Beer nazi here... Hefeweizen/weissbier is not a lager. Lagers are cold bottom-fermented beers. Hefeweizen is warm top-fermented beer.

There's nothing nazi, nor anything really to apologise for, in that. A weissbier, especially a dark variant, is really quite different from crisp lagers. Crisp is not really a word I'd use to describe weissbier at all.

That said, they do make excellent weissbier, and if that style is unfamiliar to you, you're in for a treat.

My mistake. I've always incorrectly grouped them with lagers in my mind, but it does indeed look like they are top-fermented beers.

I'm actually surprised, there are quite a few beer variants that I assumed were lagers that are actually ales, including Berliner weisse, kölsch, and gose [0].

[0] https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/style/

Kölsch is actually a weird one. It's true that Kölsch is an ale and Kölsch yeast is a top-fermenting ale yeast, however the style also calls for lagering the beer at cooler temperatures at the end of fermentation, which is the same process that all true lagers undergo. This is why Kölsch has a clean lager-like taste, and is often mistaken or debated as a lager.

See also: California Common / Steam Beer, which is sort of the opposite case (lager yeast fermented at ale temps)

Also the reason as to why so many new microbreweries tend to brew ales rather than lagers. Ales are much more temperamental and can be fermented at around room temperature thereby making homebrewing much more accessible.

Wouldn't that make ales less temperamental?

They're probably most known for their lagers/pilsener, maybe he meant he also likes their wheat beers?

They're definitely best known for their weissbier - especially historically. Lager/pilsner is only 150 years old.

Didn't know that. Here in US, Ive mostly seen lager on tap.

Well, might be geographical/context sensitive, then. They could well be better known for lagers in the US, which being overall better known for weissbier.

>Beer nazi

You may want to reconsider this phrasing.

Brew nazi?

Nah, brits will think you're talking tea.

When I write this minikites is downvoted for no good reason.

As much as I support freedom of speech I also think it's unwise to normalize nazism.

Reminding people not to normalize nazism isn't something one should be downvoted for in my book.

Just as an alternative point of view, they're debasing and ridiculing the term, whereas you're helping to inflate its importance by trying to keep it a taboo.

As an aside, here's an interview with the Jewish actor who played the Soup Nazi: http://uproxx.com/tv/soup-nazi-interview-seinfeld-apartment/

Well, I give you an upvote for that.

Good answer but I don't agree.

Taking offense at "beer Nazi" could lead someone to infer that you believe the term Nazi must only be used in a dignified context. Who is normalizing what is in the eye of the beholder, as people have been belittling Nazis since the 1930s.

Ok. Let me argue a bit further:

Whatever we've done lately obviously hasn't worked. Seinfeld has been sent again and again and yet we see nazis marching proudly in Charlotteville and elsewhere.

The world should not forget what nazism caused, what communism caused, what nationalism caused, what racism caused etc.

I'd be tempted to say: learn kids to hate those things but I'm not a fan of big words.

But I certainly think more focus on history lessons would be a good thing.

Or maybe we need something similar to this, only for thoughts: https://www.damninteresting.com/this-place-is-not-a-place-of...

A bit of an orthogonal argument: the problem isn't Nazis per se, it's what Nazis believed. Treating the idea of Nazis as too serious to make fun of and treating the idea of making fun of Nazis as a noble goal both have the fallacy that the thing we're saying "Never again" to is people with swastikas and straight-arm salutes. Now, yes, there were a few of those people at Charlottesville. But there are a lot more people who have the same ideology as Nazis - that ethnic minorities are the cause of the ethnic majority's economic anxiety, that a special police force to put ethnic minorities in concentration camps is totally fine as long as there are valid laws supporting that, that local opposition to this police force is illegitimate and treasonous, that the sexually "deviant" are ruining the integrity of our culture, that we have more of a duty to the well-being of our own race than to the survival of other races, etc. - without having any of the visible trappings of Nazis. The more that we say that the thing we object to (either by avoidance or reappropriation) is "Nazis," the more we make room for people with the same beliefs to prosper under different names.

(Side argument: putting the focus on "Nazis" also seems to invent distance between the man on the street in 1930s Germany, who just wanted a good life for his family, a prosperous economy for his country, and success for his nation's troops, and us in our own countries today, because that man lived in Nazi Germany and voted for the Nazi Party. It explains away the fact that an entire country like any other Western country suddenly went along with the Nazi agenda because that country was, somehow, full of Nazis, who are, somehow, different from us.)

I have seen lots of people make the argument that "Nazi" is a bad descriptor for anti-Muslim beliefs/policies that closely resemble historic Nazi anti-Jewish policies, because they're anti-Muslim and not anti-Jewish. (Usually this comes with some sort of argument about "Judeo-Christian values," or about how Islam is different, or something - and when I point out that the same sorts of attitudes were prevalent at the time against Jews and Judaism, they seem to think it's an answer that those people were wrong and they're right.) I think that's a sign that we've failed badly to teach "Never again" in a meaningful way, in a way that realizes that the problem is not to make sure it's never 1930s Germany again - of course it never will be. It will be somewhere else, someplace else, and some other people.

I have the impression that there's also a cultural aspect. People from different parts of the world have noticeably different responses to such jokes. Lots of them are on HN and, not realizing who's who or what the gap is between them, each tends to think the other obviously wrong and/or an asshole.

Agree. Also I want to point out I'm not offended by this in any way.

I'm just arguing that downvoting someone for pointing this out is counterproductive.

Lots of breweries. Belgian Abbeys; Grimbergen, Affligem... Can anyone opine on how similar today's beers might taste to how they did "back in the day?" I'm sure some of the beers are based on the original recipes, and with the Reinheitsgebot, it's fairly plausible that all of the ingredients in the German beers in particular are very similar. But I'm not sure how the process might have changed over the years, or how the ingredients might taste different now than they did a century ago.

The modern Trappist Belgium styles ("dubbel, tripel" etc.) were pretty much conceived by Westmalle in the 1920s-1930s. (https://www.homebrewersassociation.org/how-to-brew/a-brief-h...). Duvel is the template for the Belgium Golden Strong variety of beer -- that also was developed around the 1920s-1930s. (http://allaboutbeer.com/article/belgian-strong-golden-ale-2/)

So, no, the beers back then did not taste similar to today's beer. I would say that lambics might be the closest reflection to a style that is close to "back in the day". (http://lostbeers.com/lambic-the-real-story/) Even then, the link between today's lambic and the past only goes to the 1700s at best, and it's not clear how representative it is (at least what I can see from skimming the linked blog with Google Translate's help -- https://lambik1801.wordpress.com/).

There are also plenty of technical differences between brewing now and brewing then that would make for a different taste. It was probably a bit sweeter (less attenuation), possibly spiced different before the 1600s, possibly smoky until coal drying came into the norm, probably dark until pale malt was developed in the 19th century, probably had more room for sour notes (before pure yeast cultures were developed in the late 19th-early 20th century), etc.

Beers today taste nothing like they did back then. Microbiology aside (today's beer is made with pure-bred yeast, back then it was a wild mix of microbes), pale malt was not produced until the 17th or 18th centre, and the pale lager beers we nowadays associate with traditional German beer were developed as late as the 19th century.

It also would have been warm, flat, made with fire-dried malt (so smoky)[1], and possibly made with bittering agents other than hops, like gruit[2].

[1]https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/all-beer-tasted-like-s...

[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gruit

I did a beer tour of Belgium and apparently all of their beers are very modern (at most ~100 years old), and the dates refer to either the first brewery in the area, or the abbey itself.

Not specific to Belgian/German beers, but I found this interesting: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2vo36v/durin...

Doesn't make a sense to include Grimbergen and Affligem there, these are both owned by the same multinational (Heineken) and neither is still being brewed on site in the abbey.

Everything swerner wrote, with a minor interjection: part of a brewery's identity is based on their water source (nuances in chemical composition have a certain influence on the brewing process), so a brewery that stood out due to their well or spring 500 years ago might still do so today. Or not at all, since the interaction between ground water and geology can change a lot in that timeframe.

Amazing beer, agreed. Another recommendation: My favorite Munich-style weiss beer is from Franziskaner (founded in 1363). It's in my top 3 beers of all time.

Franziskaner weissbier is also one of my favorites, right up there with Weihenstephaner hefeweissbier. Both are top 5 German beers in my book for sure. They are both extremely easy to find in California (SF Bay Area) as well, which is great!

I rate the the Schöfferhofer above the Franziskaner. But only just.

Funnily enough, my all-time favourite weissbier is the Kumulus from Airbrau, the only beer brewed in an airport terminal! It sounds like a gimmick, but it's actually really good.

For those here into German wheat / Hefeweizen beers: Schneider Weisse offer a range of excellent regular Hefeweizen beers as well as an annual special limited edition (named TAPX).

While the regular TAP7 (a Hefeweizen Dunkel) and TAP5 (a hoppy, fruity Hefeweizen reminiscent of an IPA) are fantastic already and stand out among wheat beers the TAPX edition is a very unique treat. The Tap X Cuvée Barrique for example is a creamy and dry wheat beer that tastes like wild berries, figs, and vanilla.

Quite hard to get hold of unfortunately, especially as for the past limited editions.

Fully agree, Schneider Weisse is excellent. Other great Bavarian Weißbier breweries are Hopf and Unertl, but they're probably even harder to get outside of Bavaria.

I’m unimpressed with the Weihenstephaner Hefeweizen beer.

That said, there is a company in Austin, TX - Live Oak - who makes an incredible Hefeweizen. Every time I go back to Austin, I hunt down this beer and enjoy it with a “Detroiter” pizza from the Via 313 food truck at a bar called Craft Pride.

Now that I live in San Diego, I have an incredible selection of local brew to choose from, but I have yet to find anything that tops that hef.

https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/383/1062/

Live Oak Hefe is my No. 1 here (right in front of 512 Pecan Porter), and one of the finest beer I've had period. If you haven't been to the Live Oak tasting room across from the airport, it has a variety of rarer German styles as well. German immigrants settled in this part of Texas, which means there's a lot of craft breweries that give someone who drinks marzens and weisens year-round (me) great alternatives to Weihenstephaner and Spaten.

Via 313 is good, but man, nothing on the Neapolitan that Pieous makes. To bring us back onto the topic, water-barley-yeast-hops and water-flour-yeast-salt recipes say that there's longevity in simplicity. Makes one want to give up making technology, or focus on distilling it down to the essential.

Hofbräu Hefe is the best commonly available hefe in the states imho.

Bonus ancient beer knowledge: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bappir

Yeah, I marvelled a bit when I first saw that they were licensed in 1040. Weihenstephaner Hefeweissbier is excellent.

They seem pretty bizarre as modern breweries go. Originally operated as part of the abbey, they are now somewhat joined with TU München. Hard for me to even say if they are really the successors to a continuous organization from 1040.

The only Weihenstephan I knew before reading this was Weihenstephan Milk [0]. I'm guessing they are a different company though.

[0] https://www.molkerei-weihenstephan.de

Seconding. Weihenstephaner is usually my beer of choice if it's on the menu.

Weihenstephaner's hefeweizen is my favorite beer of all times. It's quite difficult to find here in Seattle, but I guess that makes it more special :)

Doesn't seem that uncommon around Seattle: https://www.weihenstephaner.com/product-finder/

It looks outdated, or at least for the three bars that are close to my place :(

Good beer! And pretty decently priced (in my parts, at least). ~$3.50 for a pint, if you can find it at a liquor store.

Of course lager was only invented in the nineteenth century, so presumably they made very different beers before that.

it probably depends what you mean by lager. and calling weihenstephaner a lager is questionable.

Their main beer is a "Helles" :)

Weihenstephaner is mostly known for their Weißbier which is OK. Their Helles tastes like shit, though, at least compared to other Bavarian breweries.

Which is amazing as well, by the way.

their most famous in the US is a hefeweizen, though.

Helles is regional to Bavaria and also the dominant beer. Hefeweizen is secondary choice but strong in export to the world :)