Apple? Apple lichtenhainer? Well, I guess so, but I hope you weren’t expecting something comparable to a cider, because I’m not getting much apple at all. And I’m barely getting any smoke for that matter, and I just had the regular Freigeist Abraxxxas Lichtenhainer to remind and review myself of the beer that this is based off of, and these are worlds apart. As for the regular lichtenhainer, I stand behind the original review found here that I wrote a few years ago. It was a solid 5. But this apple beer falls a bit short. Lichtenhainer beers are lightly smoked wheat beers historically from east Germany, which are virtually indistinguishable from gratzer beers, and no wonder, given the proximity to Poland and the gratzer history in Poland. Now that I’ve pointed out the differences and doled out some info, I admit that this beer isn’t bad. I could pass a glass boot of this beer around with my most respected beer mates, especially the Ministry, and not get a bit of push back, because those people like beer. As for the description, this beer tastes like beer. If I have to close my eyes and breathe deeply through my nose (which I do in all the reviews), sticking my nose repeatedly down into the glass, and still struggle to pull out distinct flavors that the average drinker can identify, then it’s really a miss. Today I choose to describe the beer with the words “just beer.” Overall smokestack metric = 4 smokestacks out of 7.

As far as I can tell, this is their website…

http://www.braustelle.com/homeneuigkeiten.html

And then The Shelton Brothers (US distributors), once again, show a bit more interest in the products than the producers at:

http://www.sheltonbrothers.com/beers/freigeist-abraxxxas-pear-and-apple/