Brouwerij Hoegaarden

Hoegaarden Brewery carries the name of a Flemish village where wheat-beer brewing became almost a way of life. The modern brewery’s story is less about an unbroken medieval institution than about revival: after Hoegaarden’s last local brewery closed, Pierre Celis rebuilt the village’s witbier tradition from a dairy and grew it into an internationally known Belgian beer heritage. A village shaped by witbier Hoegaarden’s brewing tradition is traced to around 1445, while the village’s eighteenth-century prosperity included dozens of breweries and malt-houses. The last local brewery, Tomsin, closed in 1957. That closure left the village’s wheat-beer identity in danger of disappearing, even though the style remained part of its historical character. Revival in a dairy In 1965, Pierre Celis began brewing again in his milk shed, using a copper boiler. He soon moved to the De Kluis brewery, reviving a spiced Belgian wheat beer associated with coriander and dried Curaçao orange peel. By 1985, production had passed 75,000 hectolitres a year, before a major fire destroyed the brewery. The character of Hoegaarden The brewery’s defining beer is a cloudy, unfiltered wheat beer made through high fermentation and secondary fermentation in bottle or barrel. The official brewing account identifies wheat, coriander and dried orange peel among its ingredients, while the unfiltered process gives the beer its characteristic haze and smooth texture. Hoegaarden Brewery is a modern revival of a village witbier tradition once close to extinction. Hoegaarden, Flanders, Belgium 1445: Hoegaarden’s monks are associated with the discovery of a distinctive wheat-beer recipe. 1957: Tomsin, the last brewery in Hoegaarden, closes. 1965: Pierre Celis begins brewing wheat beer in his dairy and soon expands into De Kluis. 1985: A major fire destroys the brewery after production has grown beyond 75,000 hectolitres annually.