The August style of the month was whit and wheat beers. John Lichel was head steward, Mike Woods and I took notes- a daunting task after 16 wheat beers!

We started the tasting with Bob Wilcox’s very fresh American Wheat. He reported this was a 60% wheat, 40% barley "no sparge" brew using cascade hops. It was light and crisp with a lovely clove nose and taste. Perfect for summer refreshment. I think it was also one of the most drinkable beers we had that day!

Bruce Brazil brought a 4 year old raspberry wheat homebrew which had stayed remarkably drinkable through all that time- a testament to Bruce’s process. The beer still had the raspberry aroma- good job Bruce.

John kept things moving as he lead us through the myriad of comercial brews starting with Lake Tahoe’s Hefeweizen. This beer was clean but not very representative of the style. The Franziskaner was very nice. The Ayinger Ur-weisse was somewhat flat and dry. It wasn’t handled well traveling to California. The Pauliner Hefe-weissen was in pretty good shape and we enjoyed it.

The Hacker Pschorr Weisse was somewhat disappointing in that it was a little too small. Expectations were not fulfilled with this beer. The Fraziskaner Hefeweisse Dunkel was not as interesting as the name. We moved onto the Hacker-Pschorr Dunkel Weisse and to a nice Schneider-Weisse Hefeweissen ale which the group seemed to enjoy. We ended the wheat beers with the Aventinus Original Wheat-Doppelbock which was quite interesting too.

Ken Koupal lead the out of style beers with his English Pale ale. I didn’t think the English beers had quite as much hops as Ken’s but his was quite drinkable. Bob Jones shared his Amber Ale which was quite malty but still had a good hop balance. Bob brought out his Doppelbock too. We moved onto the club’s Parking Lot Pale. A surprisingly drinkable, hoppy beer which turned out rather well considering the number of brewers and lack of planning- Good job folks. We ended with John Liechel’s IPA. John wanted to make sure the hops would come through so used 12 ozs in a 10 gallon batch- he succeeded.