I keep getting all of these great beers at Target! Lots of great beer, locally made and from away. Latest example: Arches Queen’s Weiss, a Bavarian-style hefeweizen. Arches is in Hapeville, not far from Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. This is my second beer from them, and the first in cans. The first was their Mystik Bock, which I enjoyed on tap at The Brick Store Pub last March.
I love a good hefeweizen, and Arches Queen’s Weiss is a very good hefeweizen. I enjoyed it on a cool fall evening, but I enjoy the style a great deal in the summer months.
Arches says this about it on their website:
A traditional Hefeweizen designed on a Bavarian water profile. A simple light bodied ale, with a high wheat content to give crispness and a cloudy pale yellow color. Subtle noble hop bitterness is present. The star is the yeast, one of the oldest strains in the world, which is specially treated to give bright clove and banana flavors, with a subtle pink bubble gum aftertaste.
Arches Queen’s Weiss has an alcohol content listed as 5.2% by volume on the can. I paid $9.49 for a six-pack at Target. It was very fresh indeed as the cans were stamped as packaged on 10/11/2017 and I drank my first one on 10/26.
Arches Queen’s Weiss pours to a very hazy whiteish yellow color with a thick foamy head and a wheaty nose with hints of clove and banana. Taking a sip, the beer has oodles of tart, crackery wheat up front with subtle notes of banana and clove and a tart, crisp wheaty finish. I am very impressed, this is an excellent hefeweizen, perhaps one of the best I’ve enjoyed for some time.
Update 6/17/18: So I had a bad experience with Arches Queen's Weiss, which led to a great experience with Arches brewery. How's that you ask? Shortly after I penned this review, thee out of the six cans of my Queen's Weiss exploded. I put a comment on a check in on Untappd-and got a response from the brewery to contact them via e-mail. I did, they explained there was a problem with my batch, and they would like to send me a replacement six-pack.
How refreshing! Mistakes happen, but it's all in how you make them right. This was a direct contract to another Georgia brewery that addressed its quality issues by insulting its customers. I don't buy their beer anymore.
Thanks, Arches, for doing the right thing. I've bought more of your beer since and will continue to do so thanks to how you handled this. I've been drinking craft beer since the early 80s, and I have had bad batches more times than you can imagine. Few breweries, however, handled things with such class as you have.
And remember, try a new beer today, and drink outside the box.
*Pricing data accurate at time of review or latest update. For reference only, based on actual price paid by reviewer.
(B)=Bottled
(D)=Draft