Princes and Bishops

Beer #237 Julius Echter Hefe-Weiss /  Würzburger Hofbräu ,  Würzburg, Germany

It's Friday, and we're doing take-out Chinese food for dinner, with a movie and some beer to follow.  Not a bad way to end the week by any stretch of the imagination.

Tonight's beer is the Julius Echter Hefe-Weiss from Würzburger.  It comes out of the bottle with a hazy yellow, with a lingering thin white head, and gives off aromas of grain, malt, and banana.  The taste is classic hefeweizen - banana, clove, wheat, and bubblegum, with a clean light finish.  If you love hefeweizens, this one needs to be on your list, and soon.

Soooo good.

Würzburger is storied brewery, founded in 1643 by Prince-Bishop Johann Philipp von Schönborn.  Prince-Bishop is one badass title, if you ask my opinion.  All the funk of Prince, plus the strong pimp hand of Bishop (Don Magic Juan, that is).

Prince!

Bishop!

  

Yeah, I mean I guess it was something like that.  Anyway, keeping with the theme, this beer is named for Prince-Bishop Julius Echter von Mespelbrunn, a big wheel in the church and town of Würzburg in the mid-1600's.  His heart is buried in a monument in the great hall of the University of Würzburg.  Top that one.

Looks just like Prince!

Thing to Think About Today:
A bit more on heart.  Sometimes, the winners aren't strictly the ones who go home with shiny medals around their necks.  Take for example, the story of Derek Redmond.  A pulled hamstring got very much in the way of a podium finish for Redmond at the '92 Olympics, but it didn't get in the way of him proving he had a heart of a champion.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFKpZnok10s&feature=BFa