Widmer Hefeweizen
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(3 votes, average: 4.67 out of 5)
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When you’re trapped at the airport, sometimes the only thing you can control is what type of beer your order.
I spent several more hours in Texas than I had planned, thanks to poor weather. Had everything gone well, I would have been enjoying a beer at Fenway Park, watching the Red Sox play the Orioles — my flight was scheduled to arrive just as the game started, and I going to jet straight to the ballpark. Instead, my wife had to give up our tickets (she was in Boston, but didn’t want to go to the game alone) while I curled up at a bar in the Dallas/Fort Worth airport.
All around me, would-be passengers were drowning their delayed sorrows in tall glasses of Widmer Hefeweizen. Who am I to question the wisdom of the crowd in a situation like that?
Portland Oregon’s Widmer Brothers Brewery is purported to have brewed the first “American-style Hefeweizen” in 1986, serving it with a lemon to enhance the beer’s citrus notes and immediately causing the world to ask, “Wait, why is there lemon in this beer?”
Most of the U.S. has come to accept a wedge of lemon or a slice of orange in our hefeweizens without much question. Unlike the lime that goes into many popular Mexican beers, the fruit in a wheat beer is intended to enhance the flavor — not to disguise it.
Widmer’s website describes the beer as:
A golden unfiltered wheat beer that is truly cloudy and clearly superb. Ever since Widmer introduced Hefeweizen to America in 1986, ours has been the standard by which all other Hefeweizens are judged.
I’ve had this beer in Boston before — Widmer merged with Red Hook, with whom they previously had a distribution agreement, in July 2008 and formed the Craft Brewers Alliance. Anheuser-Busch owns a share in the company and distributes Widmer Hefeweizen quite widely in the United States.
The beer arrived in a tall mug, looking deliciously hazy and lemony-orange. The draft pour still had an inch of head when it arrived at my table, with a wedge of lemon hanging desperately to the side of the glass. I knocked the lemon into the glass and began to enjoy the beer with hardly a moment to savor the aroma — getting delayed and missing the ballgame wasn’t doing much for my patience.
Widmer Hefeweizen is lemony and smooth in the mouth, with a wheaty, malty, biscuity taste. There’s some bitterness on the back, and a funny yeast taste that somewhat detracts from the citrus and malt. But then again, I was at an airport bar — who am I to complain?
It’s a mild and drinkable wheat beer, 30 IBU and 4.9% ABV. Not daring in any way, but easy enough to drink that it had a bar full of takers who could have easily stuck to Miller or Shiner, or that lonely tap of Sam Adams Winter Lager that was still up in April.
My only challenge was just having one beer. Fortunately, the flight delay was cut from 4 hours to a mere 2 hours. So before I knew it, I was back home to Boston, my wife, and my collection of good beer. All told, it was a happy ending — at least in Fenway Park, where the Sox came back and topped the Orioles. I landed in time to hear the end on the radio.
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2 Comments
April 24th, 2009 at 10:28 pm
I generally don’t like anything floating in my beer other than my liver, but here’s something special about a cold Hefeweisen with a lemon on a hot day.
Living just up the hill from Widmer, I’ve inhaled a lot more Hefeweisen than I’ve ever imbibed. Their new expanded brewery belches out tasty smells almost 24/7, and as long as the wind is blowing upriver like usual the smell wafts through the neighborhood daily.
Widmer Hef is a comfort when traveling, when confronted with a line up of AB taps, even if its not my favorite beer, it still tastes like a real beer, even with a lemon floating in it.
April 29th, 2009 at 11:49 am
Grabbing a good airport beer can be a challenge. I hope you you don’t have many more trips this year, because at some airports, the selection is basically the same three – five beers regardless of where you go. Only airport that seems to have a good non-mass distribution selection is Dulles. There, you can head to Old Dominion’s brew pub as well as Harry’s which will have a few local selections on tap.
If you’re there, I recommend anything from Starr Hill, a Brewery down in Charlottesville, VA.