David Brockington's Tasting Notebook

Victory Sunrise Weissbier

Initial Impressions:

The summer was quite interesting, what with my spouse moving across the country to go to graduate school and all. However, this Big Life Change afforded at least one side-benefit: an excuse to take yet another roadtrip across the continent. Of course, I sampled many beers and visited many brewpubs, beer bars, and breweries. Several beers stood out, and there were several surprises (some positive, some negative). However, the brewery that I most wanted to visit was the new Victory Brewing Company, in Pennsylvania.

My expectations were piqued by discussions with Jim Busch, who is involved in the brewery (as one of the principles involved, plus occasional pilot brewer). Jim made the basic mission of the brewery plain. Victory seeks to specialize primarily in German lagers, and they take this fairly seriously. Unlike most microbreweries in the US, Victory places a strong emphasis on replicating the ingredients and brewing procedure of the beers that they seek to replicate.

To achieve this, a decoction brewery was built, and German ingredients serve as the base for most of their beers. (This creates an interesting new approach to American IPA with their Hop Devil; I plan to dedicate a review solely to that). All beers on tap the day I visited the pub, save for the IPA, were decocted at least once. This ultimately makes a big difference.

The irony of my visit to Victory is that I had gone in expecting to be blown away by the Dortmunder, Marzen, IPA, and Bock. Jim had sent me out several samples as I was preparing an article for publication, and I was very impressed with the lot. However, it would ultimately end up being this bavarian weizen that dazzled me.

The beer in my glass was totally cloudy, pale, complete with a big rocky head as one would expect from a good example of this style.

Nose:

The nose was a combination of wheaty maltiness with clove and banana notes being more than evident.

Flavor:

The first thing I noticed was a chunky maltiness -- the sort of maltiness that only a decocted weizen can offer. This chunky malty wheaty flavor slid into a marriage of the requisite banana and clove notes. I found the banana to have a slight edge on the clove, but this made for a good balance between the ester and the phenol. This beer was very gassy -- again as it ought to be.

Final Analysis:

About three weeks prior to my visit to Victory, I had the opportunity to revisit Tabernash Weiss, one of the first true Bavarian weizen beers brewed brewed by a craft brewer in the U.S., at the 1996 Oregon Brewers Festival. When I originally reviewed it to this forum over two years ago, I was blown away, and awarded it a five-star rating. Since then, Tabernash has moved away from imported malts in favor of domestic varieties, and has never decocted this beer as originally planned. I found the sample in July of 1996 to have slipped in contrast to my notes on the beer from 1994. While the past couple of years have seen many new interpretations of the Bavarian weizen style brewed in the US, few reached the level that Tabernash had in 1994 (although most were excellent beers). The Victory weissbier, frankly, sets a new standard for me in domestically brewed Bavarian weizens. Not only is it a better beer than Tabernash today, but I have the temerity to argue that it is better than Tabernash was two years ago. Unfortunately, the Victory offering is a seasonal product (and certainly not available in my home stomping grounds -- as it ought not be).

Rating: *****

(5-star scale)
Copyright 1996 by David Brockington, all rights reserved.
Seattle, USA
Comments? Fire off some email: dbrock@u.washington.edu
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