Vignette #2, Hans-Peter Drexler (Schneider)

Brewer vignettes feature quotes from brewers I picked up in my travels around the world.

“There are three different styles of aroma in a Bavarian wheat beer: most of them are very fruity,  from the Weihenstephan strain; there’s one that is more neutral; and there are some that are more spicy like the Schneider yeast, spicy-tasting like clove and nutmeg.  We are very interested to have the raw materials that bring a lot of the ferulic acid to the wort to get a lot of vinyl guaiacol in the beer.  It comes from the barley and the wheat—most of it comes from the barley.” 

“The biggest challenge in the brewery is to keep the biological balance in the right way.  It’s a really big challenge. For me, wheat beer is terrible to produce.  There are so many screws you have to turn.  It’s crazy.  And these open fermenters are very hard to control.  But the result is amazing if everything works perfectly.”