14 October 2010

Hopheads' ball

It's back to the old whipping boy that is American wheat beers today. Other than a handful of notable exceptions they're a characterless bunch, and when there's lots of top-quality pale ales and lagers brewed to the same specifications, I don't quite see the point of them. So I was very interested to find out what the highly-regarded Three Floyds brewery did with the style.

Seems to me they walked around it a few times, gave it a good look over and decided that the only possible way of salvaging it was to add shedloads of hops. The end result, Gumballhead, is a thin and rather harsh beer with 4.8% ABV. It's shockingly citric on the first sip with little by way of follow-up -- just a bit of sugary sweetness, a touch of soap and an irritating wateriness which becomes the dominant characteristic once your palate has adjusted to the hops. Had I not been told it was a wheat beer in advance I doubt I'd have spotted it: there's no wheaty flavours and hardly any haze.

On the plus side, the aroma is gorgeous and runs alongside the whole drinking experience reminding me of how good a beer this could have been with a bit more malt depth to it. If ever a beer disproved the adage "if in doubt, add more hops", this is it.

3 comments:

  1. "Had I not been told it was a wheat beer in advance I doubt I'd have spotted it: there's no wheaty flavours and hardly any haze."

    That's American wheat beer for you. They use "standard" ale yeast too, so there's no sign of any ester action going on. I'm with you, probably my least favoured beer style.

    BeerBirraBier.

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  2. The worst beers I have had over here have all been in the "American Wheat" style, someone really should point out that Cascade is not the be all and end all of hops.

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  3. Yeah! (It's Sorachi Ace this week, isn't it? Or was that last week?)

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