Broken Bow Brewery - Wheatwine Ale

We’re pleased to be able to offer Broken Bow’s Wheatwine Ale as a Rare Beer Club exclusive this month. This will be available only to our club members and through the brewery’s taproom in Tuckahoe. Wheatwines or wheatwine style beers haven’t been around too long in the overall history of beer, though many wheat beers have existed for centuries, even millennia. Wheatwines, as we would consider them today, got their start in the 1980s when home brewer Phil Moeller created a recipe of a high ABV beer containing about 50% wheat in the grain bill. In 1987 Moeller brought this recipe to Sacramento, California’s Rubicon Brewing where he was the first brewmaster. The beer, Winter Wheat Wine, was served year-round at the brewery due to its popularity and uniqueness. Despite the local success, wheatwine’s national popularity grew slowly throughout the 1990s until breweries like Two Brothers in Warrenville, IL and Smuttynose Brewing in Hampton, NH picked up on the trend and brewed their own variants in 2000 and 2005, respectively. Not long after, renowned brewers such as Placentia, CA’s The Bruery took on the task with releases starting in 2009. Over the last two decades wheatwine has been a great alternative to barleywines and breweries around the US have been producing more and more interpretations with great success.

We thought a wheatwine from Broken Bow would be the perfect big beer for those laid-back summer evenings. With a healthy ABV at 8%, this beer’s overall framework with toasty breadiness and crisp maltiness keep it super drinkable and pairable. Another outstanding release from Broken Bow and one of our favorites.

The Broken Bow Wheatwine Ale pours a deep golden amber with bright red highlights, no doubt contributed by the artisanal red wheat in the mash, and flashes of copper. A creamy and pillowy off-white head builds as we pour, exhibiting lengthy retention and leaving behind light streaks of lacing with every sip. As we breathe in the beer’s esters we’re greeted by toasty, wheaty breadiness, with crisp malt roastiness and notes of caramel and honey. Mildly hoppy floral aromas follow and bring in dark citrus and hints of red fruit. More fruit notes continue to come through in the form of ripe stone fruit and a hint of bosc pear. The 8% ABV stays well tucked away, even after the beer has warmed up a bit in our glasses, with the well-layered and balanced aroma emphasizing toasted bread and honey throughout, and light notes of roasted nuts.

Our first sip of Broken Bow’s Wheatwine Ale is rich, robust, and packed with flavor. We encounter inviting flavors of honey on toasted wheat bread with lots of malty caramel with a nice touch of toffee. Beyond that we are welcomed by candied citrus peel, hints of crushed red fruit, light hoppy bitterness, and an envelope of roasted grains and nuts. The hop flavors add a bit of spice and herbal character mid palate but don’t take away from the silky mouthfeel. Beyond that, the warm flavors of apricot and bosc pear linger on our palates. The layers of flavor build on each other sip after sip, revealing the quality and craftsmanship of this beer, which remains always refined, complex, and nuanced.

The Broken Bow Wheatwine Ale is a medium-plus to full bodied beer with a lively mousse and mouthfeel. It always feels velvety smooth, very well rounded and balanced. The finish is long and clingy and full of red wheat accents. This is an excellent beer and we cannot stress enough how much we enjoyed it!

The 8% ABV does give this a bit of sturdiness in one’s cellar, so 3-5 years of maturity is not out of the question, but it is not required. Drink it now and often. For food pairings we’re leaning towards spicy dishes like Jamaican Jerk Chicken and Nashville Hot Chicken (with lots of pickles), or tangy and smoky barbeque.

Broken Bow Brewery is situated in the small village of Tuckahoe, New York, in the state’s Hudson Valley. This is southern Westchester County, a little over 15 miles from midtown Manhattan. Tuckahoe’s name, since you asked, translates to “it is globular,” and was used by Native Americans to refer to the area’s bulbous roots. We’re very excited to again showcase Broken Bow Brewery, which opened its doors in August 2013, to our thirsty Rare Beer Club members. We’ve been digging everything so far from these folks, from the core Broken Auger Lager and Broken Heart Stout to their more potent barrel-aged stuff. This month, we are able to offer up a Rare Beer Club exclusive from Broken Bow Brewery, showcasing what we think they do particularly well, with their Wheatwine Ale, their take on a California-born style, made with artisanal red wheat.

Broken Bow founder Mike LaMothe started homebrewing over 20 years ago, back in Stamford, Connecticut. The homebrewing interest sparked a business idea around building a brewery within the family, and today many of Mike’s family members work in different parts of the company, including his parents and siblings. (The brewery’s named after the town in Nebraska where Mike’s mother was brought up.) Distribution of their core line of cans has been slowly expanding across New York, and the brewery’s a short train ride up from NYC.

For those curious to visit the family brewery and tasting room over at Broken Bow (maybe to check out their Great American Beer Festival-medal-winning Old Split-Foot strong ale), they’re currently open 3–9pm Monday–Thursday, 1–11pm Friday, 12pm–11pm Saturday, and 12pm–9pm Sunday. The brewery is located at 173 Marbledale Road in Tuckahoe—readily accessible via either the Bronx River or Hutchinson River Parkways, or an easy walk from train stations nearby. Leave some time in your visit to spend in Broken Bow’s beer garden (usually open April through October, weather permitting). Play some cornhole, snag some empanadas or pizza from a visiting food truck, and enjoy some pints at one of the finest up-and-coming breweries in the beer-savvy state of New York.