Beer No: 26/1001
Page No: 593
Category: White
Today, I awoke to a couple of e-mails from Twitter. Seems the nice people over at Total Wine & More noticed my post a few days back about visiting their store and are now following my tweets. Everyone I've run into at the store has been really nice so, here's their usernames in case you want to know what's happening over at my new favorite beer store: @Total_Wine and @Total_Wine_Beer. Today I had to run some errands and one of them took me to Costco...which is right next to Total Wine & More, so I couldn't resist and even though I only planned on picking up a 6 pack, I walked out with 15 more beers from my list. Including today's beer, Napa Smith Wheat Beer.
Napa Smith is a brewery I had never heard of before, so I was excited to try this beer. Napa Smith Brewery is in the heart of the Napa Valley - wine country and is a relatively new brewery, but their head brewer has quite an extensive craft beer background. 1001 Beers notes that brewmaster Don Barkley was the assistant brewer at New Albion, the first modern microbrewery in America which opened in 1977. When they closed in 1983, he bought their equipment and co-founded the Mendocino Brewing Company. In 2008, he was persuaded to start another new brewery and joined the Smith family in Napa to be the brewmaster at Napa Smith Brewery. Which brings us to the Napa Smith Wheat Beer...
I can't recall seeing a wheat beer so clear in all my life. I mean, this thing is so clear, you can see the seat on the other side of the table through the glass. 1001 Beers states that, "unlike most wheat beers, [Don] uses lager yeast at a cool temperature, but without lagering it" and "the malt build is half wheat, half two-row barley with just a small amount of Franco-Belges kiln amber malt." And that pretty much explains it. By using a lager yeast, you can get the lager clarity and still call it a wheat beer with only 1/2 of the malts being wheat. Either way, this is a very watery beer and it has almost no flavors to it. A let down from this new brewery and makes me question whether I will go back to try their other brews. It's a novel idea to brew a wheat this way, but I just can't get on board with it.
My review, cross-posted at RateBeer.com:
Napa Smith Wheat Beer from Napa Smith Brewery
Aroma: 4/10
Appearance: 2/5
Taste: 3/10
Palate: 3/5
Overall: 7/20
Rating: 1.9 / 5.0
Had from bottle from Total Wine. Expected a standard wheat beer, got something completely different. Pours clear with very little head which dissipates to a small layer of white film. Good lacing, but very little carbonation. Utilizes a lager yeast which produces the clarity you’re not used to from a wheat beer. Also, just 1/2 wheat in the malt selection which really tones down the standard wheat flavors. Aroma is very weak, hints of spices and barely any wheat. Taste is watery, buttery, with hints of citrus and wheat. Tastes like almost nothing, very disappointed.
