Brew Review: Erdinger Weissbier Dunkel
- Russell W. Tan
- Oct 17, 2015
- 4 min read
Right. Here goes! The Erdinger Weissbier Dunkel is a contradiction. Dunkel is German for 'dark', and weissis german for 'white'. So, translated into English, to the layman, it would be the Erdinger White Beer Dark. Confused? I was, initially, too. Well, until you note that weiss can also mean wheat. So there you have it! Weissbier is a style, and so is dunkel! There are two kinds of weissbier(hefe, and kristall). Respectively referring to the cloudy (yeast suspended) weissbier and the filtered crystal clear weissbier. The Erdinger Weissbier Dunkel is a dark lager wheat beer with an ABV of 5.30%. It doesn't explicitly say so, but if I were to classify this beer, I'd put it under the hefeweizen(cloudy wheat beer) category. It pours a cloudy dark brown with a dense, smooth, microbubbly head.
I managed to find this beer on offer at Cold Storage for $12 for two. Each bottle contains 500ml of goodness, which pours nicely into my sahm weizen glass well.
Everyone should try this at least once - drink beer out of non-traditional glasses. In this first sit down tasting of the Dunkel, I paired the beer with just normal homecooked food, and served it in a Schott Zwiesel Bordeaux glass. The aromas are well concentrated and the carbonation is better managed. Besides, it feels better drinking out of a glass with a thin rim. This allowed me to detect the nuances and various notes in the nose. Coming through very strongly are the notes of chocolate, toffee, caramel, and it smells yeasty. The aroma is sweet and malty. This is one shiok beer...
I finished the first one too quick. It's that shiok. Poured the second one into a weizen glass this time round. Aroma is tamer but all the components previously detected are still lurking around and volatile.
This time, I paired it with mooncakes (a surprisingly good pairing).
On the body, banana, yeast, caramel and dark chocolate come through very strongly. There is no doubt that what I am drinking is a beer of very high quality. This beer is rich, is dark, and is probably the closest you can get to drinking liquid bread. I would not hesitate to pair this beer with a fruitcake. But... that will have to wait till January. I'm usually too cheapskate to buy fruitcakes during the Christmas season. I buy them in January when no one else wants them, and the supermarkets usually offer huge discounts for them.
*evil grin*
Look at that glorious head! It does die down quickly though.
The flavors are superbly well integrated. Like I said, the moment this enters your mouth you know it is a quality beer that you are imbibing. The sweetness and the yeast balance themselves out nicely. The sweetness is not so cloying because it is balanced out by the slight salty tang that the yeast gives it. It is a very umami beer that would doubtlessly work very well with many food pairings. The alcohol is very well hidden.
Because the aroma is sweet and malty, not hoppy at all, it can be drunk as a dessert beer, but because of the richness and the umami component to the beer, it can accompany rich cuts of meat as well.
Every time I drink this beer, there is banana on the palate, just on the edges of the tongue, tempting you to drink more to intensify the banana note.
The slight hoppiness in the mouth gives it a very pleasant herbal feel to round off the cloying rich mouthfeel of this excellent beer without any significant bitterness.
I cannot detect any cereals or grains in the mouth or in the nose, but the head is very biscuity in aroma and it is very pleasantly malty.
The umami flavors dominate this beer just as they round it off - as I said before, it is a very very rich beer, but still very versatile, friendly and approachable. I mean, who doesn’t like chocolates, toffee, and bananas? This is a glorious beer.
However, the finish is what lets this beer down. Even though the finish is nice and long, there is a metallic note always ringing through the middle finish despite it coming from a bottle and being bottle conditioned. The consolation is that the metallic note does not last for all of the finish, it is only transient.
A minor letdown to an otherwise wonderful beer. Try to stave off the unpleasant note to the finish by taking one more long swig. You won’t regret it. I promise.
Component Intensities:
Malt: 7/10
Yeast: 9/10
Hops: 3/10
Overall Ratings:
Nose: 8.5/10
Body: 9/10
Finish: 7/10
Total: 24.5/30
Additional Notes: Very versatile and rich beer. However, dunkel isn't everybody's cup of tea. Stylistically, it is very different as compared to common pale lagers and the richness needs some getting used to. I like to drink this beer slightly warmer than usual - I go for about 12 deg celsius. This is partly so because the higher temperatures increase the volatile compounds and makes the alcohol more apparent, which in this beer's case, is a good thing. I always follow the Mariestad's (see review here) with this beer. They are staples in my stash. P.S.: thanks Weilin for gifting me two additional bottles of malty dark happiness! This... this is a beautiful beer!
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