Ægir Bryggeri: Witbier (Norway: Belgian Style Wit: 4.7% ABV)
Visual: Cloudy lemon juice. Thin white head – mainly sud bubbles. Low carbonation.
Nose: Lemon. Pineapple juice. Coriander. Wheat. Dry. Meringue.
Body: Dry. Lemon juice and lemon curd. Cinnamon. Coriander. Carrot. Traditional lemonade. Light greenery. Palma violets. Slight cardboard.
Finish: Carrot. Dry. Wheat. Greenery. Cardboard. Palma violets. Menthol. Lime. Orange zest.
Conclusion: This seems very dry for a wit – feels quite highly attenuated, which is a mixed blessing here. It leans the beer away from the overly sweet popular interpretation and gives a good platform for fresh lemon flavor to come through. That element, combined with the dry base, makes for a pleasant mouth refresher in the mid body. It also lets the spice work delicately, it can be a rounding note rather than having to be pushed up to fight with a sweet base – coriander and carrot on the savoury side, and cinnamon dusted doughnuts on the slightly sweeter edges.
So with that said, what is working against it? Well the dryness also has characteristics similar to an over attenuated America Pale Ale – it gets slightly harsh near the end of the body and brings out an unpleasant cardboard like element in the finish. It is that finish that really hurts it – while the dryness can introduce weaker elements in the rest of the beer, they are usually contrasted by very well done elements. In the finish there is little redeeming to contrast the flaws. A pity, as shown by the first paragraph there is a lot of good in this beer but the finish just stomps on it.
So, it has promise, but really needs to work on the dryness balance as it really lets itself down in overtime (AKA the finish). I would recommend they keep trying though, as this feels like if the brewers keep pushing at it, it could be fine tuned to something very nice.
Background: OK, I grabbed this one because it is from Norway – we don’t see many of their beers over here, and they tend to be fairly solid. I went for their Wit as you don’t see that many of them comparatively, and it is a solid beer style, done here without and fancy craft twists. Felt it would be a good way to get a handle on the brewery. I was surprised by the can – the ring pull takes the entire top of the can off, more like a soup can kind of ring pulls. Drunk while listening to a mix made up of my most listened to tracks, so definitely ones I would enjoy for this beer session🙂. This was grabbed from Independent Spirit of Bath.
