meat seems to emerge from the saltiness sometimes, and again it would seem just a pleasant funky nuance but the indescribable quality that makes the foul lambic and sour ale flourishes so appreciable just isn’t present. Maybe the sweetness of the grapes and the unfettered tartness of the wheat is too brazen a combination; it’s certainly the sweetest grape presence and possible the tartest wheat impartation I’ve encountered, and both in one place is somewhat arresting. It’s refreshing, still, and the flavor is really quite bright and textured, but the vagueness of its false impression is really irritating.

Lively and light palate is effervescent and crisp, and tart with a sour milk stickiness toward the end; finishing on bready yeasts, which are notably present throughout but especially felt here, banana, tart wheat, and a distancing soft white wine character, slowly dry. Unconvincing, if flavorful and consistently attractive; it might be simplified by saying it’s too sugary.

I’m going to take credit for the existence of this beer as someone who requested it when New Glarus had the online survey a while back. Anyway. Well carbonated and very tall, thick head that never completely fades. Lightly sour aroma of yeast and wheat. Flavor is sour, like the others I have had from the style, but I can also taste the grape, citrus, wheat, and yeast. Lively on the palate. Refreshing and very enjoyable on a warm summer day.

This beer was a big disappointment since New Glarus makes such fine beers! All I could taste and smell wall lemon. It’s what a Leinenkugel Summer Shandy tastes like if only I could bring myself to try it.