Regardless of the time of year (but especially in the early spring), we love to partake in a wheat beer or two. These top-fermented, heavily wheat-filled beers are widely available from US craft brewers as well as traditional European beer makers. Traditionally, they come in two main versions (along with a few offshoots like the Berliner Weisse, Gose, lambic, and others): the Belgian Witbier and the German Weizenbier. While we could spend all day writing about both styles, today we’re sticking to the German version exclusively.
German wheat beers are well-known for their heavy wheat, yeast, fruity, and sometimes lightly spiced flavor profile. Specifically, the popular hefeweizen is known for its yeasty, clove, almost banana flavor. While these flavors (and others) vary by brewery and beer, it’s safe to say that cracking open a wheat beer on a late winter or early spring night is a good idea. They’re refreshing, flavorful, and complex enough for the remaining cooler weather.
Now that we’ve gotten you good and thirsty, it’s time to actually find some of these European gems. Below, you’ll find eight of our favorite classic German wheat beers. We ranked them based on flavor and balance.
8) Andechs Weissbier Hell
ABV: 5.5%
Average Price: $5 for a 500ml bottle
The Beer:
This top-fermented beer is known for its natural, yeasty, tangy flavor profile. A classic since its first release in March of 1993, its flavor profile of bananas, cloves, fruit, honey, and funky yeast is just as great thirty years later.
Tasting Notes:
The nose of bubblegum, banana, cloves, and yeasty bread draws you in. The palate is more of the same with flavors like ripe bananas, wintry spices, citrus zest, and bready malts. It’s yeasty, simple, and memorable.
Bottom Line:
While it’s difficult to find any fault with this beer, it’s a little yeasty and hazy for some novice wheat beer fans.
7) Ayinger Bräuweisse
ABV: 5.1%
Average Price: $14 for a four-pack
The Beer:
This 5.1% ABV top-fermented, hazy, unfiltered, yeast-filled wheat beer is known for its mix of funky, tangy, floral flavors, and refreshing, effervescent mouthfeel. This award-winning beer is light and refreshing, yet complex enough to excite the biggest wheat beer fans.
Tasting Notes:
This beer starts off with a surprisingly yeasty, funky nose along with ripe bananas and wintry spices. The palate follows suit with tangier, barnyard, funky yeast, bananas, bubblegum, and cloves. It’s crisp, refreshing, and loaded with wheat-centric flavors.
Bottom Line:
Another banger of an unfiltered beer. The only downfall, similar to the prior beer is the funky, almost barnyard yeasty aroma and flavor.
6) Hofbräu Hefe Weizen
ABV: 5.1%
Average Price: $10 for a six-pack
The Beer:
If you’ve been to Munich or you’re a big German beer drinker, you’ve likely heard about Hofbräuhaus. The restaurants serve Hofbraus beers, but if you’re not near one, you can grab a sixer of Hofbräu Hefe Weizen at your local beer or grocery store. One of the historic brewery’s most popular beers, it’s known for its well-balanced, citrus, and banana-filled flavor profile.
Tasting Notes:
On the nose, you’ll find honey, wheat, yeasty bread, bananas, and baking spices. The palate is exactly like the nose with a heavy dose of ripe banana, cloves, funky yeasty, what, and light citrus peels taking center stage. The finish is crisp and lightly bitter.
Bottom Line:
Another well-balanced, complex wheat beer that deserves a spot in your fridge. It might be a bit heavy on banana flavor for some new German beer drinks.
5) Hacker-Pschorr Hefe Weisse
ABV: 5.5%
Average Price: $12 for a six-pack
The Beer:
Brewed with malted barley, malted wheat, yeast, and Hallertauer Herkules and Hallertauer Taurus hops, this 5.5% ABV Weissbier is known for its naturally cloudy, unfiltered, yeasty, fruity, lightly spicy flavor profile.
Tasting Notes:
This beer smells like freshly-baked banana bread with a little clove and floral, Noble hops mixed in. The pleasant aroma makes way for a palate of ripe bananas, candied orange peels, clover honey, wheat, and spicy cloves. It’s a great mix of yeast, sweet flavors, and spice.
Bottom Line:
This beer is a great example of how to make a well-balanced wheat beer. It has every aroma and flavor wheat beer fans crave and they are all working in unison.
4) Franziskaner Hefe-Weissbier
ABV: 5%
Average Price: $11 for a six-pack
The Beer:
Another popular German hefeweizen, Franziskaner Hefe Weissbier is known for its unfiltered, natural cloudy appearance as well as its mixture of fruity and spicy flavors. It’s a very complex, balanced wheat beer that has fans all over the world.
Tasting Notes:
Dry hay, yeast, sweet wheat, banana, honey, dried fruits, and wintry spices start everything off right with this beer’s nose. Drinking it reveals yeasty bread, wheat, earthy funk, bananas, sweet malts, citrus peels, and light spices. The finish is crisp, sweet, and memorable.
Bottom Line:
Franziskaner Hefe-Weissbier leans heavily into the yeasty, bready, banana flavors, but it’s all very well balanced and drinkable.
3) Paulaner Hefe-Weissbier
ABV: 5.5%
Average Price: $10 for a six-pack
The Beer:
The number one wheat beer in Germany, Paulaner Hefeweizen is brewed with Herkules hops as well as light wheat malt, dark wheat malt, Pilsner malt, and Munich malt. The result is spicy, floral, sweet wheat beer you’ll come back to again and again.
Tasting Notes:
Yeasty bread, lemongrass, bubblegum, bananas, and cloves make a major appearance on the nose. The palate is very fruity with bananas, brown bread, funky yeast, citrus peels, fruit esters, pepper, and cloves. There are little to no hop flavors and aromas, but somehow it still works.
Bottom Line:
This is one for the fruity wheat beer fans. While it’s yeasty, funky, and has some other well-known wheat beer flavors, it’s the fruity flavor that propels this one to a different level.
2) Weihenstephaner Hefe Weissbier
ABV: 5.4%
Average Price: $12 for a six-pack
The Beer:
Not only is Weihenstephaner the kind of brewery that seems to make nothing but bangers, but it’s also the oldest continuously operating brewery in the world with its inception in 1040. Its Hefe Weissbier is known for its unfiltered cloudy appearance and fruity, banana, and clove flavor.
Tasting Notes:
Complex aromas of funky yeast, sweet wheat, bananas, freshly-baked bread, orange peels, wintry spices, and caramel malts make this a very welcoming nose. After that start, the palate doesn’t disappoint with flavors like banana bread, candied orange peels, dried fruits, cloves, and yeasty bread.
Bottom Line:
Weihenstephaner crafted one of the most flavorful, fruity, well-balanced wheat beers not only in Germany but in the whole beer world.
1) Schneider Weisse Original Hefeweizen
ABV: 5.4%
Average Price: $6 for a 16.9-ounce bottle
The Beer:
Schneider Weisse traces its history back to 1872 when George Schneider purchased the rights to brew wheat beer from King Ludwig and took over the formerly abandoned brewery Zum Maderbräu in Munich. Its most well-known offering is its Schneider Weisse Original Hefeweizen, an unfiltered, well-balanced traditional wheat beer.
Tasting Notes:
It all starts with a nose of ripe bananas, bubblegum, grassy, floral hops, sweet wheat, yeasty bread, and cloves. The palate is filled with flavors like candied nuts, fruit esters, bananas, freshly baked bread, and more wintry spices. It’s fruity, spicy, and sublimely balanced.
Bottom Line:
If you only drink one German wheat beer this spring, make it Schneider Weisse Original Hefeweizen. Its unfiltered, banana, fruity, yeasty flavor is one you’ll crave long after you finish drinking it.