Dining Dojo Drinks: Helios 青い空と海ビール Blue Sky and Sea Weizen Beer

In early January, Dining Dojo went to Okinawa for a short vacation.  While in Okinawa, I found this offering from Helios, a local brewery there.  I have previously reviewed the 天使のRed Ale from Helios, and I really liked that beer.  So, I wanted to try another offering from this brewery.  While walking along International Street (国際道), I found this beer in of the shops there. It is should noted that so on the same street, there was a Helios Bar.  Unfortunately, I did not go and have a drink there.  When I was window shopping in the stores that were catering to tourists and hawking souvenirs, I say this beer everywhere.

 I definitely wanted to try this.  The two things that grabbed me to buy this product.  First, it was a locally produced beer.  I am fan of local beer.  You can definitely taste the craftsmanship that it took to produced this beer.  The second reason was that this beer was of the weizen style.  I love weizen (wheat) beers, and recently, Japanese brewers have been producing really good weizen beers.

When I returned back to my home in Nagoya, I decided to taste this beer.  When I opened the Blue Sky and Sea Beer, I could right now smell that this was a wheat beer.  The wheat characteristic really came through.  However when compared to a German wheat beer for example, the Blue Sky and Sea Beer was weaker but not by a whole lot. 

The flavor profile of this beer is a wheat beer through and through.  The taste was not heavily pronounced, but you could tell that this is wheat beer.  This beer is very drinkable.

If you are not a fan of strong German wheat beer, give this beer a try.  If you are being introduced to wheat beers for the first time.  you will find this beer a nice primer to the style.  If you can get hold of this beer, definitely do so.