Brewery: Baltika Brewery, St. Petersburg, Russia

Brewery Description: “An unfiltered lager beer produced from a recipe using a wheat malt. Baltika 8 Wheat beer has all the qualities of this beer variety: a thick dense head, as well as a mild, fruity aroma with notes of spices and a mild sweetness”

Brew Style: Hefeweizen

Recommended Glass: Weizen, 5.0% ABV

The Ugly Truth: In case people haven’t noticed, I fully intend on drinking every single Baltika beer that my local beer store stocks. The lastest is Baltika 8 Pshenichnoe, their wheat beer. As for the brewery description, I don’t agree with most of what they say after that colon mark. The head did pour pretty thick, but it was a fairly light head, and not heavy. When I think of a heavy head, I think of what you would find on a stout. This was lighter than that, with a large number of air pockets coming to the surface fairly rapidly. The color was an extrememly cloudy gold, but appealing. As for the fruity aroma, I didn’t get a sense of that. It had a strong yeast and wheat smell to me, but I had a bit of a stuffed up nose so that one I’ll call a draw. Lastly, I didn’t get a sense of the spices and sweetness. But again, stuffed nose, so it would have thrown my sense of taste slightly but not that much. It smelled like wheat, plain and simple. As for the feel, in my mouth this was one heavy-ass beer. The taste to it was mild, but at the same time the mouth feel was extremely dense. The best I can say is: imagine someone took some wheat bread, put it in a blender with some lager, hit puree, threw it in a glass and gave it to you to drink. And it sat heavy. And when I say heavy, I mean I felt like I just ate a cow that had been injected with cheese and deep fried. All that being said, it really wasn’t that bad and was different that what I expected so I’m kind of torn as to what to give it. I would recommend people giving this a try, but don’t go into it expecting a hefeweizen.

Verdict: I was going to give it a 5, but my new friend Boris from Department 1 of SMERSH has kindly “asked” me to give it a 6 out of 10.