September 01, 2008    New Glarus Dancing Man - Superb

Modern Brewery Age Weekly E-Newsletter •Volume 59, No. 35• September 1, 2008

By Pete Reid, editor of Modern Brewery Age; with regular panelists Gregg Glaser, editor of Yankee Brew News, and Tom Conti and Robert Lachman of the Yankee Brew Newstasting panel. Joining us each week is a rotating cast of tasters, to include Dr. Steve Victor, formerly of Yale University; Commander Von Bair, USN, ret.; expat-Briton Gerry Nicholls, graphic designer Phil Simpson, videographer Paul Lin; Neil Balkun, beer buyer for Ancona’s Wines & Liquors, Redding, CT, Greg Zannella, field sales director for Northeast Beverage of Orange, CT, and Michael Anstendig, a writer for New York Magazine on-line. Since taste is subjective, we include descriptive comments from each taster. We rate a top beer in each tasting, and rank it “Five Mugs.” Beers that are almost on the same plane are “highly recommended” and get four mugs. Other beers are recommended based on their strong points, but don’t get a mug rating.

New Glarus Dancing Man
New Glarus Brewing Co.
New Glarus, WI

"Five Mugs" =Top beer of the tasting, superb in every respect.

Dancing Man Wheat is a very Bavarian hefe weizen that comes in at 7.2% abv.

A spot-on Bavarian hefe-weizen from the New Glarus Brewing Company. This is a great yeast, surely straight out of Bavaria. Lots of bubble gum and clove all the way through. But it’s not all phenolics, this beer is very creamy and refreshing. Dan Carey of New Glarus is the most focused of brewmasters, probably a trait he learned brewing at A-B. When he makes a cherry beer, it’s cherry. And when he set out to make a hefe weizen, and he made one that rivals
the best of the Bavarians. This one could take medals at the European Beer Star. The only stylistic oddity is the alcohol content of 7.2% by volume, which pushes it into Imperial Hefeweizen territory.
“Bubble gum aromatics in the nose big time!” said Gregg Glaser. “That bubblegum flavor is there as well, but it’s not unpleasant,” said Michael Anstendig. “That clove is strong,” said Robert
Lachman, “I like the beer, but the clove kind of takes over the back end of the beer.” “Like that clove gum, from Beeman’s” said Phil Simpson. “I like it.” “I feel like I just came from the dentist,” said Tom Conti. “It’s great beer and it freshens your breath too!”