Paulaner: Weissbier Non-Alcoholic (Germany: Low alcohol: 0.0% ABV)
Visual: Cloudy banana yellow body. Huge mounded white head. Lots of small bubble carbonation, but hard to make out in the cloudy body.
Nose: Dried beef slices. Crisp. Brown bread. Vanilla. Cinnamon.
Body: Vanilla. Iced tea. Light fudge. Light banoffee. Cinnamon. Thick mouthfeel. Custard.
Finish: Orange zest. Cardboard bitterness. Malt chocolate. Dried beef slices. Custard. Wheat. Teabags.
Conclusion: Dried beef slices? Dried beef slices notes in a weisse? I’m as shocked as you are, but yep, there it is. Not a heavy note but there is a savoury, kind of meaty thing that hangs around the beer. Straight up, that isn’t the best note to have – but let’s put that to one side for now, look at the rest of the beer, and then we can come back to it.
So, the beer is fairly thick, giving a good texture with quite a sweet set of toffee and custard notes, even a hint of banoffee that calls to the banana notes you would expect from a weisse, just in a more dessert way. This applies to a low of the notes – the spice comes across more cinnamon than cloves or the more savoury spice of a lot of weisse beers. It isn’t bad, just sweeter and more easy going than expected.
The low alcohol is visible, as is often the case, in iced tea like notes mid body and dry teabags in the finish. Despite them managing a good texture with what malt they had, there is no hiding that this is an alcohol free beer.
So, looping back to the start and bringing that dried beef slices back into the conversation. It is still the same – just this dry, savoury note that seems to hand around the beer. With the fairly big sweetness it doesn’t manage to intrude too much – a flaw definitely – but not more so than those evident low alcohol tells. Just something to be aware of.
It is pleasant enough, but has a lot of non beery characteristics. It does the job if it is what is available, but is far from my main choice for low abv drinking.
Background: I don’t think I’ve ever tried the alcohol version of Paulaner Weisse so I can’t make any comparison between the two, but the beers I have tried of theirs have been very enjoyable. So, anyway, I saw this as part of the low alcohol selection at Beercraft, and decided to grab it for a try. Not much else to add apart from the fact I went with a bit of a mix of erock tunes on youtube as backing sounds. Found his most recent take on Mortal Kombat Meets Metal and fell down a bit of a rabbit hole of his music.
