Easy-Drinking Wheat Beer

Style:

Southern German wheat beer

Made by:

Matilda Bay Brewing Company, Australia

Alcohol content:

4.7% abv

Price:

$13.75 a six pack

Availability:

Wide

Description:

Sweet, apple-flavoured fruitiness, with a clove edge and a tart hop finish.

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A few weeks ago I featured the Matilda Bay Brewing Company’s Bohemian Pilsener.

As Matilda Bay’s beers seem to have become widely available, I thought I would feature another because this Australian influx deserves a bit of attention.

The beer is Redback, and it is a bit of an Aussie classic. First brewed in 1988, it caused a stir because it was in many ways quite different from standard Australian beers. It fits nicely into the southern-German wheat-beer style. As the first wheat beer made in Australia, it came to the market when bland lagers dominated the scene.

Its popularity helped the brewery to expand and eventually it was bought out by the Fosters group. This explains why it has now arrived in New Zealand.

Originally the beer was bottle conditioned, and it would have been very different from what else was available back in the late ’80s. Now it is filtered and clear in the bottle.

Southern-German wheat beer has a distinctive and well-defined style. It has to be made with a certain amount of malted wheat, usually about 50/50 with malted barley.

The defining feature is a special strain of top-fermenting yeast that originates from Bavaria.

This gives the beer a distinctive flavour — an apple tartness, often with a spicy hint of cloves. It is a character that immediately identifies the style and globally there are many beers made with this yeast.

There are also wheat beers made with standard lager yeast. Although made with about 50 per cent malted wheat, these beers do not fit with the German wheat beer style because they lack the distinctive fruitiness.

A lot of them come out like light lagers and they are fairly uninspiring. So, when Redback first appeared, it created quite a stir. Naming it after a poisonous spider no doubt helped.

It’s a pity the bottle- conditioned version is no longer made. It is common in Germany to have both filtered and unfiltered versions available, but beggars can’t be choosers.

In the glass, the head disappeared quickly, which was a bit of a downer as this style often has a big, white, fiery head. But the carbonation was vigorous and the liquid was clear and crisp, with a pale golden colour, tinged with amber.

The distinctive southern-German wheat beer aroma was big and noticeable. It was quite sweet, with lots of apple and clove character and a clean, crisp, then husky mouthfeel. The cloves and apples came through strongly in the middle, with a grainy hop bitterness. This rides through to the finish with the fruit flavours and they both linger in the aftertaste.

It is an easy-drinking beer with a lot more character than the average lager. If you are at a barbie this summer with a six-pack of Redback, you would be the classiest beer drinker there.