Hangar 24 Craft Brewery
Redlands, CA
Available: CA
The oranges used in this wheat beer are purchased through the Old Grove Orange Co. (an affiliate of the non-profit Inland Orange Conservancy) whose main objectives are to save the local orange trees from disappearing, spread the word about the local citrus growing heritage, and to feed the hungry with the surplus oranges
ABV: 4.6
ABW: 3.62
Color: orange
Bitterness: 13
Original gravity: 1044
This beer pours the color of banana cream pie. But don’t let the color fool you; it’s all about oranges. A vibrant aroma of Valencia oranges bursts juicily out of the bottle as soon as you uncap it, and the oranges stay with you from first whiff to last sip, although they are balanced nicely with a slightly sweet cereal malt backbone to give it some ballast. The orange overtones make this lightly effervescent wheat beer a refreshing choice when you are in the mood for something light on a hot summer day.
Orange Wheat, it is called, and orange wheat is what you get. This cloudy, yellow beer froths briskly into the glass, then oranges, fresh and juicy, billow out of the slightly bready aroma. The taste is not as sweet as the aroma suggests it might be: in fact, it’s quite thin and fairly dry, with oranges leading the way and light bread and spice notes tucked in behind. Bitterness creeps into the very dry, rather lean finish, but oranges remain in control. Overall, it’s perhaps a bit one dimensional, but very refreshing all the same.
Lisa Morrison, aka The Beer Goddess, writes about beer whenever she can and also gets to talk about it on a weekly radio show in her hometown of Portland, OR.
Author of the Good Bottled Beer Guide and The Book of Beer Knowledge, Jeff Evans is an eight-time editor of the CAMRA Good Beer Guide and one of Britain's best-known beer writers.
Thu Jun 28th, 2012
The Events of Beer
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Here’s my review, short and sweet:
Orange Wheat is my favorite. It’s consistently good. Get it. Drink it.
If you want to drink something you can see through, drink water.