Summer time is a great time for beer. I have had a long history of brewing wheat beers. Many years ago I can remember drinking pitcher after pitcher of great German style Hefeweizens.

Somewhere along the way, I lost my taste for them.

Recently, I had started doing research into Hefeweizen again. In my research, I discovered things I already knew but never put into the front of my mind I guess. I think the reason Hefeweizen fell out of favor with me was that I wasn’t really getting fresh enough examples anymore. As my beer palette was maturing, I didn’t realize that the freshness factor needed in most all styles of wheat beer was so crucial. I assumed I just didn’t like the taste of Hefeweizen anymore. (It made be quite sad, because those pitcher sessions with great friends is still a vivid memory for me.)

So I decided to take a simple approach to brewing a Hefeweizen. I wanted to brew it quick and drink it early. I wanted to use ingredients I was comfortable with and liked. I also wanted to restrain the fermentation character a little bit to avoid maybe generating too “hefey” of a taste; if that even makes sense.

What I have is a great thirst quencher laid out in this Hefeweizen tasting video.

I fermented this one on the really cool side, 62F.  I the banana esters are really muted and the clove character is the only thing really hinting at all that I used the classic WLP300 Hefe strain.  Even at that the clove character is pretty muted too. Just enough to make the beer appear “spicy” but that could just as easily be coming from the East Kent Goldings hops.

Lastly, there is a pretty cool twist in these beer. For the Pilsner malt, I used traditional continental german Pils from Weyermann. But for the wheat portion I used malted wheat from Valley Malt in Hadley, MA. They are a “craft” malt house bringing small batch malting back to the local markets here in MA.

Both John and I really enjoyed this beer. It is a going to be a great summer drinker but you’ve got to drink Hefeweizen quick (or at least I do). At the time of this writing its been about two weeks since the video was shot. The beer is still drinking nice, but some of the bright edges are starting to fade. I want to save some it to do a side by side with a wheat beer John has going… but I am not sure. If it starts to take a deeper turn, I’ll have to crack open the liter mugs and start getting this one down.

So give this style a second look. It is not too late to brew up a great Summer Hefeweizen.

Brew on! I’ll post the full recipe separately soon. Enjoy the video.