New Glarus Unplugged Imperial Weizen

Brewed by New Glarus Brewing Company
Style: German Hefeweizen
New Glarus, Wisconsin USA

Bottle: Pours a hazy gold with a white head. Aroma, bananas, spices, floral notes, yeast and cloves. Flavor, spices, yeasty notes, floral, cloves, banana, bubblegum. Pretty good.

2008-08-03. Lightly hazy orangy body, decent head. (3+) Sweetish aroma, yeast and esters, bit alcoholic at times. (7+) Flavour is similar, sweet esters are a touch muddled but pleasantly so. Very light bitterness in the end balances the sweet core. Light wheat touches. Smooth medium to full bodied palate. Simple but lovely. Bottle via trade with Cheeseman.

bottle by way of iowaherkeye and the mystery swap. pours a hazy orange/golden brown with a gigantic foamy almond colored head. lots of drippy lacing is left behind. the aroma is strange... banana mixed with citrus, grass, wood and pickling spice (dry bay leaf, coriander, clove, cardamon and nutmeg). rather odd flavor as well... almost sour fruit, orange, lime pith, dusty grain, a hint of the abv% and a touch dry and bitter from the hops. spicy finish lingers into the aftertaste where it is met with banana and wheat. alcohol is definitely felt in the belly. medium to full bodied. the mouth feel is prickly at first but soon becomes creamy from the abundance of carbonation. interesting. thanks joey!

Pours a very deep golden color...mostly opaque. Obscene billowing head which settles nicely with some good levels of lacing. Aroma is pretty heavy on banana and clove...some alcohol hints and dark fruit as well...nice, but a bit over-the-top. Flavor is also heavy on the banana and clove...some bubble gum, yeast, dark fruit, and a very high level of alcohol. Drinkability is very low if you compare it to your ’typical’ German Hefe, but it is not a slow quaffer by any means. As odd as this sounds to say about a beer from Dan Carey, this one was just too hot for me right now...the alcohol is just too much for this drink. That being said, it gets good marks for expanding on a style without completely bastardizing it...not my fav, but a very handsome effort

A vigorous pour easily produces a five-finger thick, tan colored head in my large Tripel Karmeliet tulip glass. The head is thick and creamy with quite a bit of structure and staying power and it also leaves lots of lacing on the sides of the glass. The beer is a murky, pale amber color that shows a deeply hazed, reddish-orange tinged hue when held up to the light. The aroma most noticeably smells of clove, but there is also more phenolics that lean towards, but don’t quite get to, aromas of plastic. Fruit aromatics also play a role here; hints of typical banana, a slight, weird tropical fruit note and some musky melon notes. there is almost a weird tartness this beer and there is a fairly big grain character that leans towards dusty crushed grain and cracker-like malt. There is a certain spiciness here as well that I can’t quite place; somewhat like pepper, or grains of paradise, maybe a hint of horseradish, I really can’t quite grasp it. An interesting nose, the higher original gravity seems to have produced a lot more esters and phenolics than one gets in a typical gravity Weizen-yeast ferment. I am not quite sure it all works though, but it is interesting enough to not be objectionable.

As I take my first sip I also breath in the aroma, at which point it gets a bit hot with volatile esters and higher alcohols. The flavor tastes of lightly sweet, dusty / chewy grain, with a backdrop of softer clove and other phenolic notes of plastic being lightly noticed. Quite spicy, especially through to the finish where the piquancy is magnified a bit by a wheat tartness; peppery notes in combination with the carbonation, sour ginger flavors, hot higher alcohols, . Some sour melon notes and some not quite ripe pear flavors add a touch of fruitiness to this beer. The body as a light fullness to it that is about right for a chewy Hefeweizen, but is down right dangerous for a beer of almost 10% abv; though the alcohol gets quite hot, so it ultimately is not hidden very well.

Clearly a derivative of a German Weizen and not nearly as funky as my description may lead one to believe; many of these flavors and aromas are noted particularly because they don’t usually play a role in the typical German Weizen profile. An interesting beer, even if it doesn’t quite work, and it doesn’t seem to have that stripped out, filtered to death character that is typical of many New Glarus beers (not to say this isn’t filtered, it may be, but it better survived the process than some of their other beers).

bottle, golden color, very fruity alcohol nose, flavors are banana, spicy dentene gum and finishes with clove and lemons

from 12 oz bottle. pours a relatively clear gold. nose is dominated by grapefruit up front. amazingly smooth with slight lacing, crisp up front and as it finishes. citrus like orange as it warms and the wheat comes out more to balance it. amazing, amazing beer

Bottle from Ross, president of Nambla. Pours a nice murkey orange amber with a white head and sticky lacing. Very nice banana clove esters, with some sugary wheat malt in the background. Medium to light bodied with a nice earthy texture. Nice pale wheat backbone, complimented by flavors of banana, clove, and spice. There is just the right amount of sweetness. Alcohol is apparent on the finish, with yet more clove and some yeast. It even has some hints of Belgian Tripel toward the end. This is well crafted beer. However, it’s not as refreshing as a well done Bavarian Hefe.