Lemon with Your Beer?
(Excerpted from Brewing with Wheat)
To celebrate 400 years of wheat brewing on the site in Kelheim that’s now home to Private Weissbierbrauerei, G. Schneider & Sohn created a special beer called 1608, a little stronger than Schneider Original. Brewmaster Hans-peter Drexler hopped it at a slightly higher rate than a typical weissbier and with a newish German hops called Saphir, which added a bit of a citrus flavor.
“They say it was a Bavarian tradition to serve weiss with lemon,” Drexler explains, referring to the practice as if it were a bit of ancient history not everybody believes existed.
Ask an American beer drinker why the bartender just hung a lemon on a glass of hefeweizen, and the answer likely would be, “Because that’s the way the Germans do it.” Wrong. Maybe once upon a time, but certainly not now. “Oh, no no, that is something that was done in the 1980s. I remember with kristall weizen,” beer sommelier and writer Sylvia Kopp wrote in an email. “Now it is not accepted behavior.”
The late Michael Jackson once suggested the lemon garnish might be linked to the practice of serving juice or syrup with Berliner weisse because it was visually appealing and highlighted the refreshing character of wheat beer. In a 1991 column in What’s Brewing he wrote:
“When I first encountered South German wheat beers, in the early to mid-1960s, they were regarded as an old-fashioned, rustic style, favored by old ladies with large hats. The beer was at that time customarily garnished with a slice of lemon.
“People have told me the lemon was to mask the taste of the uneven products made at that time by unscientific country brewers; I do not believe that. Some of the wilder wheat beers might taste odd to the uninitiated but not to people who grew up with them.
“I have also heard it said that the lemon reduced the foam to manageable proportions, but why would anyone want to flatten a naturally sparkling drink? I believe the lemon accentuated the tart, refreshing character of the beer, and I am sorry that it is so rarely seen in Germany today.”
Before you decide to quote Jackson and ask for a lemon in a Bavarian beer, consider this thought from Munich-based beer journalist Werner Obalski: “Lemon with hefeweizen you only will see when Aussies and Kiwis drink it.”