Belle Gueule Hefeweizen

You just know by the title of this post that something special is going on here: A French - or better, Quebecois - beer brand name together with the German wheat beer style. Not long ago I have ranted (or at least lamented) about the inferiority of Belgian wheat beer compared to German wheat beer, and living in Quebec, one has to accept the fact that most brewers here are inspired by the former witbier/blanch style, rather than the latter. But to the rescue come my good friends at les Brasseurs RJ, whose Belle Gueule Pilsner I have previous featured on this blog. These guys are truly amazing - one of two breweries in Quebec that appreciates making authentic German style beer, the other being of course Les Trois Mousquetaires. I used to play soccer in a park right next to the RJ brewery, and as you might imagine, the best time to play was when they were mashing and the wind would blow over the fabulous aroma of steeped barley, sending an extra spring into my legs.

The brewery, located just at the edge of the still-trendy-although-now-somewhat-less-so Plateau Montreal's neighborhood, certainly has grown up since they were formed from a merger of three older microbreweries, as can be seen by the age validation function on their website, which appears on the webpages of all major breweries around the world these days. While I understand that having to enter one's birth date as "proof" of legal drinking age to visit a brewery's website may satisfy regulative requirements, both the requirement and the method of meeting its demands seem absurd to me. If it there is a legal drinking age, why should this age correspond to a legal age for reading about beer and seeing pictures of beer? And anyone with the skills to type and enough brains to know his or her age can probably figure out what to do to see the website regardless of their actual date of birth. It's the ugly truth about corporate life: Pretend that you are trying to do what you are supposed to and regulators, customers, or other stakeholders will acquiesce and leave you in peace.

Getting back to les Brasseurs RJ and their Hefeweizen, they have done a fine job interpreting the Bavarian style, the main shortcoming of this lovely beer being that it comes in a midget extinguisher format. The nose and overall character of this beer screams "Freistaat Bayern" out so loudly that you may as well cover it in a blue and white checkered flag. Gentle banana and orange peel aromas dominate the nose and mix together with delicious white bread malts at the front of the palate. This is real Bavarian wheat beer yeast! Even the colour of this beer reminisces a fine Bavarian style, like Erdinder or Hacker-Pschorr, with a pleasing orange-hazy appearance. I'd have to say that the middle palate could do with more bread and less yeast flavors. There is also an ever so slight ethanol note here, which is common in many Bavarian Hefeweizen brands. The magic of yeast and the many mysterious flavours it produces!! The finish is nicely fruity-acidic and carries some lingering malt notes in stylish fashion that it makes me want to put on my Lederhosen and engage in some good old fashioned shoe-slapping.