Schlafly Hefeweizen

First, a disclaimer: I’m really not a beer reviewer. I’ve tasted a lot of beers in my time but I’ve never tried my hand at a reviewing one outside of pointing to a six pack in the grocery store and saying “that’s tasty!” As a part of preparing for my big road trip and writing my book I’m attempting to purify my palate and familiarize myself (if I don’t already know) with the offerings from at least the breweries that I’ll be visiting and maybe a few others as well. Hopefully it will make me sound a little more intelligent when it comes time to sample beers along with the brewmasters responsible for their creation.

Here pretty soon I’m going to be moving from Champaign, IL to Des Moines, Iowa. There are a lot of great things about Des Moines; one of those is that it has a pretty unique set of micobrews available as compared to what I get in Champaign. I figured that since I’ll only be in Central Illinois a few more days I should spend that time enjoying the beers that I can’t get in Central Iowa.

Tonight I sat down for the evening with a couple bottles of hefeweizen from Schlafly in Saint Louis. The hefeweizen is one of Schlafly’s most popular and largest production beers, along with their American Wheat Ale. The upside of being one of their most popular beers is that the flavor is a bit more consistent than something you might find with the small batch micobrews. The downside is that it doesn’t have as much of the unique flavor and character I love so much about small breweries. It feels a lot more like a beer that would be produced by one of the big box breweries.

The Schlafly Hefeweizen tastes to me a little bit more like a wheat beer than it does a hefeweizen. That’s okay though, I’m more concerned with the fact that it has a solid taste and nice finish. It’s one of those beers that I’m more than happy to sit down with on a nice summer night and drink three or four of on the balcony with some good conversation. There aren’t too many better endorsements I can give a beer than that!

I’m not going to be giving beers I review a rating or number. I don’t think it is fair to rate an IPA and a pale lager on the same scale, they’re just too different. Instead I’ll just be giving brief review of what I think of the beer and if I would buy it again. When it comes to the Schlafly Hefeweizen my final word on it is to say that it is a slightly above average beer that was quite enjoyable and I would buy again in a heartbeat next time I’m in an area they distribute to. As with so many things in life, a good beer is significantly more special when you only occasionally have the chance to get it.