Sierra Nevada Pale Ale has always been a flagship beer around the Bay Area and Northern California in general. It made Chico and the Sierra Nevada brewery famous and has received numerous awards and high praise from noteworthy organizations. Far before I was interested in drinking beer I can recall faint memories of family and friend related functions that featured coolers stocked to the brim with the staple green label brew. Now that I'm at the point where I almost always opt for a beer opposed to a Juice Squeeze, I still don't go out of my way to sample the CA classic. But if you're a fan of Sierra Nevada and want to try a new varietal, the Kellerweis Hefeweizen is well worth checking out.
The Kellerweis is a refreshing and complex beer with strong flavors of clove and ripe banana. The brew is hazy and golden in color with plenty of suspended yeast that adds a lushness to the body and an uncommon amount of depth for a hefeweizen. The brew is one of the only domestic hefeweizen style beers that uses the traditional Bavarian style of open fermentation, a process that is labor intensive but well worth it for the added flavor complexity. The Kellerweis uses two-row pale, wheat, and Munich malts and either Sterling or Perle hops. The word "Keller" comes from the German word for cellar, the term that breweries use to refer to their fermentation system while the word "weiss" is German for white, or wheat beer. The Kellerweis is very flavorful and refreshing and would be great with a hamburger, bratwurst, a chocolate soufflé, or even bananes flambé!
Grade: B+
ALC:4.8%
IBU:15
OG:12.3 Plato
OG: Original Gravity measures the density of the fermentable sugars in the malt and water mixture with which brewers use at the start of any batch. The measurement uses the "Plato" scale, a hydrometer scale used to measure the density of wort (unfermented beer) in terms of percentage of extract (sucrose) by weight. Beer gets technical!
Dear Beerfox,
ReplyDeleteHow do you go about choosing your brews for review?
Dear William,
ReplyDeleteAt this point I have no official system or strategy for choosing the beers I review. As a general rule of thumb I try to choose brews that are accesible, interesting, tasty, yet obscure enough that most people may not have had the chance to try them. I will review a lot of Belgian, German, and American beers because I believe that they are some of the best! Thank you for your question.
Beer Fox