Beer · Light & sessionable
Witbier
Hazy Belgian wheat with coriander and orange peel — sunshine, bottled in Flanders.
How to order it: Hoegaarden revived the style. The orange slice is American; the haze is authentic.
Flavor profile
The proper serve
- Weizen or tumbler glass
- Serve cold, 40–45°F
- Swirl in the yeast for the haze
- Orange slice optional (American habit)
- Pairs: brunch, salads, mussels
The story
The spiced wheat beers of Brabant predate hops' dominance, flavored in the old gruit tradition — Hoegaarden alone once supported dozens of breweries making cloudy white beer with coriander and dried orange peel. By 1957 the last of them had closed and the style was extinct. Enter Pierre Celis, a local milkman who had helped at that brewery as a young man: in 1966 he revived witbier essentially from memory, and Hoegaarden became a household name. After a fire forced a sale to the brewing giant that became Interbrew, Celis decamped to Texas to start again. Coors' Blue Moon later carried the template to the masses. One milkman, one resurrected style, two continents.
Adjacent pours