Several breweries are putting out more seasonals to drum up interest in their products and offer a variety; Shiner's Prickly Pear, Lakewood's Till and Toil, Deep Ellum's Neato Bandito and Four Corner's Paletero are just a few of the seasonals you will see this spring. Rabbit Hole Brewing in Justin has joined in with its spring hefeweizen, Tweedleyum.
Released on April 1 and on tap through June, the brewery describes Tweedleyum as being made with "100% natural strawberry puree to create a slightly sweet, easy drinking fruit beer." The name for this beer comes from two nursery rhyme characters, Tweedledee and Tweedledum, that Alice meets in Lewis Carroll's novel, Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There.
I went to Lakewood Growler during the glass giveaway to sample Tweedleyum. My first impression of the beer was the color, because it looked like I was handed a glass of grapefruit juice. The smell of the beer was very much what you would expect from a well-made hefeweizen: cloves and banana aromas, which come from the fermentation process. After taking a few swallows, my first thought was that this is a beer made for those who enjoy hefeweizens. The taste of this medium-bodied beer is a standard hefeweizen, but where the strawberry comes through is in the slightly tart aftertaste.
So, if you are not too snobby about hefeweizens and want to try something different, this is a worthy choice. If Rabbit Hole hoped people would order this beer for its accent of strawberry flavor, then it is a success; it's a decent hefeweizen that at least offers something other hefeweizens do not. If you are a fringe beer-drinker who only orders Abita's Purple Haze or the like, this is probably not one you will enjoy much.
