It must be quite a noble brew, the beer that deserves the honour of being poured into a beer glass specially developed for this style of beer. The characteristic wheat beer glass has no handle, because the wheat still tastes good even when it has been warmed a little by hand.
The radiant crown of fine-pored foam should be capped by an inch of foam. Drink this sessionable beer in large gulps. Any yeast residue remains in the foot of the glass, even when you take the last sip. Today, wheat, weiss or Hefeweizen beer stands for Bavaria like hardly any other drink. But this was not always the case. On the contrary.
Even in the later Middle Ages, Bavaria was still considered a wine country, while the Hanseatic cities in the north and in Flanders were among the great beer producers and exporters. In Bavaria, where beer quality left much to be desired at the time, people looked enviously at cities like Hamburg. Because good beer not only gives pleasure, it also fills the state coffers thanks to taxes.
The first step towards making Bavaria a beer state was the Purity Law, still known today, in the Bavarian State Order of 1516, which stated that beer could only be made from barley, hops and water.
On the one hand, this was to ensure that no dubious and sometimes harmful ingredients were used, but on the other hand it also meant that brewing with wheat was forbidden. This noble grain was to be reserved for bakeries.
The ban was later gradually lifted and, especially after the Thirty Years' War, which affected the country's vineyards, the rise of wheat beer began.
Go Bananas!
Anyone who has ever compared pumpernickel and Sunday pancakes knows that the taste of grain differs depending on the variety. In beer, too, the raw material has a great influence on the aroma, as wheat malt percentages of 50 per cent and more are common.
However, the banana note characteristic of wheat beer comes from the special top-fermenting yeast and the higher fermentation temperatures. The fact that wheat is often described as a summer beer has primarily to do with the fact that this beer was also brewed in summer (because this beer also tastes good in winter).
Bottom-fermented beers (e.g. lagers) could only be brewed during the cold months before the invention of the refrigeration machine. That Weissbier does not refer to the colour of the beer is proven by the "Dark Weisses", which are brewed with a proportion of roasted malt.
Stronger Weizenbock or Weizen-Doppelbock beers are also brewed, as is the noble Kristallweizen, which is filtered before bottling. Among the non-alcoholic beers, non-alcoholic wheat, some of which are also brewed bottom-fermented, proved to be a particularly aromatic and popular alternative. Stronger hopped wheat beers are also brewed around the globe today, as are traditional Belgian Blanches or Wit beers.
Whereas wheat beers used to be served almost exclusively from 5-dl bottles, and more rarely from the tap, today they can also be found in 3.3-dl bottles or cans - not infrequently with eye-catching designs, as you would expect from hip craft breweries.
