Gaarden-cats, HOE!!

Oh, Hoegaarden, you sexy vixen, how you tease me with your vanilla taste. You are the master of all white bierres... you have me beguiled. You are les etoilles dans le ciel... la monde dans mes reves... ok, this is a bit much, but, you are Les Jardin de Mes Putes!!!

The Hoegaarden history is similar to so many Belgian and French abbey or trappist beers. In this case it began in the 1445 in the Flemish town of the same name in the wheat growing district of Brabant, east of Brussels, by monks (Naturally!) who by chance discovered this “new” white (wheat) beer style which enjoyed great popularity for many centuries. Ultimately two world wars and the emergence of the European mega-swill lager breweries saw the demise of the traditional white beer in 1957. In 1966 a Belgian milkman by the name of Pierre Celis together with some friends and family resurrected the style and opened a farmhouse brewery producing 350 hectolitres a year, this quickly grew to a peak of 75,000 hectolitres in 1985 when a fire destroyed the brewery. In order to rebuild a significant amount of financial help was required, enter Interbrew, a mega European conglomerate brewer with mega bucks (or Euros) to throw at the project. In 1987 Pierre Culis sold out and by 1997 Interbrew had driven production to 855,000 hectolitres, (that’s 855,000,000 litres or 300 Billion pots of Hoegaarden!), per annum!”Brewed with malted or unmalted wheat, wits are usually flavoured with crushed coriander and orange peel, and are typically cloudy, hopped with noble hop varieties to achieve a low to medium bitterness and flavour and are usually quite dry with a low to medium body.

Je t'aime mes Jardins de Hoes...