Left Hand Haystack Wheat

Brewed by Left Hand Brewing Co.
Style: German Hefeweizen
Longmont, Colorado USA

Tap at My Brother’s Bar, Denver. Pours a cloudy and well-carbonated yellow. Aroma is bubblegum and banana. Flavor has a nice clove start with an herbal banana finish. Palate is slippery. Good beer.

I tried this one yesterday and was very pleasantly surprised. The pour was very carbonated but in line with the style. The color was a hazy golden which highlighted the unfiltered, bottled conditioning. Cloves jumped out of the fairly complex aroma for the style. It was a very refreshing taste and didn’t have a heavy-handed citrus flavor. This would be an excellent summer drink.

First thing I noticed about this beer was ALOT of carbonation. Pours a pretty clear (for a hefeweiss) yellow/orange with a big head. Flavors are what you would expect for a hefeweiss, banana and yeast. They arent too strong or complex though. Mouthfeel is a bit watery as well. This is decent, but there are much better beers of the same style to be had.

Bottle… Hazy yellow ale. Light smoke and clove dominate the aroma. The flavor is lightly smoky and grainy. Good balance. Tangy. Medium-bodied and astringent with fizzy carbonation. Finishes crisp and clean with very gentle spice.

This was really pretty nice. I was worried because the brewed-on date was a bit old (mid-2004) for a September 2005 consumption, but heck, there was nothing to suggest that this was too old. Nice, moderately hazy copper color with a big, loose head that quickly dies down while carbonation streaming in the body is noticeable for a long long time. The aroma has banana in a light toffee sauce and a very yeasty nose, the close coming out nicely as it warms. The same flavors predominate. I thought it was a little bit thin once the carbonation had died down, and although there was a hint of both sour and metallic (well, o.k., that might have been due to the age), these also lended to a sense of saison/lambic in moments. A little pepper finishes it, with the wheat reminding me from whence it came. Very drinkable, very enjoyable to sit with. Bottle.

Very hazy golden honey body. Head is big and white, but a little on the smallish side. Smell is bigtime clove and wheat, heavy. Taste is nice and balanced, never too sweet, just medium, lots of wheat flavor. Blends so nicely on the tongue. Great drink!

Bottle (8/22/05 - the future??), Haystack label. Dark yellow body with a stiff fluffy white head. Good lacing. Strawberry-accented banana aroma with a cinnamon-spiced wheat malt background. The flavor brings out clove and leafy hops over bubblegum/banana sweetness. Has a peppery dryness throughout the flavor. This beer doesn’t really do anything for me as the bulk of its flavor is in candy-like sweetness.

Goddamnit. I type a long rating and hit add then for some reason this database asks me to log in (i’m always logged in) and sure enough all my fucking hard work is gone. Fuck this, I’m not redoing this rating. This wheat is not great. That is all.

Re-rate

Man, I forgot about this rating and how upset I was when I typed it. Not realizing I had rated this one before, I got another bottle. That totally sucks, I need to get my printer fixed. Anyway, it pours a hazy orange lemon color with very little fizzy white head. Body is laced with chunks of dead yeast despite being poured carefully. I’m bummed about the aroma in this one, which is too light and dominated by yeast with no citrus or fruit and maybe a light sulfurous smell that sucks. The yeastiness is nice though, something I might not have said in the earlier rating when I seemed to look for nothing but estery stuff in hefe’s. Flavor is stronger though, with banana bread, light citrus, and light clove. Wheat is evident throughout. Carbonation is off a little, although the beer feels good everywhere else. Finish is moderately acidic with yeast and that same sulfur type thing going on in the mouth. I’m not sure my original rating was right or not because I obviously didn’t type it to see what my thoughts were but I did adjust the numbers a little bit to reflect how I would rate it now. I do know I was drinking a LOT of hefe’s back then and rating only some of them so I wish I could see what I wrote. Oh well.