Two styles of beer that I often mistake for one another during blind tasting panels are Scottland’s Wee Heavy and Germany’s Doppelbock. Messing up this comparison more than any other and continuing to miss it a few weeks away from the Adv Cicerone Exam worried me and boded for a strategy change. I took the week to deep dive these styles and tasted 3 Wee Heavies and 3 Doppelbocks- 1 beer per day over the course of 6 days. I learned a lot about these styles and am excited to have some new tips to use.

**Foreward**:

I rarely drink beers that are sweet and/or full-bodied. The beers I reach for are usually things like bitter Pilsners, funky sours, or dry Belgian beers. I think this is a big reason I struggled so much with the Wee Heavy/Doppelbock distinction. I knew Doppelbock was a lager and should be much drier than Wee Heavy, but I could never really experience that difference; and I didn’t know why.
After spending a week with heavier beers, I think it was that my palate was so unfamiliar with bigger, darker beers that I got lost when encountering bolder dark malt flavors, high alcohol, and low bitterness and brightness. My baseline for intensity was so low that Wee Heavies and Doppelbocks felt equally ultra-intense, and I couldn’t parse out the subtleties. Drinking these beers consistently over the past week made a noticeable difference though, as my intensity baseline didn’t get the chance to dip down.

**Past Distinctions**:
When I got Wee Heavy and Doppelbock on a blind tasting, I used to note that Wee Heavy had sherry wine flavors and dark/dried fruit esters coming from yeast. Wee Heavies are known ester producers while Doppelbock are known “clean-fermenters”, so this was my main clue. While I still agree with this distinction, I think there’s much more I could have been looking for.
For a Doppelbock, I’d first note to look for clean yeast (if I tasted fruity esters or spicy phenols I knew it wasn’t a Doppelbock). This is for sure still an important clue. I would also smell/taste for “bready” malt notes. It was my understanding that the malt profile leaned more toward dark bready notes vs the carmelly notes of a Wee Heavy. I still find this to be true, but since these are complex beers, I would often convince myself I was tasting deeply browned bread only to find it was not a Doppelbock, but a Wee Heavy. I think this was because of a lack of familiarity with heavier/darker beers as well as not tasting enough of these styles.

**Searching for New Clues**:
:
I started the week with Doppelbocks, hoping to ease my way into the heavy beer experience. The first one was Salvator, the OG Doppelbock that most breweries tip their hat to by naming their Doppelbock with an “-ator” ending. A lot of things surprised me about this beer before I smelled or tasted it. It was lighter in color and had much more carbonation and head than I expected. When I tasted it, my first impression was that it had a lot of alcohol and was very malt forward. I believe this to be part of my low intensity baseline. I took a couple of sips though, and as I did, my palate got less overwhelmed and I started picking up some familiar flavors.

As my palate acclimated, I realized a few things. The first thing was that this beer really wasn’t that sweet. There was some sweetness, yes, but it was so evenly matched by hop bitterness that the balance was leaning only slightly toward malty sweetness. It was the same sort of balance as you’d find in a Helles or Dunkel. I didn’t make the connection until I did this exercise, but it clicked for me that Doppelbock is essentially a Helles or Dunkel, but the double-strength version.

This doesn’t mean that the balance is different; they’re still both dry, malt-leaning beers with some hop character to balance the sweetness. More malt is used for the Doppelbock version, but the hops are raised in parallel to maintain the same balance. The difference is body, strength, and pungency. The same goes for the regular Bock versions of Helles/Dunkel, Helles Bock [AKA Maibock] and Dunkles Bock; they’re amped versions with a similar balance. This experience continued as I tried the other Doppelbock examples. Korbinian seemed like a double Bock version of a Dunkel and Maximator was somewhere between a double-strength Helles and Dunkel. Like these and Salvator, they all finished pretty dry with little residual sweetness, noticeable bitterness, and good carbonation.

When I transitioned into the Wee Heavy portion of this experiment, I noticed a lot of things I hadn’t when my palate was hanging out in light and crispy beer land. Having just tasted Doppelbocks for 3 days in a row, my nose and tongue were ready for bold beers. Syrupy sweetness hit me first, and being weary that my palate needed time to adjust, I kept sipping. The more I sipped, the sweeter and denser it got. I didn’t detect much bitterness like I had in the Doppelbocks, and the alcohol warmth was noticeably more aggressive. I think this was from the residual sweetness in the beer combined with the higher ABV to create a drinking sensation similar to Port wine or Amaretto.

This is interesting because the alcohol percentage in the first two Wee Heavies I tasted, Bellhaven 90 and Traquair House Ale, were the same or lower than all the Doppelbocks: Korbinian is 7.4%, Maximator 7.5%, and Salvator 7.9%, while Bellhaven is 7.4% and Traquair is 7.2%. To get a higher ABV, more malt must be used, but the reason Doppelbocks can have more malt yet less sweetness is because of body and balance. The mouthfeel sensation of residual sugars found in a Wee Heavy creates the perception of heaviness on the palate, and the lack of balancing hop bitterness further accentuates this sweetness. Fruity esters coming from yeast add another layer to this, creating a rum-soaked-plum vibe that is boozy, sweet, and heavy. In the 8.5% Skull Splitter, this mouth coating sweetness and booziness was especially present.

Doppelbocks have bitterness that closely balance malt sweetness. This results in a drinking experience that has elements of sweetness, but it isn’t overpowering, lingering, or bracing. In my experience, I found that the bitterness refreshed my palate, which readied me for more. I experienced the Wee Heavies to be so sweet with not much providing balance; it was akin to eating bite after bite of a rich and decadent chocolate cake. If I had a black coffee/espresso or some tart fruit compote with the cake, the balanced sweetness would be more approachable and the dish would be more refreshing overall.

This is my experience though, which is heavily influenced by my personal preferences. There are many folks out there who would be stoked to eat a rich chocolate cake; they’d enjoy every bite despite a lack of bitterness or acidity. Perhaps that’s the balance they enjoy! The same goes for enjoying Wee Heavy- if sweetness is your thing, then Wee Heavies will probably be your thing. Light, dry, bitter, and bright is usually my thing, even with food, so it makes sense that I have a proclivity toward Doppelbock. It’s all about learning what you enjoy and why you enjoy it.

New clues for future blind tastings:

Wee Heavy or Doppelbock, that is the question

Creamed

Vienna or International?