February 25, 2009: Hacker Pshorr

If you're a novice beer drinker, there is a good chance that you could be put off by a traditional German Hefeweizen like Hacker Pshorr. You might take a close look at the bottle and think to yourself, "What the hell is that nasty junk sitting in the bottom of my beer?". Here at 365brews we are committed to educating the masses about beer and brewing culture, and I'm here to tell you to fear not, dear drinker. The yellowish brown sediment resting in the bottom of the bottle is nothing more than the by-product of a bottle conditioned beer. In the first photo for this post, you can see a bit of the horrible looking silt stuff in my bottle of Hacker Pshorr. Bottle conditioning is a fancy term for an unfiltered beer. After the beer is bottled, the silty leftovers of the fermentation process remain in the bottle. This is fairly typical for an unfilitered hefeweizen like Hacker Pshorr, and the yeasty sediment is nothing to be afraid of. The cloudy look of most hefeweizen's is one of the earmarks of an unfiltered beer.

Hacker Pshorr is your standard German hefeweizen, and is of course unfiltered and bottle conditioned to give it the signature cloudiness that one would come to expect from a Hef. Hacker Pshorr has an especially fruity bouquet about it, with notes of apple and honey being particularly prominent. For almost 600 years, Hacker Pshorr has been brewed in the Bavarian tradition, and judging by the crisp taste of this wheat beer, all of that experience has paid off. It's a mystery to me why Hacker Pshorr is not more popular in America, when to me it is clearly superior to the American hefs that dominate the market here. If you're a fan of unfiltered wheat beers, give this one a go. Also, be sure to check out the Hacker Pshorr website which has some cool features, like how to properly pour a pint of Hefeweizen into a glass. Interesting stuff.

Prost,
Ian

www.Thedifferenceinside.com