Wheat beers are known as drinkable beers, ones that guys would buy for their girlfriends who aren’t huge on beer. Blue Moon and Shock Top have made the style popular, and Natty Green’s Wildflower lives up to its mainstream cousins’ reputation: a drinkable beer that’d fool you as Sprite.
Whether you call it wit, blanche, or weiss , the various styles of wheat beers have common characteristics, like a smooth and full body, light and fruity or floral aromatics and a lush creamy head. Many come unfiltered, with yeast and wheat proteins suspended in a cloudy slur of deliciousness. Beer snobs, even those who swear by strong IPAs or heavy stouts, can still enjoy a well-made wheat beer. But it won’t be a Wildflower.
The body is not full like its Belgian counterparts; its alcohol content is on par with the typical low gravity at 4.5 percent, but the rich characteristics of wheat beer don’t come through. It’s not filtered, but it’s not velvety. Wildflower loses its head quickly after pouring and it’s dangerously too easy to drink. It’s light, but it resembles what Germans would call kinderbier —children’s beer, usually half beer, half lemon soda or lemonade.
Natty Greens, a brewery based out of Greensboro, with a brewpub in Raleigh, now sells throughout North Carolina, and many of its products are solid representatives of their styles. Their amber ale is everything you’ll expect out of an American amber ale and their seasonals (only on draft) have personality and depth in flavor. Wildflower is like the boring, anorexic sister from a big, loud family.
Wheat beer has acquired the recognition as girly beer, but despite its girly connotations, a well-crafted Belgian witbier or German Hefeweizen can knock your socks off. They’ve got strong flavors—coriander for witbier and bananas for Hefeweizen —and smooth bodies that compliment these flavors.
But Wildflower doesn’t. So heck, if you don’t really like beer, you’ll never know.