A wheatwine pours gold to deep amber, often with garnet or ruby lights, under a low, creamy off-white head. It tastes first of bread and wheat, with honey, toast or caramel in support, dried fruit from the yeast and a light hop. The body is rich but sleek, and at 8–12% alcohol it is a beer to sip.
Where it comes from
Rubicon Brewing of Sacramento, California, brewed the first modern commercial one in 1988. Brewers usually release it in winter, as a vintage or as a one-off; some age it in oak.
How to serve it
Pour it at 10–13 °C into a snifter. It goes with smoked trout, Asiago or peach sorbet.
Next to its neighbours
It puts less weight on hops than an American barleywine. Its roots are in the American wheat beer, not the German wheat styles, so it has no Weizen yeast character.
Wheatwine in numbers
- Classic example
- Brasserie Castelain (Ch'ti)
- Original gravity
- 1.080–1.120
- Final gravity
- 1.016–1.030
- Food
- Smoked trout; Asiago; peach sorbet
- Classic examples
- The Bruery White Oak; Perennial Heart of Gold; Two Brothers Bare Tree; Castelain Winter Ale
- BJCP style
- 22D Wheatwine
Sources
Checked .
- 22D. Wheatwine, 2021 Beer Style Guidelines — Beer Judge Certification Program
- American-Style Wheat Wine Ale — CraftBeer.com, Brewers Association
- Wheatwine — Brew Your Own
