Veldensteiner: Mandarina Bavaria Weissbier (Germany: Hefeweizen: 5.4% ABV)
Visual: Cloudy dark overripe banana to apricot color. Huge yellowed, loose bubbled head.
Nose: Mandarin orange. Fresh and tart. Fresh lemon juice. Light cinnamon. Coriander. Wheat flakes. Light grapefruit. Dried banana. Cake sponge.
Body: Mandarin orange. Slightly thicker body than expected. Toffee. Lemon juice. Peppery. Wheaty flecks mouthfeel.
Finish: Wheaty. Cream. Coriander. Mandarin orange. Peppery. Hoppy bitterness.
Conclusion: I feel that a lot of newer breweries feel that some of the traditional beer styles are broken and need to be completely overhauled, and in doing so often throw out the baby with the bathwater and forget what made those styles so distinct in the first place. See for example a lot of early examples of making beer style x, just with more hop bitterness, as people love hop bitterness (Which I do, just not in ever darn beer ever)
This on the other hand feels like it loves being a hefeweizen, but also loves the Mandarina Bavaria hop, uses that different hop to accentuate and enhance the weisse style rather than replace it in a way that lets both elements shine and massively boosts both.
There is a wheaty character and some spice, showing the traditional side and more savoury touches that can come with a weisse, and some hints of those dried banana notes I know and love from the style. However that banana touch, and the fresher weisse notes are massively enhanced and freshened up by the huge amount of orange notes from the Mandarina hops. That fruitiness works so well with the more traditional weisse notes. It does have some increased hop bitterness with it at the end, but in general it doesn’t feel like it needed to go overboard on the hop bitterness or general hop feel, relying on the flavor they could get from it instead and make the beer fresher and louder in what it does well.
Against this increased freshness the use of the spice notes seems even more vital. Grounding the bright notes so after the refreshing middle, it nicely underlines it ready for the next sip.
Basically this is a fantastic weisse that uses traditional quality with new hops as a part not the whole of the experience and is never ashamed of the base style. An utterly amazing beer.
Background: I have been meaning to do notes on this for absolutely ages, as I keep buying bottles of this and drinking it before I get around to doing notes on it. So yes I knew this was going to be a positive set of notes going in unless they had somehow fucked it up in the one week since I last had it. So yeah, this has been one of my common pick ups from Independent Spirit whenever they have it in. It is labelled as a “sonderedition”, which, given that I always see it in summer I took to mean summer edition. Google tells me it is in fact Special Edition and I am an idiot. I didn’t even ask it that latter half, it just said that unprompted. Music wise went with The Replacements: Stink again, been back on the varied punk bands a bit recently.