On a hot summer day, we cooked up some sausage and threw back some wheat beers. Light and fruity, they offer refreshment without being overbearing.
For most palates, wheat beers were generally unoffensive (but there were exceptions, I'm looking at you, Kona), but at the same time, they were generally unremarkable (the winning brew earned the title spot of this post). Perhaps not surprisingly, the top three spots went to German brews; Weisen Edel-Weiss from Georg Schneiders and Weihenstephaner almost tied, and were followed by a grade of mostly American brews.
You'll note the scores look a bit different. The image shows means of corrected scores, where each tasters' scores (originally on a scale of 0-10) were normalized to have a mean of zero and unit variance. Although it did little to change the relative rankings, it provided a means of comparison independent of individual tasters' preferences. This was especially important for some tasters who were generally underwhelmed with wheat beers. For example, the comments from one taster were (notice the highest praise is of #5):
- Banana + citrus
- Banana + metallic
- Banana + yeast
- ‹blank›
- Drinkable, it passes
- Boo!
- Icky micky!
- Why god why?
- Blach!
- Ewwwwwww (yeah, seven w's)
- Beyond bad
- Almost drinkable
- It's too dark to comment
The last comment reflects the overambitious nature of this tasting. If you've been counting, you'll note we tasted 13 beers. Lest you think this dulled our taste buds, the correlation between order and score explained less than 0.1% of the variation (yup, r2 ‹ 0.001). Nonetheless, numerous comments along the lines of "Not another one?!?" suggest 13 was a bit too much.
So if you're looking for a light refreshment, try some brews from Germany (lemon is recommended, though).
Next we return to where this all started. We will be tasting Pale Ales. A proper treatment is in order, and if you have any suggestions for the best Pales to include (or any we should avoid), just let me know!
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