Beer of the Week – Schneider Weisse Tap 7 Review by Irish_Goat
Welcome to “Beer of the Week”! Beer reviews by NHC members. This week’s review was written by NHC member Irish_Goat. Visit the members-only “Beer Reviews“ section to submit your own review.
Brewed according to the original recipe of the founder of the brewery of 1872 Schneider Weisse Tap 7 is referred to as “our original” despite being given the number 7. It pours a darker, more copper colour that your average wheat beer but still with the characteristic dense foamy head one would expect of a Bavarian Weisse. On the nose there is an abundance of everything we either love or hate in a hefeweizen: banana esters, clove, spice, malt and bread all mingled together. The taste brings out more clove and bubblegum flavours with the banana taking on a more subtle role. Full-bodied mouthfeel and lots of carbonation make this a perfect summer beer and far too quaffable for 5.4% alcohol. For me, this is the best example of the style currently available in Ireland. In my days working in the Bull and Castle anyone asking for a recommendation of a good wheat beer was nearly always asked “have you tried Tap 7?”.
Luckily for homebrewers, Schneider Weisse publish the ingredient list of Tap 7 on their Bräuhaus menu in Munich (well worth a visit if you’re ever in Munich). I’ve included a photo of the menu and here’s the translation I found online.
We require the following ingredients to make 1 litre of Schneider Weisse:
- 1.0 litres of brew water
- plus 4.3 litres of sparge water
- 108 g wheat
- 72 g barley
- 2 g roasted malt
- 0.7 g hops [the picture appears to say 0.07g, but the recipe uses 0.7g]
- 4 g top fermenting yeast
- and of course time to mature
For a 23 litre recipe, that’s approximately:
- 23 litres of water
- 2.5kg of wheat
- 1.65kg of barley
- 50g of roasted malt
- 16g of hops [Hallertau]
- 75 grams of top fermenting yeast
- and of course time to mature (Schneider do 4 days of primary and then 14 days in the bottle)
Schneider Weisse are one of the few German wheat breweries to use their original yeast strain in the bottle – a lot use a bottling strain or even just a cosmetic one. You can culture up the yeast from a couple of bottles of Tap 7 or you can use WLP300 yeast instead.
Prost!
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