Review: Brasserie Vrooden Weizen White Ale

Quebec's beer scene continues to be overwhelming for me, I could give myself an entire month to try as many Quebec breweries as I possibly could and I would still somehow miss out on an obscure nanobrewery that just opened up last week. I may be located in Manitoba but as I've said to a few of my beer geek friends - I've spent substantially more time in Montreal in the past two years than Winnipeg. Sure, Winnipeg is only a two hour drive but when I'm in Winnipeg, I'm generally in the city for an hour or two at most. I don't feel like I belong in the Winnipeg beer scene but somehow I feel like I feel part of the Montreal scene if I'm only ever there maybe two full weeks per year.

Brasserie Vrooden is one of Quebec's newer breweries, located in Granby, Quebec. They pride themselves on doing mostly traditional German-style beers which may be a bit boring for a lot of people.. but German-style beers are generally very solid, so of course there's a market for that! I discovered Brasserie Vrooden's beers while in Ange-Gardien at Marché du Village, a rural grocery store that boasts one of the better beer selections in all of Quebec.. a cage with vintage aged beer, a good deal of hard liquor and even a walk in cooler if you absolutely need a cold two-four of Bud Light right now. I grew up near towns the size of Ange-Gardien and Marché du Village would only be a dream out here in Manitoba. *sigh*

Since I was heading back to Manitoba the next day, I only picked up a bottle of their Weizen because the brewery was too new for me so I wouldn't know if I liked it or not.. so here we go!

Appearance: Vrooden's Weizen pours a cloudy, ambery orange ale with a good deal of head to start off with - a beige head that gently diminishes leaving by a finger's worth of head later on. This is quite dark for your typical German style hefe but so far it looks great!

Aroma: The very first thing that I noticed when opening the bottle was the earthy banana aroma.. so yep, this is a hefeweizen! Very estery, some herbal notes, a bit of clove, earthy hops, great deal of wheat and sweet dough in the mix.

Taste: Clove makes the very first impression for the flavour but it's quickly dominated by the banana zest. A mildly sweet, bananay beer with a hint of caramel. It's very easy to drink, light creaminess, minimal aftertaste that's mostly a cracked wheat taste to it.

Overall Thoughts: Very solid hefeweizen. It's very easy to drink and doesn't have that fake banana candy taste in it that you see in a lot of hefeweizens (phew!). Fairly creamy, a bit earthy a bit of a breadiness to it. I like the natural banana taste in here and I appreciate that it's not over the top like many hefeweizens you see on the market - it lets you know that there's notes of banana the second it hits your palate but it immediately mellows out.

http://vrooden.wixsite.com/vrooden/weizen-en