This Is My Blood: Weihenstephaner Hefeweissbeer Dunkel

I'm working my way through all the beer styles, found HERE, and then here's another one.

Bavarian Dunkelweizen
(#49)
Exemplified by Weihenstephaner Hefeweissbeer Dunkel

As you can probably surmise from the mouthful of a name of this particular beer, dunkelweizens are pretty much the same as hefeweizens. Same grainy/creamy texture, same haziness, same primary notes of banana and cloves. You know hefeweizens, you love hefeweizens, and so dunkel contains a lot of the characteristics that you already know and love.

The only difference is the malts. The malts used in a dunkel are darker, and have a added rich flavor of caramel. It's pretty much the same flavor as can be found in all those great bocks. So if it's helpful, you can think of a dunkel as a combination of a hefeweizen and a doppelbock, or maybe even a weizenbock with added banana/cloves flavor.

So is dunkelweizen a truly unique beer? No, everything here you've tasted before. But because it combines some truly great flavors from some truly unimpeachable beer styles, dunkel ends up being a great beer anyway. I've discovered already this year how much I love hefeweizens and bocks, and to be able to have both at the same time in the same beer is a blessing, a blessing I won't forget before I make it to a German beer hall at some point in the far future.

Oh yeah, shit...

Day #7: Drinking on a Team

"I can hardly think of a better way to bond with friends than to share a drink while a crowd cheers you on. Another plus to this drinking scenario is that the losers usually end up winners because their drink consumption is way up."

I had no one to play beer pong with today, I had no reason to drink competitively, and I couldn't even lean on the Phillies team like I normally would have. So let's just say that I'm team beer and then throw up my hands and admit that I cannot work this drinking scenario into my life right now.

NOTES

BEER: Weihenstephaner Hefeweissbeer Dunkel

STYLE: Dunkelweizen

ABV: 5.3%

BREWED BY: Bayerische Staatsbrauerei Weihenstephan

LOCATION: Freising, Germany

PURCHASED AT: IGA

PAIRED WITH: kielbasa and pierogies from Czerw's—decent pairing, but the cajun kielbasa we had was a probably a little too spicy, and overwhelmed my taste buds when I'm trying to appreciate the beer

GRADE: 4 pukes out of 5

BEER COUNT: 259.5