Now before we begin I have a confession to make. I’m not a great fan of wheat beer – never have been.

I can honestly say I’ve tried to like it. I’ve supped many of the generally accepted best examples from Germany and Belgium in an attempt to convince my palette that it’s as amazing as many of my beery friends say it is.

My personal issue with the style is simply that I struggle to find drinking pleasure with a beer whose predominant tastes are banana, band aid and bubblegum mixed up with coriander and cloves.

So with this beer skeleton now publicly out of the closet lets get on with the review of Sigtuna Brygghus’s latest release, its oh-so-cooly named Vårweizen.

For the non-Swedish speakers vår means spring and this beer is part of a clutch of new beers recently introduced into the Systembolaget as part of the theme ‘spring and spicy cuisine’.

Now you only need to take a look at the photo to the left to see that you’d have to be REALLY creative to call this a spring beer when there’s over a metre of snow outside and the thermometer is literally frozen under minus 10 degrees. It’s more the latter category that this very unusual wheat beer falls into.

Sigtuna itself describes Vårweizen as an aromatic wheat beer based upon a southern German style with a ‘modern touch’ – the touch being the highly unusual addition of American hops.

This would no doubt make most Germans spit out their sauerkraut in disgust, as Sigtuna have clearly broken the style rules here which say that yeast should be the star of wheat beers with hops playing a very small supporting role at best.

Just as well I’m not from the style police then, because those hops make this beer, turning it from a potentially rather flat example of a weizen into something far more different and interesting.

Vårweizen is an unpasteurised beer that pours a cloudy amber (remember to swirl the bottle a little to agitate the suspended yeast floating around in it, otherwise your first glass will be far clearer than your last).

On the nose the phenolic smell of banana is clearly there but it is more restrained than in most other examples I have tried. There’s some peach too and an undercurrent of spice which isn’t obviously cloves but more like freshly cracked black pepper corns.

In the mouth VårWeizen is crisp but has a ‘skinny’ mouthfeel that lacks the soft creaminess I’m looking for from the wheat. There’s a dash of malt sweetness followed by some uplifting citrus acidity and then come the hops, sweeping in to finish the job with a nip of bitterness.

With all these qualities and its moderate ABV I can see why this beer will pair well with spicy cuisine. As a stand alone drink however it didn’t quite do it for me, although it gets plenty of ‘cred’ for daring to be different.

Vårweizen

A wheat beer (with a twist) from Sigtuna Brygghus

5% ABV

Systembolaget Article Number: 11552

Are you already tired of staring out of rain-spattered windows waiting for the first snow to set in? Do you feel clumsy and lethargic because you can’t remember the last time you saw the sun?  If you do then you need to try this beer. It’s summer in a bottle.

La Trappe Witte was launched in October at the Systembolaget nestled among a crowd of much darker, more meaty beers that seemed on face value much more suited to the winter season.

I confess I thought the Systembolaget planners had lost the plot launching this bright and breezy Belgium-style Witbier (white beer) just as the cold weather set in. But perhaps on second thoughts they knew exactly what they were doing all along as this beer is more welcome than a flu jab and the side effects are much more enjoyable.

La Trappe Witte Trappist is the only Trappist Witbier made anywhere. By way of background explanation there are only seven Trappist beer producers in the world – six in Belgium and La Trappe (the brewery behind this beer) based in the Netherlands.

To qualify as a Trappist beer means passing three strict criteria; the beer must be brewed within the walls of a Trappist monastery under the supervision of Trappist monks;  the monks need to be in charge of operations and finally all proceeds must go to charities or the running of the brewery.

Witbier is the Belgium interpretation of a wheat beer, brewed with a proportion of unmalted wheat and then traditionally spiced with Curacao orange peel and coriander.

La Trappe Witte pours a stunning pale hazy gold. It looks like I’d imagine home-made lemonade would look like poured by a kind ol’ Texas grandma on a scorching hot day in the deep south.

And zesty lemons clearly play their part mixed in with the beer’s aroma too, together with flower petals, green herbs and spicy bitter oranges.

In the mouth the creamy wheat smoothens out the spice heat and you’re left with a mild and uplifting acidic finish, with a lingering sensation as though you’ve just squeezed a drop of lemon juice on your tongue.

La Trappe Witte Trappist

A witbier from De Koningshoeven in the Netherlands

5.5% ABV

Article Number: 1573-03

(ps: It’s the yeast that largely makes the beer cloudy. Remember to swirl the bottle halfway through pouring it into your glass so you get all that yeasty goodness!)