I've re-visited and re-evaluated this one over the last 2-2.5 months. I've had about 3 or 4 six-packs. I like this one a lot. It's only 4.8% ABV (alcohol by volume), BTW. I like this the best of any American Hefeweizen, though some folks might consider that damning with faint praise.
How much you like those bitter foods could be a reflection of your personality, according to a new study in the journal Appetite—and people with the greatest affinity for bitter foods may even have more psychopathic and antisocial tendencies.
The treasure chest of the nation's brewing industry sits on an unassuming office complex on the outskirts of Norwich. It houses thousands of different types of yeast. Some, unused for generations, are now being given a new lease of life to offer a taste of times past.
Back in the 1920s a handful of beer-makers shared a fear: what would happen if we lost our brewing yeast?
They not only agreed such an occurrence would be very bad news, they also agreed on a solution - to deposit a sample of their all important yeast in a shared collection for safety.
Today that collection - the National Collection of Yeast Cultures (NCYC) - is home to 4,000 different yeasts.
They include all types of yeasts, including brewing, baking and industrial yeasts, from across the globe. Even yeasts found at the north and south poles have been collected and added to the collection.
"We are the Kew Gardens of the yeast world," says Dr Ian Roberts, curator at the NCYC.
"Yeasts are literally everywhere and are very important not just in brewing and baking but in areas like cancer research because yeasts are a model organism for research."
Using different yeasts can change the taste of a beer dramatically, says Dr Roberts.
"Brewers tend to play it safe and they like to keep the yeasts they like to use," he says.
But when a brewery's production yeast is destroyed - as happened in 2009 to a flooded brewery in the Lake District - the NCYC was able to get the operation "back up and running" with the very same yeast strain.
Some brewers, however, are willing to take the plunge and explore the myriad taste-scape offered by yeast. One is micro-brewer Martin Warren, who owns the Poppyland Brewery in Cromer.
"I'm too small to compete head to head with the regional brewers and I don't brew beer that you would buy in pubs," says Mr Warren, a former museum curator.
"I am looking to have adventures with beer, I'm really just a grown-up home brewer who now has a full-scale brewery.
"It means that I can make the beers that other brewers dare not do, or cannot do."
One of his latest beers is made using a yeast strain originally from Norwich unused since 1958.
Presented with his yeast by the NCYC's Steve James, Mr Warren said: "That must be the smell of beers from the 1950s.
"It is fruity, it is delicious. It is going to be great to brew with this. As my wife says if you put ingredients in, how can it go wrong?"
The end result is a beer called Hawkey Frolic, which was debuted - and feted as "really lovely" and "really malty" - at the Norwich Beer Festival.
Reminds me of when the Liederkranz cheese factory fire destroyed all of the culture, and extra ordinary steps had to be take to try to get it back. This was the only factory that made the cheese. The story back in the 80's was that they could not actually do it so Borden gave up on the brand. They sold the name and new owners claimed that they went back to a factory that had been used decades before to get it. Who knows what the truth is, but in both beer and cheese the microbes are all important.
