There's a story behind Sierra Nevada's Kellerweis Hefeweizen beer. It's one of two new all-year beers introduced by Chico, California Sierra Nevada Brewery in March of this year. The story begins with the brewery obtaining a rather special Bavarian yeast strain, not otherwise available in the U.S. The yeast inspired them with a desire to make a traditional Hefeweizen, but to make a Hefe that stood out as a special beer. Sierra Nevada experimented for several years making small batches of beer with the yeast, but weren't creating something that impressed them. They decided to go on a pub crawl research trip to the heart of Hefeweizen country, Bavaria. In Bavaria Sierra Nevada's brewers noticed that an awful lot of breweries were still using open fermentation, where the beer is left in an open tank with exposure to the air. The yeast, when exposed to air, reacts in a far more expansive fashion than it does in a closed tank, and the resulting beer is more complex.

Sierra Nevada had been using shallow tank open fermentation with other beers; the trip to Bavaria inspired them to try it with a Hefeweizen made with their special Bavarian yeast. The result is the quite fabulous Sierra Nevada Kellerweis Hefeweizen. It's a lovely, fragrant, unfiltered Hefeweizen made with Two-row Pale, Wheat, and Munich malts, with Perle or Sterling hops used for bittering. The color is dark amber gold, rich with yeast, with a distinct slightly sweet citrus taste. Its low ABV, 4.8, makes Kellerweis Hefeweizen a good session beer, and it's honestly quite difficult to just have one. The name, "cellar wheat" is an homage to the Bavarian brewing traditions that inspired the beer's creation. Kellerweis Hefeweizen is marvelous alone, or with food, and I suspect even those who prefer a wedge of lemon with their Hefe will pass on the lemon with this beer.