Wheat beer is a beer that is brewed with both malted barley and malted wheat, rather than only barley. The addition of wheat lends wheat beers a lighter flavor and paler color than most all-barley ales. Wheat beer is customarily top fermented, that is, fermented with ale yeast.

Wheat beers have become very popular in recent years, and are especially popular in warm weather. In earlier centuries, brewing wheat beer was illegal in many places since wheat was too important as a bread cereal to "waste" it for brewing.

The three most important varieties of wheat beer are Belgian witbier and German Weizenbier and of course the popular North American version which is simply called wheat beer or erroneously, hefeweizen.

Belgian witbier ("white beer"), of which Hoegaarden Wit is probably the best-known example, gets its name from the suspended wheat proteins which give it a whitish color. Belgian white beers often have spices such as coriander or orange peel added, giving them a slightly fruity flavor.

German wheat beers are a well-known variant throughout the southern part of the country, the name changing from Weizen in the western (Swabian) regions to Weißbier or Weiße in Bavaria. Hefeweizen (German for "yeast wheat") is a variety in which the yeast is not filtered out, though Kristallweizen (clear), Dunkelweizen (dark) and Weizenstarkbier (higher alcohol content) varieties are also available. The filtration which takes the yeast out of Kristallweizen also strips the wheat proteins which make Hefeweizen cloudy. Bavarian weizen beers are fermented with a special strain of top-fermenting yeast, Torulaspora delbrueckii, which is largely responsible for the distinctive flavor.

A minor variety of wheat beer is represented by Berliner Weisse, which is low in alcohol and quite tart.

The Belgian Lambic is also made with wheat and barley, but differs from the witbier in its yeast. Lambic is a brew of spontaneous fermentation.