A carnival of technology

Magic Hat Circus Boy

Magic Hat is a brewery in Burlington, VT whose beers have recently been showing up here and there in the Atlanta area.  That’s about all I know about them, so I decided to give their hefeweizen a shot.

“Hefeweizen” is German for “yeast wheat,” which makes no sense, but more or less just means that it’s a beer brewed with malted wheat and left unfiltered to give it a cloudy look.  It differs from witbiers in that the Belgish are allowed to use spices and stuff, like coriander and orange peel, whereas the flavor in a hefeweizen depends entirely on the wheat, yeast and hops.  Or at least that’s what a hefeweizen is in Germany; American-made ones are often quite different, and Circus Boy is one of those.

Those sciency Sam Adams glasses seem to share a few properties with a weizen glass, so I used one of those.  The first thing I noticed upon opening the bottle (12 oz.) was that Magic Hat apparently prints things beneath the cap (“Waste Time, Collect ‘em all”).  The second thing I noticed was that, though the packaging insists that this beer is unfiltered and kraaa-zy like some kind of circus freak, it didn’t seem very unfiltered.  It was cloudy, just not as cloudy as I would expect; I could still see through to the other side of the glass.  The beer formed a moderate head that thinned quickly and stuck around like that for the rest of the glass.  The smell is pretty much all malt.

The taste is almost all malty sweetness and citrus (mostly orangey) from the Amarillo hops, with a little bit of bitterness.  It has a little heavier feel than yesterdays lager, but other than that it’s similarly smooth and refreshing going down.  And that’s about it.  There aren’t any of the hints of clove or banana that I would expect in a hefeweizen; it’s just a sweet, clear ale that happened to be brewed with wheat.  It’s not bad, it just seems kind of middle-of-the-road.  Based on this beer and the fancy, hip-looking packaging, I get the feeling that Magic Hat spends more time on marketing than on making beer.

Here’s yesterday’s beer.

Samuel Smith Pure Brewed Lager

Samuel Smith makes some of my favorite beers, in particular their imperial stout and the Taddy porter, but I’d never tried their lager.  I usually find lagers, especially the pale varieties, to be pretty boring.  At worst I associate them with the popular American Pilseners, and at best with the Reinheitsgebot, struck down in 1987 but still proudly followed, that restricted experimentation for German brewers.  This isn’t to say that lager beers can’t be interesting, I just more often find that they aren’t.

The Samuel Smith lager, poured from a 12oz brown bottle into a Pilsener glass that more or less looks like the one on the bottle, was clear and golden-colored and had a thin head that disappeared after the first couple of sips.  The aroma was rich and clean and like those beer commercials that show ingredients instead of swimsuit models: rich grains, flowery hops, everything pure and clean.

The taste was about the same as the smell: grainy, a light sweetness, a little bit flowery and a little bit bitter, and in all just clean, refreshing and well-balanced.  I liked it.  I guess “session beer” would be the term to use here.  It isn’t heavy like a stout or a porter, and 5% ABV is about average: a little higher than you’d find in Utah, but not as strong as something like an IPA.  This isn’t a beer that demands to be slowly sipped and pondered, but it’s tasty, light, and good for just drinking and enjoying.