I am usually quite true to you and this blog. I buy beers I never have had and I write about every one. Pretty much. But last night, after a warm spring Saturday on a long Canadian holiday weekend, after mowing and BBQing t-bones and checking out inter-league baseball...well, I cheated. I had a new beer without taking notes.

It reminds me of an undergrad pal who had worked as a waiter in a very good restaurant and how he could hold back about 1/4 oz of the greater wines so that he could make a note on the stolen sippette. He had an empty bottle of a 1940 French wine on his bookshelf that he pointed to when he told the story saying that sip was worth something like sixty bucks retail but that it had been heaven.

Southern Tier's imperial unfiltered wheat ale called Heavy*weizen is not quite heaven but it was well worthy and that little sip of sludgy yeasty brew that was there this morning still tells the tale. The beer poured an nice antiqued gold under white foam. Interestingly fruity and floral yet also firm and stony. Apple and pear juicy. I was struck how it seemed to combine sauvignon blanc and riesling, what with the pronounced grassiness of the wheat as well as the minerally firmness of the hops with some bubblygum or candy in their as well. A dry spicy semi-steel finish from the Saaz and Hallertau. At 8%, there is plenty of strength and the required level of balancing flavour to cope with that much alcohol - which goes somewhat against the point of a hefeweizen - but it is interesting, like pretty much everything I've tried by Southern Tier. 97% BAer approval.