Plank Hefeweizen

Brewed by Brauerei Plank Laaber
Style: German Hefeweizen
Laaber, Oberpfalz/Bayern, Germany

Cloudy dark gold, decent sized white head. Wheaty, crackery aroma. Wheaty flavor, too. lemon, maybe a touch of bubblegum, some fruity notes, and a crisp, peppery finish.

Taste: 9/8 Bottle(?Date. I got it for $2.99Yeah!) Looks: Hazy gold body, nice head. Aroma: Zest, fruit. Taste: Well balanced. Dry, thin bodied, fruity and quite lively. Finish is even and long.

Pours a cloudy copper, with a fizzy body, but minus the creamy head I associate with the better hefes (ie. Weihenstephaner) - somewhat sweet aroma, with lots of clove, a spicy, ginger-like character, tangy citrus fruits, and grain - fairly dry and tart, bordering on sour - quite bready and yeasty, with quite a spicy clove flavor - because of how dry the beer is, the yeastiness creates an odd mouthfeel on top of it - finish of stale hops and light bubblegum and fruitiness - lacking quite a bit of character.

Bottle. Heavy wheat nose, faint vanilla and clove. Just a splash of honey and citrus. Golden pour with a short beige head. Very dry, bland, overly carbonated, overly yeasty taste, a lightly sour tang with a lightly floral grainy touch. Medium, soft, slightly oily body. Pass!

Pours into my 25cl tulip glass with a frothy, initially three-finger thick, light tan colored head. The beer is an amber hue that shows an orangish, copper tint when held up to the light. The aroma has a characteristically, expressive, spicy clove note to it, plus a nice grassy grain note, some crushed malt aromatics and a soft fruitiness made up of faint berry notes and a touch of green apple. There even seems to be a slight butter-like component here that is very faint, but somehow doesn’t seem to be diacetyl.

Quite light bodied with a fizzy, well carbonated texture. The beer tastes most noticeably of spicy clove throughout the flavor profile; the clove phenols even manage to provide a touch of a bite to the finish along with a hop bitterness. The malt somehow seems a bit tired; grassy grain flavors, muddy bread flavors and a bright wheat tartness provide the bulk of the balance to the clove spiciness. The beer can seem a bit thin at times for a Hefeweizen; one usually expects a certain creamy, malt driven texture from the best examples of the style, which this seems to be lacking.

Not a bad beer, just not the world class Hefeweizen I was hoping for. Without a bottle date I am not sure how old this is, but I’ll definitely be on the look out for fresher bottles of this.

A disappointment compared to their other beers. My sample might have been old because it looks like this receives good scores generally. The standard wheat and banana are there. Cloudy orange, but no visible sediment.

Bottle (Dank an Jonas !) Deep golden, unclear, mid-sized creamy head; moderate toasted wheat-malty nose with a touch of bananas; creamy MF, medium bodied, moderate sweet-sourish flavour; soft sourish-fruity finish. Well rounded, very pleasant Weizen.........

Plank’s Bavarian Hefeweizen kicks off my exploration of German beers. For too long I’ve passed over the inexpensive beers in the German refrigerator case, craving instead the luxury of Belgian brews. But German brewers deserve their due. While lagers were once unappealing to me, on charges of being too simple, I’ve learned that simple, in a very wabi-sabi kind of way, can be very, very good. This chatoyant, fiercely red-range beer is topped with a pillowy white head, freckled with pock marks - a pretty beer. The aroma gives off a truly seductive combination of pineapple, pine, clove, cinnamon, brown sugar, tamales (roasted corn husks?) and braised pork. Maybe a strange aroma, but definitely enticing. The flavor likewise has a slew of unlikely bedfellows: banana, chocolate, pineapple, a streak of mango and a light yeastiness all served on a bed of brisk carbonation. The flavor, en totale, is a bit light, which allows the carbonation to overpower it a little, but it remains engaging enought to be a refreshing and well developed beer.