When Bavaria and Brooklyn Collide…
Brewery collaborations are much in vogue these days. Dogfish Head recently teamed up with Three Floyds. Three Floyds with Mikkeller. Avery has mixed things up with Russian River. And most recently, Bell’s got together with De Proef. There are probably numerous other examples of brewers cross-pollinating. (If you know of more, please let us know in the comments section.) But the purpose of this post is to praise as effusively as possible the collaboration between Garret Oliver at Brooklyn Brewery and German brewgod Hans-Peter Drexler at Schneider. We tasted the result at Quarry House in Silver Spring over the weekend. It was nothing short of a revelation. The Brooklyner-Scheider Hopfen-Weisse is exactly what it sounds like: a brilliant mix of a classic German wheat beer, full of malty pleasure, with the bitter hops that American brewers love so much. An unlikely pairing, yes, but one that works to perfection.
The beer came about when Drexler visited Oliver’s brewery to make the beer using Brooklyn’s facility. An earlier collaboration took place in which Oliver visited Drexler in Germany. The result of that trip was the logically named Schneider-Brooklyner Hopfen-Weisse. We haven’t had the pleasure of sampling it yet, but based on the quality of its American incarnation, we have high hopes.
There are only three drawbacks about the Brooklyner-Schneider Hopfen-Weisse: (1) as far as we can tell, it comes only in 750-ml bottles–at 8.5 percent ABV, we think less really is more; (2) it costs $22 per bottle; and (3) you have to go to Silver Spring to get it. That is, of course, unless you know of a place in the District that carries it. We hope you do…
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8:33 pm
I bought $6 .5L bottles ages ago at the P Street Whole Foods. Haven’t been back in 2 months so no idea if they still carry it.
10:39 am
That is Schneider-Brooklyner for $6, the Brooklyner-Schneider could be found for $15-16 at the same Whole Foods a few months ago, though.