Delving Fine Brews with Lovibond Sparge

This sunny day is heating up fast; my cousin Lovi and I are enjoying the shade of a large ponderosa pine. She is telling me about wheat beers she has known, brewed with a grain mix that is up to half wheat.

“Weizenbier, weisse, witbier, biere blanche, white beer, hefeweizen, weizenbock, all wheat beers,” she says, her unplaceable accent changing slightly with each term, “All fine for hot summer days. A little bit sour, good for thirst, eh? In Europe, beers made with wheat and barley both are very old. In fact, for centuries Bavaria reserved it for only royal brewers to make. In America too, very old, but now just coming back after Prohibition to being made again. We can perhaps Taste both, today, hefeweizen from Bavaria and from USA.”

“Hefeweizen, Lovi? It sounds like some kind of cow, maybe a particularly wise Hereford heifer.” Lovibond, whose English is really very good, laughs. Her long black hair looks Gypsyish in the summer weather, and summer colors on her tall frame enhance the effect.

“‘Hefe’ means yeast,” she tells me, “in beer not filtered. The hefeweizen is cloudy, full of flavors. Some wheat beers have flavors like chewing gum, or spices.”

Like chewing gum? I have heard that wheat beer is an acquired taste, but this sounds, um, interesting, to be polite. Yet I must admit that my cuz has led me on some fascinating explorations of beer so far.

The clear, hot weather prompts us to pack a picnic again, somewhere near water. Watson Lake sounds perfect; we can scramble around the boulders and find a quiet spot from which to watch great blue herons and an assortment of ducks, and maybe a good-looking man or two in a sailboat. First, a trip to the liquor store.

“Ah, you have a good choice of wheat beers here in Arizona!” Lovibond is pleased; often enough her continental palate finds not enough to her liking. This time, however, the challenge is which to choose.

“The Paulaner Natural Wheat, it is a good Munich Hefe-Weizen. A dunkel, a dark wheat beer, that would be good too, for the flavors. Spaten-Franziskaner, it is also from Munich, very Bavarian, a dunkel hefe-Weisse from there. I think we try both, and one from your country. You pick.”

There are some American wheat beers, some unfiltered, but the one that catches my eye uses the old European term. Fire Hydrant Hefeweisen (sometimes also called Hook and Ladder) is brewed in Utica, New York for FireStation 5 Brewing Company of Portland, Oregon. It boasts a warm golden label with the fire station image, and an emblem of an old fire truck with the word “Ardent” over it. A different atmosphere than the human subjects of the Munich labels, a jolly-looking Franziskaner monk with beer in hand, or the reveling Bavarians of the Paulaner. Do American labels tend to avoid human subjects? I promise myself to notice in the future.

We pack some food and Lovi’s heavy glass goblets, and put our wheat beers on ice. It’s an easy walk out to the lake and the boulders along the Peavine Trail before we veer from the path and explore some of the nooks and crannies of the Granite Dells. We find wide rocks with a fine view of the water, just right for setting out our food, our beer, and ourselves.

The sun is no longer overhead when we pour the hefeweizens, so we get a nice lighting effect through the translucent beer. The bottle-finishing of the Paulaner and Franziskaner dunkel give those two a distinctly cloudier appearance than the FireStation 5, although, unfiltered as it is, it too has the characteristic hefe haze.

Even in the light, the Franziskaner dunkel is a study in shades of brown. Not the brown of porter, or chocolate, but a soft mouse-brown, with a tan, short-lived head that smells sharp and fruity. After the clarity of this aroma, the first taste of this wheat beer is surprisingly murky, a yeasty complexity of flavors. As this beer warms in the sun, the swampiness lightens into more fruity tones, banana and cherry. Breathing in the smell of this beer once again, there it is... Juicy Fruit gum! And it seems oddly in character with the other aromas and flavors of this beer.

Paulaner Natural Wheat pours a murky golden color with a creamy, light, bumpy head reminiscent of puffy white clouds floating in a blue sky. The wheaty smell of this beer is also summery, and farmlike, like the smell of sweet horse feed. The first taste brings a vision of a golden meadow, hazy with drifting pollens and tiny flying insects. It is light, cool and acidic; as Lovibond says, a good hot-weather beer. With this brew comes a tingly, happy-feeling high.

Agricultural images continue coming to mind with the Fire Hydrant Hefeweisen. If, like me, you have fond memories of a small, pastoral dairy farm, you might smell hints of sweet silage and of slightly fermenting grain caught in corners. Spicy aromas and tastes come through – clove, nutmeg – but only when I pay close attention and look for them. Fire Hydrant, like the other hefeweizens, is light and tart, but sharper and more clear-tasting than the European brews. Lovi predicted that; evidently hop varieties grown in the US are typically more resiny and sharp-flavored than their relatives from the Old Country, and Americans tend to like their beer clear.

Wheat beers are light, even the dark “dunkel.” Now I understand why sometimes “wheat” and “white” are interchangeable terms in the beer world. It is almost as though the cloudy taste itself of these yeasty wheat beers is somehow “white.” The hefeweizens have inspired our wonderfully happy feeling, and memories of farm life evoked by these scents and tastes have been sweet and nostalgic. But I’ve learned that my palate is not yet attuned to these subtle, light flavors, and I’m looking forward to something less “white” next time.