CulturAle Press

S’Kloane Brauhaus S’Guate Gerste

Date:  November 4,2018

The Story—S’Kloane Brauhaus claims to be the smallest brewery, and the claim is true at least for the city limits.   We’ll add some notes on the brewery tomorrow as we highlight their other beer.

S’Guate Gerste is more interesting than moreish, but for us interesting is worth traveling to Europe to find.   This one’s a Hefeweizen, but without the weizen.   It may be the first of its kind, and we haven’t seen it elsewhere.   They call it a Hefe Gersten, a yeast-barley instead of a yeast-wheat.  We don’t think they’ve quite nailed it, but we appreciate the effort – and the lessons it offers to those who might want to travel the same path.

The Beer— It’s a hefe without weizen, all right.  The problem is that there’s a dullish malt paired with the estery yeast.   It’s evident why this yeast has been paired with wheat all over the world.   It’s just not very vibrant.   We think it’s a good first step in exploring this possibility. Perhaps the right hops would make this work.

Value — Fair to good depending on what you’re looking for.   For interest it’s a bargain; for a night’s drinking not so much.

This week we return to  HIGHLIGHTS OF EUROPE–  Our next European book highlights surprisingly good beer in “bad beer cities.”  – a guide to great beer in European tourist cities. (Planned publication 2019.)   We’ll shift back to great American beer finds next week.  But the beers for the next few days are from a very good beer city indeed — Salzburg, Austria.

Next week we return to the US to highlight some great American craft beers, some of which we’ve found in researching out first US Beer publication: Brews and Snooze-– Breweries you can visit and walk back to a fine place to spend the night.  Look for it in 2019.

About these posts:  We taste and evaluate over a thousand beers every year.  The beers posted here rank in the top quarter of those tastings.   Values:  “fair” is a good beer at an above market price, “good” is worth the money, “very good” is a bargain, and “excellent” is a steal.