Valentins Hefeweissbier

I am not big on religious imagery, but given that I have chosen to blog (well, try to) about beer, and given the legacy of beer brewing as a traditional vocation in monasteries, I suppose I will have to accept a few pictures of saints and angels (didn't that already happen yesterday?). Gambrinus, of course, is the best known of the many patron saints of beer brewing, and there are a few beers that celebrate his name by adopting it; Gambrinus. So here we have a beer with the picture of St. Valentine on the can - the beer is Valentins Weissbier from Germany. Interesting is that this beer seems to have a virtual life of its own. There is a website dedicated to the brand, but the brewery - Privatbrauerei Eichbaum - makes no obvious mention of it on the corporate webpage. Normally, this is a suspicious set of circumstances suggesting cheap production quality under the guise of a marketing plot: Just think of Valentine's day and you'll get the idea. Nevertheless, I like the taste of this beer - a fairly typical German Wheat beer, re-fermented in the container (sadly, a can in this case) and with the characteristic opaque appearance created by suspended yeast particles. Eichbaum is located in Mannheim, in the Kurpfalz region of the state of Baden Württemberg- not in Bavaria, where most German wheat beers come from. Now all you Bavarians or wanna-be Bavarians out there who love their Weissbier, take note. I love Bavarian wheat beers, and this one I would easily count in the same league as Erdinger, Schneider, and Hacker-Pschorr. Granted, these are all mass-produced beers and likely cannot hold their own with local products from small town breweries, but those are simply too hard to find over here in Canada or even in most parts of Germany. But the quality and pedigree of even those mass-produced wheat beers cannot easily be disputed. Valentins has a slight and tangy yeast fruitiness, which is subtle and does not overpower the wheat malt with banana, clove, or peach notes. Instead, those flavours supplement the wall of malty goodness. My picture shows the delicately sculpted head of the beer and its orange-brown colour in a traditional Weissbierglass, with a slice of a topographic map of the area where it is brewed in the background. Can you find Mannheim?