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Beer Reviews

Hocking Hills Hefeweizen

Barrel House Brewing Company
Cincinnati, OH
USA
http://www.barrelhouse.com

Style: German Hefeweizen
ABV: 4.6%

Jill’s Rating:
   (Not good.)


Comments:
You all know that I like the sweeter beers. Fruit? Bring it on! Wheat? I love that sweet smoothness!

However, I found a beer that was actually—and I’m not making this up—too sweet for me.

The Cincinnati-based Barrel House Brewing Company’s seasonal Hefeweizen has a couple of scales on the bottle. For the malty/hoppy scale, the barrel is pretty close to malty. For light/dark, it’s all the way to light.

That scale is pretty accurate, but it only goes so far when it comes to actual taste.

At first I thought I’d be pleased with the beer. It poured with a huge head, but then I noticed it was pretty clear. Hey, where’s my cloudy hefe? The nose had lots of banana flavors to it though, so maybe the cloudless factor wouldn’t be too much of an issue.

Uh, wrong again! This baby was unbelievably sweet; in fact, it might be the sweetest beer I’ve ever drunk (and I’ll even throw cider into that mix). At any rate, it’s definitely the sweetest hefeweizen I’ve ever had.

Once I got past the sweetness, I thought for just a second that the beer was kind of interesting, but then a deluge of watery flavor hit the back of my mouth. Hardly the light, sweet fullness I was expecting. And the banana flavor in the nose was totally missing in the taste of the beer.

Think Miller High Life is the Champagne of Beers? Nope, this one is—it’s the Cook’s Champagne of Craft Beer.

Reviewed by Jill Jaracz on April 22, 2008.

Drinkin’ And Thinkin’

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