Plank Hefeweizen

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

Copper color with a thin head. Light wheat aroma. Very heavy and strong wheat taste. Light clove and banana yeast. Good and solid, but actually a little behind their others I’ve tried.

Pours a light caramel brown color with a large off-white head. Aroma of banana, wheat, and spices. Decent flavor for a hefe, palate seems a little thick. Not too impressed with this one.

Big off white bubbles come out and create a short lasting voluminous head. Hazy golden color with a tall, big bubbled head. Aromas of wheat and mild yeast, hints of cloves in the background. Rather light and, for a lack of a better term, boring scent. Very easy drinking. Light zip that helps the thick wheat presence. Wheat flavors, with just a few hints of cloves, light mint and minerals. Actually quite quenching and crisp. Not a fresh and deep in malt flavors hefe, but not bad.

500ml bottle - Pours hazy light copper with a two finger white head. The aroma is of wheat malt, bananas, and yeast. The flavor is of light, crisp malts with a good balance of mild hops that come through in a fairly dry finish. It’s refreshing but struck me as a touch watery. I had it right after mowing the lawn and it was nice, but slightly higher rated on the hefeweizen scale than I expected (RB says 95th percentile for the style) given that to me it doesn’t really stand out.

Bottle from Total Wine. Pretty disappointing pour for a hefe, kind of a dark brown, like someone put a turd in my real hefe.. No head whatsoever.. Smell is fruity with some banana in it, but nothing like I would imagine it to be. Taste is redeeming, as the beer is fairly easy to drink, and it actually tastes much better than it smells. If I didnt have to look at it, or smell it, I would rate it higher. Easy drinking, but over all nothing really stands out here..

Pours clear/brown with a large, fluffy head,. Aroma is banana, caramel, and fruity flavors. Fruity, banana, caramel flavors with a fairly sharp hop bitterness.

[Bottle, thanks Guerde] Pours clear deep amber with a nearly nonexistent off-white head. Aroma is a little odd--there is a little banana, but mainly yeast and something else that I cannot place. Taste is is pretty sweet with subdued banana and a fair amount of yeast. Medium mouthfeel with an average length finish. I think this bottle had been sitting on the shelf for a year, so I will need to re-rate this beer when I have a known fresh bottle.

(bottle) Pours a semi-hazy dark amber with a large white head that quickly dissipates. Quite a strange color for a hefe. Aroma was initially very sweet with banana esters and honey, almost offensively so, but after awhile the yeast and clove made an appearance to provide some balance. Lemon appears as well. The taste is somewhat average with light flavors of banana, but mainly spicy clove along with lemon that supplies most of the flavor here. Towards the end, there’s the trademark wheaty twang along with just a light yeasty finish that’s really brief. The mouthfeel was medium, and the carbonation was lively. This was a rating from an older bottle, so I’ll have to try a fresher sample.