Before we start here, let me explain my approach to reviewing beer.
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If I don't like a beer, that doesn’t mean the beer is bad. Nor does it mean that I think those who choose to drink that beer are goons with no taste buds.
It just means I don’t like it. That’s all.
Which brings me to this week’s beer, a wheat beer with added grapefruit drink from German brewer Schofferhofer.
Being a fan of the Schofferhofer hefeweizen – I love the lolly banana notes – I was curious to try this beer.
I think I should have saved my money for this is a very, very strange beer. And one that manages to remove any semblance of that hefeweizen I love.
The first sign of trouble is the clear bottle. Given that light negatively affects the flavour of beer – most notably the hops – a clear bottle is a good sign that not much is going on with that beer.
The aroma is very distinctly grapefruit – I could smell the fruit as soon as I prised off the bottle cap. The flavour’s the same. As I mentioned earlier, there’s no hefe character here at all, it’s all grapefruit drink.
By the way, the additive is not grapefruit juice but “grapefruit drink” – says so quite specifically on the label.
It’s more lolly water than beer. At just 2.5 per cent, it’s not that far off a soft drink.
If I had to say anything nice about this beer it’s that it might work during a hot day.
But only if you don’t like beer because it’s not sweet enough.
Glen Humphries is the 2016 AIBA Australian Beer Writer of the Year.