The W Bier Gets Its Banana and Clove From a Single Yeast

Nobody puts banana or clove into a hefeweizen. Both come out of the yeast, and LogOff has named the strain it used and let it run warm. The result lands Wednesday in Rancho Cordova.

Style: Hefeweizen
Release Date: 2026-09-09
ABV: 5.5%
LogOff Brewing (Rancho Cordova, CA)

Banana and clove are not ingredients in a hefeweizen. Nobody adds them. Both come out of the yeast, which makes the brewer's real decision a question of how warm to let that yeast run.

LogOff Brewing puts The W Bier on Wednesday, a 5.5 percent Bavarian hefeweizen at 12 IBU. The Rancho Cordova brewery made it in collaboration with what it describes as "our friends at Legends Bev and Terry," and its own account of the beer is compact: banana up front, clove in the back, wheat all the way through. Hazy and soft.

The strain gets named, which is not always the case. This one is fermented on the Weihenstephan culture, the house yeast of the Bavarian state brewery at Weihenstephan and the reference point for the style worldwide. It is what a lot of American brewers reach for when they want a wheat beer to taste like the ones served in Munich rather than a generic pale wheat ale.

Temperature is the other half of the equation. The banana character comes from an ester called isoamyl acetate and the clove from a phenol called 4-vinyl guaiacol. The two do not rise and fall together, and fermentation temperature is one of the main levers a brewer has for tipping the balance. Running the beer warm generally pushes the banana forward. LogOff listing banana first and clove second is consistent with a brewery that made that choice on purpose.

At 12 IBU, there is effectively no hop bitterness standing in the way. That is normal for the style, and it is also the entire design. Hefeweizen is one of the few beers where the yeast is the flavor rather than the machinery that delivers it.

The name compresses a few things into one letter. W Bier sits a half-step from Weissbier, the other common name for the style, and W is also where Weihenstephan starts. The can puts the letter in quotation marks. The brewery closes the announcement with an instruction to take the W.

The W Bier lands Wednesday, September 9 at the Sunrise Boulevard taproom.

Editor’s Take

A brewery called LogOff, whose whole naming premise is putting the phone down and going outside, has made a beer called The W Bier and signed the announcement off with "Take the W." That is internet slang bolted onto a yeast culture from a Bavarian brewery that has been at this since the eleventh century, and I find the collision delightful rather than confused. Hefeweizen is the most analog beer there is. No hop bill to argue about, no adjunct to justify, no barrel program, no waiting list. Just wheat, water, and a yeast that has been told to warm up and express itself. You cannot really optimize the thing. You can only leave it alone and see what it says, which is, when you think about it, roughly what logging off is for.

The pairing writes itself and I refuse to be clever about it. Weisswurst if you can find it, a soft pretzel if you cannot, and a great deal of sweet mustard either way.

Source & Editorial

JollyPint independently prepares release articles using information published by breweries through newsletters, websites, and other official public communications. Brewery-supplied descriptions and tasting notes are reported as provided, while editorial context is added by JollyPint.