The Magical Power of Brabant's White Wizard...
Written: Jul 09 '04 (Updated Sep 21 '04)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Soft, light-bodied beer that packs a lusciously complex flavor punch!
Cons: Nope
The Bottom Line: Wit beers are hard to beat for summer time refreshment, and Hoegaarden is the wit that's impossible to beat! Try it and see why...
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| mrkstvns's Full Review: Hoegaarden Original White Beer |
Like a Phoenix rising from the ashes, Hoegaarden is the beer that single-handedly revived the extinct wit beer style back in 1966, when Pierre Celis opened his De Kluis brewery to re-create the beers that had been brewed in his hometown during his younger years, and which he had actually had a hand in brewing as an employee of one of the last breweries in Hoegaarden (located in the province of Brabant) to make wit in the early 1950s, when "market forces" pushed every single one of Hoegaarden's traditional breweries either into innocuous lager production, or out of business. It was an unnatural extinction since local taste preferences still demanded at least one wit, but it wouldn't be until a decade of market gap that Celis would sell his first bottle of revived Hoegaarden beer (which, for the trivia hounds, was then labelled Oud Hoegaards).
Today, it is remarkable how strongly the Belgian wheat beer style has come back. Pierre Celis infused his focus on Belgian wit into the American marketplace in the early 1990s when he opened the Celis Brewery in Austin Texas, with its flagship Celis White (the Celis brewery is now in Weberville Michigan --- lock, stock, barrel, and coriander mill). Today, Belgian wheat is becoming increasingly popular and you can find at least one example almost anywhere in America. There are dozens of wit beers now brewed in Belgium, and dozens of wits from North American craft breweries.
One of the marks of a true "classic" beer is the way that it's traditional qualities continue to stand up to scrutiny and comparison even under the onslaught of competition from young, agile, innovative brewers --- especially those that can appeal to narrow niche markets and that are small enough to do continuous improvement on recipes without worrying about the risks of offending importers and mass markets.
Hoegaarden has, over the past decade, shown that it deserves to be regarded as the benchmark of the style for a very good reason: when you drink Hoegaarden side by side with competing wits, the Hoegaarden is unquestionably the best of the pack. Some of the competing wits are quite good. Few match the sublime ability of Hoegaarden to master drinkability with flavor intensity and complexity.
A master is always deserving of praise.
The "Classic" Wit...
I'm not sure why I even bother putting a style description of wit beer into a Hoegaarden review. As I've said, Hoegaarden is THE beer that defines the fine points of the style --- and for good reason. It's the undisputed urquell (as in "original source") when it comes to wits, and will probably be the benchmark forever. If you want to truly understand this style of beer, start with a Hoegaarden or two and look, smell, and taste it carefully.
The essence of a Belgian style wheat beer (call it "white", call it "wit", call it "blanche", just call me over when you're buying 'em, okay?) can be summed up in three words: light, complex, refreshing.
Wit is light --- typically brewed to 12 degrees Plato or less (by the way, that's called "normal gravity" and is the same density of most mainstream lagers and pale ales). Wit is also light in color, even though it should be somewhat hazy (mostly from proteins in the wheat rather than from having tons of yeast sediment floating around). It's a drinkable beer that's smooth and refreshing, and is often thought of as an excellent springtime or summer thirst quencher.
Despite its thirst quenching potential, it is not a bland one-dimensional beer. It has some flavor complexity in the malt department, contributed from the use of unmalted wheat, and it has extra complexity coming from a light spicing. Classic spices are curacao orange and coriander (cilantro), though some interpretations may use additional twists and turns.
At its best, a good wit is a beer that's probably light enough to not offend mass market tongues that lack tastebuds, but at the same time, it delivers enough subtlty, tradition, and complexity to intrigue more discriminating beer drinkers.
Now without further ado, let's pop open the Hoegaarden and see exactly why this beer continues to be the benchmark of excellence, despite so many imitators and innovative interpretations coming onto the market both in Belgium and across North America. (I've heard there is also at least one Japanese interpretation, but I have never actually laid lips on one.)
A Glass of Hoegaarden...
When it comes to side-by-side tastings, you've got to be consistent in presentation, so I'm using identical straight-sided drinking glasses to pour all of my samples. (Although the classic "correct" way to serve a wit is in a thick, squat tumbler style glass.)
So, let's pop the top....pssstttt....and pour....glug, glug, glug...
Appearance:
This is one albino looking beer! Compared to what I normally drink, this one looks like a bleached and starched white bed sheet!
The color is extremely pale, unquestionably as close to a 1 on the SRM scale as I've ever seen. While there are some yellowish tinges to it, the beer can truly be described as "white", especially given its fairly substantial protein starch haze which renders the beer practically opaque, even before you do that last pour, swirling the bottle to capture the last of the yeast sediment.
The first pour leaves a fairly thin head of extremely fine, tightly packed foam, but the last pour (post-swirl) is where you really get your nice creamy, brilliantly white head.
What a beautiful glass of wit! If I had any talent in arts, I'd paint a still life of this and hang it on my wall so I could admire its beauty until my last dying breath.
Aroma:
Pay attention folks! THIS is the way a wit beer should smell!!
Immediately after doing the first pour, the beer is redolent with soft, yet intense, curacao orange and a yeast signature that's almost reminscent of fresh yet incompletely baked rolls --- it is yeasty, but not the abrasive yeasty scent of still rising bread. This is a pleasant yeastiness, and its a yeast character that carries with it complexity and depth, augmented by just the lightest hint of pepper and coriander (though there's almost certainly no pepper in the spicing of this beer).
Beer judges and writers often talk about the smell of wit being "orange and coriander", but pay attention to the scent of this beer and you'll understand the balance of that spice signature. The orange should dominate the coriander. That's not to say everyone must do it that way, but doesn't it make for a magnificently enticing aroma? It's at once complex, yet with all the temptation and seduction of a warm tropical breeze blowing over the sun drenched beaches of the Lower Netherlands Antilles.
Did you catch that orange scent? Notice that its more assertive than that of the typical imitator. Note also that it is obviously bittersweet curacao orange peel that gives the beer its orange character. This is not the place for imitation orange flavors or for any hint of navel oranges or fresh squeezed orange juice from the Florida Sunshine Tree. Curacao orange. There is no substitute. There is no better signature of it than that displayed by a fresh-poured Hoegaarden.
After the final pour, the beer still retains its tempting orange signature, but you start to pick up more on the light coriander contribution, and too, the yeast signature mellows back a bit (which might seem surprising since you've swirled the beer to dredge up more yeast, but many yeast by-products are actually ethereal kinds of sensations that are fleeting and delicate --- you get them on a first sniff or you miss them until the next bottle). It's always handy to have an excuse to open a second bottle, not that I feel much need to be apologetic when I'm drinking Hoegaarden...
Flavor:
Sweet, and light with an angelic fluffy airiness to it. The body on this brew is amazing. The sweetness is amazing too --- amazing that so much flavor can be packed into a beer that feels like the airy topping of a fresh baked lemon merengue pie.
Swirl the beer around in your mouth and note that bittersweet curacao orange flavor. The most amazing thing about that flavor is the way that it permeates every little niche and crack of the flavor, coating my mouth with orange creaminess. Even after I swallow the beer, the orange signature is there, lingering on the palate longer than even the biggest Cascade-scented IPA hop signature you've ever experienced. It's like a freakin' Energizer Bunny of aftertastes, it just keeps going and going...
And all this happens in such a light bodied, delicately balanced beer. What a brave new world to have such beers in it!
I just have got to say more about that malt sweetness too. With most wheat beers, regardless of the style, you get a certain lemony citric sharpness to the beer that's a contribution from the wheat --- especially on malted wheat. One of the most remarkable things about this beer is its lack of sharpness and tartness and anything remotely like citric acid or lemon.
I really think this is the result of Hoegaarden's use of only unmalted wheat in this beer, which for many craft brewers, is kind of a pain in the tookus to obtain and process, but the effort pays off in the glass, in my opinion. That soft body, and the soft sweetness of malt with unmalted wheat is something that really contributes to making this beer so very drinkable and thirst quenching, while at the same time packing so much more flavor intensity and complexity than any other beer of such light color.
Overall Impression:
If you think I can find flaw one in this beer, you must be joking. While I normally tend to favor bigger, bolder beers, there is definitely a time and place for every beer, and for beers like a classic wit, the time is just about any hot summer day when you don't really want a ton of sugars and carbs and alcohol to contend with. I live in Texas, so the "right" time for wit is pretty much 24/7 365 days a year. (Who said Texas is a place unfit for anyone but armadillos and rattlesnakes? I can think of at least one big advantage to living here...)
Anyway, if you're thinking of reviewing some Belgian-style wit beers, I can't think of any better yardstick against which to measure a beer than by drinking it side-by-side with a Hoegaarden.
I'm currently having a little fun, doing an informal taste-off with a bunch of young wit beers, and one of my criteria is "how well does it stack up against a Hoegaarden"? The hurdle is set high.
Hoegaarden is a great beer. A classic example of a revived traditional style. Its a beer with complexity and an outstanding example of the brewer's art.
More on Wits...
Sounds tasty? Here are some more thoughts and recommendations on Belgian-style wheat beers. (Unlinked titles are yet to come....DON'T CHANGE THAT DIAL!)
* Everything You Need to Know About Wit Beers
* Celis White
* Samuel Adams White
* Blanche de Chambly
* Allagash White
* Avery White Rascal
* Troublette
* Hoegaarden White
Recommended:
Yes
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