Keep the Linalool. I'll Have the Malic Acid: Appleweizen by Pearl Street Brewery

While I may not be writing about Oktoberfests again this autumn, that doesn't mean that brews of the season have fallen off my radar. To wit: Pearl Street Brewery's Appleweizen.

Despite the fact that I like both apples and beer, I don't get overly excited about apple beers. The ones that I can recall having are Furthermore's Fallen Apple and New Glarus' Apple Ale although I'm sure I must have drunk others at some point. The former combines apple cider with a cream ale while the latter does so with a brown ale. Both beers are okay by me although the apple tends to overshadow the beer. Malt sweetness isn't given much of a chance to stand in contrast to the tartness of the apple. I can drink one and am happy to move onto something different.

Pearl Street takes yet another tack and combines the juice from Honeycrisp apples with a hefeweizen. The German wheat bier is known for its fruity esters and phenols so I was intrigued enough to buy a six pack. That and the Appleweizen just looked so lonely sitting next to empty shelf space where the shiny new Linalool IPA had been.

One thing that I like about summer is that there's more daylight and thusly it is easier for someone like me who is completely incompetent at still photography to take decent photos. Now with daylight on the wane, my pictures are, generally speaking, plummeting to new depths of lousiness. This one, however, isn't too bad. You can see that Appleweizen is a lovely beer that radiates a golden hue. You can also tell that it is quite clear. My pour produced a small frothy head but what little there was lingered for a spell. My photo also shows that the wealth of bubbles there were moving upward through the brew.

What my picture cannot show is the wonderful aroma. Unsurprisingly, apple was the first thing that caught my nose. It smelled like fresh cider with a moderate tartness. After that I caught some of the expected esters/phenol aromas that one normally gets from a hefeweizen, namely, clove and banana. It was quite a fruity extravaganza. There was also some grain/wheat scent to be had but, really, the smell here is all about fruit.

Appleweizen is a paragon in truthful advertising. As with the aroma, a fresh apple cider taste stood out in the taste with a nice moderate tartness. The hefeweizen yeast provided a wealth of esters/phenols for my tongue with banana and bubble gum flavors. Much to my delight, the apple flavors were prominent but not overwhelming. I could taste the beer underneath. In addition to all the fruit and a spot of wheat and malt, all those bubbles gave the taste a little dryness and an almost champagne-like sparkly sensation.

The beer finished slightly dry with the carbonation, apple tartness, and some herbal hop bitterness all pitching in. Sadly, my glass was left with very little Schaumhaftvermoegen. Just a spot here and there as most of the foam slid gently back into the beer.

Pearl Street has brewed a really nice apple beer. It has a medium-light body which was fairly smooth and when combined with all the carbonation makes for something that goes down easily. It's just very light and nimble on the tongue. Yet it also has lots of flavor. The apple was tart and tasty but it did not consign the hefeweizen flavors to an estery oblivion. Appleweizen is 5% A.B.V. and is a fine "salute to the fall harvest", as the brewery advertises, and a great late summer/early fall beer. Drink it now while our thermostats still reach near the 60 degree mark.

Junk food pairing: Pair Appleweizen with Buffalo Blue Cheese Combos. You'll love the pas de deux that the sweetness from the beer and the saltiness of the Combos engage in. in addition, the sharpness of the blue cheese flavoring and the gentle chili heat contrast nicely with the more restrained fruitiness of the brew.

This Beer Has Not Aged Well: Appleanche from Capital

I first tasted Capital's Appleanche last year at a pre-Great Taste event. Appleanche is an apfel (apple) doppelbock and it sounded like a tasty preview of autumn. I didn't really care for it all that much on that hot summer day but on a chilly winter night, I revisited it.

One of our cats photobombed my picture but I think that she did it in a rather artistic way by framing herself in the glass. A very naughty katze. Her presence and my shoddy photography don't do justice to the beer's wonderful gold-light amber color. Appleanche is clear and my gentle pour produced only the slightest head. The Schaumhaftvermoegen was minimal with a bit of foam clinging to the sides of the glass only briefly before sliding into the beer.When I opened the bottle, I caught a big whiff of fresh apfel. Sweet but no overly so. More like a Granny Smith than a Red Delicious. This brew smells great. After putting the glass to my nose I caught that sweet apfel scent again plus a little bit of bready malt.

The predominance of the fruit carried into the flavor. Immediately upon hitting my tongue I tasted the apfel. Mostly sweet but there was some tartness there as well for balance. But it isn't long before the bottom falls out and the apfel flavor disappears and it replaced by that warm alcohol flavor. While 7.7% A.B.V. makes for a fairly hearty brew, I wouldn't think I'd taste the booze. Almost as soon as that slight burning flavor arrives it dissolves into a herbal hop taste which lingers on the palate giving a dry, slightly bitter finish. Mouthfeel is smooth although the carbonation and the hops keep it from being syrupy.

Sadly, Appleanche was exactly how I remembered it from back in August - disappointing. While the fresh apfel aroma and luscious counterpoint of sweet-tart flavor are truly wonderful, I failed to taste any of the malt which was present in the nose. I drank half a bottle of it trying to discern the defining flavor of the doppelbock but failed. Perhaps it's part of the sweetness at the front end of the sip but the apfel was dominant. Quite aside from that boozy middle act, the flavors here just don't meld and instead come in waves. I just failed to taste the apfel und malt pas de deux and the hops were left on their own at the finish instead of balancing the expected sweetness.

Capital's webpage gives me the impression that Appleanche is to be a permanent late-summer fixture in their line-up. Hopefully this August's batch will do a better job of letting the bready sweetness of the style shine through and integrate it with the fruit and hops. A failure, perhaps, but a beer certainly worth getting right.

Junk food pairing: I suspect Appleanche would go well with Lay's Barbeque Ham potato chips. The smoky, porky goodness would surely be tasty along with the apfel flavor in the brew.