Beer Review- UNO Orange Honey Wheat

My daughter's first birthday is this week, and next weekend we are having her birthday party for quite a few friends and family. I wanted to brew a beer for the event, and I wanted to brew something that would be accessible to both my friends who drink a lot of my beer, and to those who might not have as adventurous of tastes. Since it's the middle of July, I thought a nice light wheat beer would be good, but wanted to add something to make it a bit more interesting. I had toyed with idea of using orange blossom honey for sometime because I'm curious about how much of the subtle orange blossom would come out if it was put into the secondary. I posted the recipe in an earlier post.

I tapped the keg to give the beer a try, along with a few friends and the result has been good. It pours a nice hazy medium orange color with a thin white head. There's a nice floral aroma with some orange hints. Its got a real sweet taste with a slight yeasty tartness, but a faint honey sweetness in the finish. Overall I'm really pleased with this beer. The honey is really subtle, but adding it to the secondary really made its presence known. The orange blossom is really nice, not overly orangey, with more of a floral quality. I've used orange peels (both store bought and just scraping from the orange), and orange marmalade before in beers and the result was very strongly orange. The orange blossom honey is a much softer aroma. I'm curious to see how the people at the party react, but I think it should be well received. I think it achieved the desired result of being interesting enough for those who drink my beer on a regular occasion and accessible enough to those who might not drink a lot of beer.

I've drank two of the triples I bought, and am still waiting to crack open Two Brothers Oh Brother Triple. I'm curious about it, since its a new brewery to distribute to the Twin Cities, and I've heard good things about their beers. In addition to the TwoBrothers, I had Boulevard's Triple and Victory's Golden Monkey. I'll break down those next week.

Also, I transfered the Hopshot IPA to the secondary and it tasted nice. The Amarillo hops gave it a really strong grapefruit flavor, and it has some nice bitterness (bodes well for the Hopshot concoction). I decided to dry hop with an ounce of cascade instead of bottling it because I wanted more aroma, it didn't have as much as I was expecting, so this should really make it have a great citrusy/west coast IPA nose.

Finally, I'm also going to tap my keg of Nokomis Summer Ale. This year's version is a kolsch-ish light ale brewed with rye and wheat. I used the Kolsch Ale 2 yeast. It was a light yellow with a nice rye spiciness when I transfered it. I'm curious about it since I've never brewed with rye before. More on that to come.
Salud!
Bearded Brewer