A bockier shade of wheat
Like dunkelweizen but bigger is one hell of a stylistic sales pitch, so I have high hopes. It’s more brown than black with the characteristic cloudiness of a wheat beer but surprisingly minimal head retention. The issue could be under carbonation. Aroma is very moderate with a little bit of wheat beer spiciness and a hint of alcohol. The latter is mild in the taste as well rather than hot/solventy. The spice is stronger in the taste and skews much more towards clove than banana. I don’t get much sweet at all; certainly not the deep dark fruit and raisin flavors. There’s nothing in the way of hops so the overall effect is bready malt flavor with the distinct taste of wheat and classic weiss yeast notes. This beer is like a bigger, darker weiss beer without being a richer weiss beer. The body is heavy but there’s not much behind it. Having that thickness without a greater depth of flavor feels like a missed opportunity.
The principal malt in this beer is 8.25 pounds of dark wheat. The bock-side base malts are 4 pounds, 2 ounces pilsner and 1 pound, 10 ounces of Munich. Rounding things out are 6.6 ounces each of Caramel 40 and Special B along with 3.3 ounces of pale chocolate malt. Mash temperature and time was normal despite the large percentage of wheat, but the pilsner required a ninety minute boil. Just under an ounce and a half of Hallertauer went in at the sixty minute mark. Unlike lager bocks, this one need an ale yeast for flavor. We used WLP300 Hefeweizen. Efficiency was not great and OG came in at 1.070 – just barely in style but well below predicted. The 1.018 finish was spot on.