Upland Wheat
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(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
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Travel weeks cause me anxiety, because I never know what kind of beer I’m going to find. I have a stockpile of great beer at home, but on the road things are left more to chance (see my posts a few weeks ago from Texas!).
Yet, this trip to Indiana proved pretty fruitful — I enjoyed a good IPA in my old stomping grounds, discovered a new and very limited Imperial Rye Pale at a downtown Indianapolis brewery, and still managed to find a good beer at the airport before flying back home.
Indy has a new airport, with a huge concourse ringed by restaurants and shopping just after the check in counters but before the security checkpoints. I arrived about an hour and a half early, so I lingered in this concourse searching for a good beer.
The racing themed Indy 500 Grill had a busy bar on this Wednesday afternoon, so I walked over to check out the taps. They only had 5 taps, but not one of them said Bud, Miller, or Coors — I remember Sam Adams and Pilsner Urquell — but my attention was fully on the only local beer in the lineup.
“Excuse me, is that Upland Wheat?”
Indeed it was. I couldn’t get to the Upland again, but the Upland came to me.
I’m a big fan of the Upland Wheat, having consumed many pints on warm summer days out on the Upland’s patio. In fact, though I had already moved to Chicago, I was visiting Bloomington and having a pint of Wheat at the Upland on the very day in 2002 that the Upland Wheat won Gold at the Great American Beer Festival. The Tap Room erupted with applause and the Wheat began pouring!
According to the Upland website, the Upland Wheat is:
A classic rendition of Belgian Wit Bier, light on the tongue and easy going, refreshingly tart, with a distinct citrus finish. In the Tap Room we serve our pints of Wheat with a wedge of orange to accent the inherent spiciness.
The airport isn’t the Upland’s Tap Room, but for a while it seemed that way as the lemony-sweet aroma wafting from the freshly poured 22 oz pint glass carried me back to Bloomington.
Upland Wheat poured a hazy lemon color from the tap into a tall wheat glass, with a rich, creamy white head. The aroma was lemony citrus with a sweet malty base. Taste is sugary, lemony, and crisp. The beer has a mild hop when held in the mouth, but the bitterness can’t quite hold back that citrus sweetness. The hint of bitterness clamoring to be heard in the aftertaste is quelled by the more dominant sweetness. It is refeshing, crisp, and distinctive; smooth and liquid in the mouth, Upland Wheat has a slick feeling without the graininess present in many witbiers.
I do have my qualms with the Upland Wheat, however. Billed as a witbier, it lacks the spiciness and depth of flavor you would expect of a good witbier. This is a boring, one-dimensional witbier; but as a summer ale — baby, this is delightful! The Upland has begun to rebrand its beer while pursuing a “green” persona (the Upland Pale Ale is now called “Helios Pale Ale“) and I hope they rebrand the Wheat as a pure summer ale.
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