A day late, but not a dollar short. This week's entry into New Beer Thursday comes from a brewery that I am incredibly excited is now in Texas, the great Jolly Pumpkin brewery out of Michigan. Jolly Pumpkin is known far and wide for making awesome barrel aged sour and wild ales. They've been doing it for a long time, well before it became THE thing to do. Not only that, they do it extremely well.
This particular beer is a traditional farmhouse hefeweizen made with local wild and sour cultures and aged for a time in oak barrels. Now a traditional German Hefeweizen pours a cloudy yellow, with a thick thick white head, and has notes of clove and banana on the nose and palate. So with that in mind, I poured the beer.
It pours a bright golden sunshine color, not very cloudy at all. Its capped by a thin white head that quickly dissipates into a thin film covering the surface of the beer. The first whiff of the beer brings a hint of cloves and banana, the second brings a souring tartness, hints of barnyard, that one should expect from a beer like this. The mouthfeel is thinner when compared to a traditional hefeweizen. Good amount of carbonation, very bright flavors, tart, sour, barnyardy. Some white pepper, and other spices appear as the beer warms. Maybe cloves? No banana. This is a good beer, very enjoyable and drinkable, but what hurts it for me is calling it a hefe. Right or wrong I have some expectations when I hear that, and this beer as good as it is, doesn't meet the definition of a Hefe for me with its flavors. Good sour beer though.
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