This is our contribution to Session #137 hosted by Roger at Roger’s Beers.
Our introduction to German wheat beer happened long before we were interested in beer and before we’d ever thought of going to Bavaria.
It was at the Fitzroy, a Samuel Smith pub in central London, in about 2001, where the house draught wheat beer was a version of Ayinger brewed under licence in Tadcaster, North Yorkshire.
We had encountered Hoegaarden by this point — it was ubiquitous in London at around the turn of the century — but hadn’t considered ordering any other wheat beer until a friend urged us to try Ayinger. “I call it banana beer,” they said, “because it tastes like puréed banana.”
At first we didn’t quite get it. To us, it tasted like beer. Weird, soupy, sweet beer. So we had a few until we understood what he meant. And yes, there it was — the stink of blackened bananas left too long in the bowl. “It gives you terrible hangovers, though,” he added, a little too late to save us. We couldn’t think of it for a year or two after that session without feeling a little overripe ourselves.
Pinning down anything relating to the history of Samuel Smith beers is trickier than it ought to be but, in the absence of firm evidence, we reckon it’s a safe guess that they started brewing Weizen in the 1990s, during or after the brief craze for wheat beer among the British beer cognoscenti (Hook, Dorber et al) during 1994-95. (As always, solid intel proving otherwise is very welcome.)
Sam Smith’s take might not have had the cool of a genuine import — the hip kids raved about Schneider — but it had the advantage of being both accessible and accessibly priced, and we can’t help but wonder how many other British beer geeks were first introduced to German wheat beer this way.
5 replies on “Session #137: “Banana Beer””
Summer 2000. The only out-of-the-ordinary beer available in Dublin was Erdinger, which I drank because it was summer and I had money for the first time. I recall meeting a friend for pints and bringing my tall tapering glass to the table and him recognising it, exclaiming “Oh! Banana beer!”
It’s weird to think of how exciting and exotic Erdinger once seemed. Pretty much the main attraction at North Bar in Leeds back in the late 1990s, we gather.
My first encounter was in the mid-90s, largely inspired by how good the photos in Michael Jackson’s books (and his descriptions of them) made them look.
Ha, our first draft of this post mentioned Jackson’s Great Beer Guide (AKA the Bible). It was the first beer book we bought, at a branch of the long-gone chain Books Etc. off Buckingham Palace Road. The photos did make everything look really tantalising. Everything glowed!
[…] the 137th edition of the Session we wrote about our early experiences with German wheat beer in Samuel Smith pubs in London: “At first we didn’t quite get it. To us, it tasted like beer. Weird, soupy, sweet beer. So we […]