As beer drinkers, we embrace variation, and often we find bigger and bolder is better. Breweries love to put new spins on classic or standard beers in their lineups, whether it’s brewing stronger “imperial” versions, adding unusual flavors or ingredients, aging in barrels or some combination of these.

From a sensory and educational standpoint, on the other hand, it’s often more interesting and informative when the changes are more subtle.

I’m always interested in exploring the subtler variations, learning how the same recipe can be affected by a single change. Single -hop beers are fairly common in this regard, in which the brewery works from the same recipe but uses a different hop variety each time. Bevel Craft Brewing does this with its Hop Tour series of IPAs that showcase various hop strains.

Bridge 99 Brewery goes in a different direction, with fruit. The taproom currently offers two hefeweizens, a standard hazy wheat ale for Headwaters Hefeweizen, and Blood Orange Hefeweizen, which takes the same recipe and adds blood orange puree from Oregon Fruit Products. Having both available offers a prime opportunity to compare two similar recipes at the same time.

Stats on the beers are identical, with 5% alcohol by volume and 13 IBUs from Perle hops. It’s a great opportunity to study the difference a single ingredient can make, so I picked up a crowler of each beer to try side by side and compare results. I reached out for additional details.

“The recipes are the same, and we put in about two gallons of blood orange puree per barrel,” owner and brewer Trever Hawman said via email. (A barrel is 31 gallons.) The fruit is added to the brite tank after primary fermentation is complete, he said.

The unadorned Headwaters Hefeweizen is a golden orange color with characteristic yeasty cloudiness. It’s full of bready whole wheat aromas, reminiscent of bread dough and Wheat Thins crackers, with a slight grainy twang of raw wheat.

It tastes slightly sweet, with a doughy flavor punctuated by a hint of grassy hop bitterness to help balance the malts. There are mellow notes of bread crust and biscuits, and the sweetness becomes a little cookie dough-like as it warms a bit.

The fruited wheat, though it follows the same base recipe, is noticeably lighter in color—a paler shade of yellow, topped with a thick head of foam. It smells brighter, with a citrusy character like orange zest or kaffir lime, with a grainy sweet breakfast cereal and bread flour character.

It’s also lighter in flavor than the base beer, with delicate orange elements (including zest, pith and savory orange blossoms) and a juiciness with a hint of tart that evokes orange peel bitterness. It’s got a wheatlike, grassy background and overall is fairly light bodied.

Side by side, the similarities and differences are amplified. The Headwaters drinks heavier and sweeter, with more of a doughy-sweet lingering finish, while the Blood Orange seems quite a bit lighter with a touch of citrus bitterness. At the same time, there’s a common thread of bready, cereal graininess running through both.

I asked Hawman if he had a preference between the two.

“I was able to have the Blood Orange out golfing at Quail Run in a non-brewery situation and it was very refreshing,” he said. “So for me I would say it depends on my mood for the day as to which one I prefer.”

The brewery occasionally offers a Blackberry Wheat ale as well, which Hawman revealed is brewed the same way as Blood Orange, with blackberry puree added to the Headwaters recipe post -fermentation.

The next time you find yourself at Bridge 99, consider trying tasters of each beer side by side and exploring the similarities and the differences. Not only will you be enjoying tasty brews, but it’s an opportunity to explore how small changes can lead to big variations.

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