Down at Cafe Rouge for Sunday lunch, courtesy of some Tesco vouchers to bring the price for the four of us down from eighty quid to around twenty. Really nice meal (especially for a fiver a head). Decided to have the Hoegaarden - thankful that they have a couple of nice beers (Leffe also)... I wanted to compare it with the nottle of M&S Belgian Wit I had the night before (which is brewed for them by the Huyghe Brewery -who also brew some of Tesco's finest range, along with Delerium Tremins and many other beers pretty much unobtainable in the UK). Hoegaarden held up well - slightly lighter and fruitier, and equally refreshing.
Since you see Hoegaarden all over the place these days, it's easy to forget that the beer style to which it belongs - the Belgian Wit style - was effectively extinct for many years, until it was revived by Pierre Celis (former milkman), the founder of Hoegaarden, who started a little craft brewery that brewed the style. He eventually sold up to the big boys and moved to Austin, Texas, where he founded another brewery making effectively the same style. Tom Man!
I've been wondering how much of the diversity of olden-times brewing has been lost, and how much could yet be recovered. Happened upon this great page on legacy (pre-lager) German beer styles, which makes fascinating reading. I'm still only part way through digesting it - but what jumps out is how many legacy wheat beer styles there were. Also how the surviving Altbier (Old beer)style of Dusseldorf and north Germany is just the tip of an old iceberg of ale styles - some of which were very different from any surviving styles. I also read somewhere (must find the ref) that Cornwall also brewed a white beer in times past. So many beer styles to brew - so little time. It's making my head spin...
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