Review: Granville Island Robson Street Hefeweizen

If you visit your local liquor store lately, you will notice that it appears to be summer already. There's a wide assortment of new beer available. New hefeweizens, witbiers, lagers and "flavoured beers" that should be classified as malt based coolers.

Granville Island has brought a few new products to Manitoba this week, including a mixer pack of a few beers that are already available here and beers not available here, and this beer, the Granville Island Robson Street Hefeweizen. There's a bit of a difference between the German style Hefeweizen and their cousins, the Belgian style Witbier. Hefeweizens are generally more of a bananay beer, while witbiers are generally more of an orange beer.

I love witbiers and hefeweizens so here we go!

Appearance: Pours a nice light orange haziness, with minimal off-white head.

Aroma: There's a nice bananay aroma that's very welcoming. I'm not a fan of bananas but I'm wanting to drink this ASAP! Also a hint of cloves as well

Taste: The very second that the beer touches my tongue, I notice the banana taste to it, but immediately disappears completely, making it much lighter in flavour. The only flavours I do notice that stay around are mainly a bit of a lemony citrusness. Compared to Okanagan Spring Summer Weizen, the Robson Street Hefeweizen is much more consistent in flavour and aroma combined, much better. As you keep drinking it, you still taste something, while for the Okanagan Weizen, it's pretty much only a sweetness in the aroma, it doesn't transfer over. Both beers are unfortunately too light for my taste buds, quite watery, but that's just me.

Overall Thoughts: The Robson Street Hefeweizen has an ABV of 5.0% and is available for approximately $12 for 6 bottles. For a hefeweizen, I expected much more of a banana zing. The banana aroma is incredibly welcoming, but the only banana I noticed was the very second the beer touches my tongue, after that, it's just a bit of lemon. That said, I didn't have any problems drinking it down. This is a beer I'd recommend for someone with a finicky beer palate that generally drinks lagers, but wants to try something for the "summer patio" atmosphere. Someone accustomed to Molson Canadian will enjoy this much more than me, where my palate expects much more flavour. This is something I'd buy again as it's an incredibly easy drinking beer and something I could drink 6 of easily after working on the farm for several hours.

On the back of the bottle it recommends you to serve this beer with a lemon wedge. I don't like putting wedges of fruit in my beers, but do as you please, but this is quite lemony enough for my tastes.