Sugars and enzymes derived from malted cereal grains (most commonly barley) are dissolved in water. The sweet barley tea, called wort, is boiled to break down the sugars. Hops are added to the boil as a bittering agent to offset the sweetness of the sugar. Finally, yeast is added to eat the sugars and create alcohol in the process of fermentation. Using different amounts and varieties of these four ingredients, brewers can create an endless variety of beers.
Most beer is made almost entirely from malted barley, but Belgian and German brewers also created beers with a high proportion of malted wheat. Called witbier in Belgium and weissbier in Bavarian Germany (both names mean “white beer”), because the wheat lightened the color and flavor of the brew, they get most of their flavors from the fruity yeasts used and are typically unfiltered, leaving the yeast in suspension and giving them a cloudy appearance. Both styles are only very lightly hopped.
The Belgian witbiers usually included spices like coriander and orange peel to add flavor and complement the clove and banana flavors that came from the yeast. The style was almost extinct in Belgium by the middle of the twentieth century, until Pierre Celis opened a brewery in Hoegaarde, Belguim in 1965 to brew only witbier. The witbeir style has become known to US beer drinkers from a company that takes its name from the term that refers to two full moons happening in a calendar month, and is usually served with an orange slice.
The Germans had several takes on the style. The name hefeweizen means “yeast wheat” and is unfiltered. Filtered versions are called kristalweize (one of my personal favorites). They didn’t follow the Belgian trend of spicing the beer and let the yeast stand on its own. Strangely enough, weissbier was originally forbidden by the German Beer Purity Law, the Reinheitsgebot, passed in 1516 to limit beer ingredients to barley, water, and hops (yeast was added later when it was discovered to be the real reason beer fermented). The law was originally intended to limit competition with the bakers for wheat and rye breads, but it spread throughout the states that eventually became a unified Germany in the 1800s. Some regional styles like weissbeirs were allowed to continue, but many others disappeared.
Two German variations on the wheat beers, the Berliner Weisse and the Leipziger gose, also use bacteria to make them sour. I will talk about sours in a later installment in this series.
The cache is located in a small pull-off along the lake. I'm not sure why it's there nor if it's even an official city park, but it's best to abide by the sunrise to sunset hours of Worthington parks. Parking is legal on the pavement next to the road.
The new hide may need tools or a personal increase in gravitational potential energy to retrieve.