Fürstenberg Part 2: Dunkles Hefeweizen

Last week I reviewed the Pilsener by the "princely" Fürstenberg brewery, and today I continue my examination of their brews with a more truly southern German beer: A dark wheat beer. The purists among you might say - what beer blasphemy: wheat beer at the beginning of winter!? Well, good point -  perhaps, I should be moving away from wheat beers, which are summertime thirst quaffers, and drain some winter beers: stronger, more viscous, stomach warming beers that are sipped with pinky finger sticking out rather than poured down the gutter to extinguish the thirst. While this maybe last wheat beer for this year on the blog, it is at least a dark one (Dunkel), and so it moves us into the right direction, and I feature this dark beauty in front of a nice heat radiator to signal the arrival of old man winter.

The first time I had this beer was in a beer bar in Québec City, ca. 2005 - exactly the time when according to the Fürstenberg website, the brewery was sold by the original private owner family to a public holding company. Unlike the Pilsener, it comes in an nice regular German 500 ml bottle, but I found the secondary label with commercial information attached to the bottom of the bottle quite hideous. Clearly, the ex-princes are not prepared for ex-port to Canada, where despite the fact that most people can only speak one of the two official languages, we insist on writing everything twice on just about everything sold, once in English and once in French. Some of the uptightness about language becomes quite absurd in Québec, such as when a university writes Université McGill University on all of its official signs and symbols. In Québec, what is colloquially known as the language police makes sure that all French information in public spaces is written using a larger type font than that used for the English, and the new provincial government is contemplating asking companies to alter their names. Soon I will be drinking Montagne de Comte. Good thing there is the Belgian equivalent style: the Blanche, otherwise we would have to drink blé de la levure.


This beer is worth savouring over a slightly longer period of time simply because the mixture of yeast and dark malts creates different tastes at different temperatures. Of course most of us would be tempted to simply gobble this stuff down in one big gulp while it is nice and cold, as a good wheat beer should be (not too cold, of course, otherwise you won't taste much of anything). The beer has a nice fruity yeast aroma that combines with a grainy dark caramel nose, a combination that is mirrored by the taste on the front palate. The malts are quite sweet, indeed, but soon mingle in some gritty grainy dark malt grist flavour. At this point, it is worth letting the beer warm up a bit, as the dark malt character becomes more pronounced when you move from fridge to cellar temperature. The back of the palate is my least favourite taste component of this beer, as the sugary sweetness comes back and lingers beyond the grain and hops bitterness, both of which are balanced but could be cleaner. Perhaps the yeast is playing its role here too, as some of those sweet tastes are quite fruity. Nevertheless, the beer is overall satisfying and well worth it. And what a beautiful foam head I managed to pour can be seen below.