Superlative Wheat Bier

The past two nights I have had a Bavarian wheat beer (weissbier). Wednesday's was so delicious, so absolutely lip-smacking / 'here's a key, you can come and go as you please', that Thursday I again bought a German wheat beer.But it didn't measure up to the first, the first being the wheat beer from the oldest continuously operated brewery in the world: Weihenstephaner.

I rate Weihenstephaner Hefe Weissbier to be off the charts, superlative. It turns out that RateBeer.com's collective wisdom agrees, giving it a 99/100 score.

The beer I had Thursday wasn't over-the-top great, but was a tasty approximation. Plus, the bottle was 12 ounces instead of 11.2 of the Weihenstephaner. It was the Franziskaner Weissbier. Again, I'm in agreement with RateBeer, which scored it a 96/100.

There you have it: 2 excellent beers from Munich, the beer capital of the world. Why is Weihenstephaner's better? That is a question for another post.

4pm on a lazy Sunday in Manhattan

Sunday afternoon during Autumn in New York: a time of many options. Coffee or beer depends on what you have been doing.. Eating brunch? Playing Football? After a 6 mile run, this reporter had a couple beers but did not want to lose the day to idle indoor socializing. So, out and about in the East Village, where many coffee options await.

7th Street Manhattan: Porto Rico Importing Co. 

The famous Mud Truck parked in Astor Place.

A flagship Starbucks lost its sibling on the opposite side of Astor Place but remains a gleaming area attraction. 

You Only Have to be 16 to ...

You don't have to declare you are 21 years old to drink  the websites of foreign beer brewers. The first screening question is language, so the text can be understood. The brewers do not ask you to first declare your home country, which might lead them to ask you to pass the minimum age of such country. They instead use their local laws as the benchmark.

No matter where you're from, you need only be 18 to enter the self-declared oldest brewery in the world: Weihenstephaner from Bavaria, Germany. A competing Bavarian brewer, Weltenburger Abbey, also claims to be the oldest brewery in the world. When I visited their website I learned that I only had to be 16 years old to enter!

It remains in dispute which of the two Bavarian brewers named above is the oldest brewery, but we have learned that Weihenstephaner has the older age requirement to consume its website.

Which of these 2 brewers has an older web site? According to the Wayback Machine, Weihenstephaner wins that honor as well, having been crawled way back in Dec 1998. Weltenburger was right on its heels, with a website from Jan 1999.

Empty Mug

At Zum Schneider on Ave C in Manhattan.

7am Airport Bar

I interviewed a busy family man / business executive about a number of coffee or beer topics. Asked: Please discuss a situation where either coffee or beer could have been the appropriate choice, and how you chose, he first stated:

"In all cases where I could only choose one, I would choose beer, except if I was in an airport bar at 7am with my boss. Then I would get coffee."

Later in our discussion, this man, who we'll call Ben,  painted a picture of an occurrence in which one or the other option (coffee or beer) would be a mutually exclusive consumption.

"It's Saturday or Sunday morning and you wake up in your own home, between 10 and 11. You can either have a coffee and bagel - some kind of bread product... or a beer -- hair of the dog -- and look for some ibuprofen. I always go with the beer because there's the possibility of a mishap from a digestive standpoint with the coffee."

I asked about the digestive concern about coffee. "It's like a natural laxative... things can backfire."

So does choosing the beer exclude having the bagel? "Not necessarily," Ben said. "But it's rare to do so.. the reason you had wanted the bagel or bread was for the carbs," which you obtain from beer "in liquid form."

Plus, "beer and bagel don't really go along from a taste perspective." 

That's true. So, beware readers: once you do commit to and begin consuming a bagel, the deck is stacked against you; looks like you'll be wise to have a coffee--so make sure it's still nearby!

Editors Notes: The interviewed party is of further value to our blog because he managed a quality coffee beanery for 2+ years. In a later post, we'll publish some of his advice regarding coffee buying, roasting, and serving. Subscribe to this blog!