It's white beer, folks. Opaque, hazy stuff with yeast thingies still floating around in the glass. The impurity of it all must have Adolphus Busch rolling over in his crypt. Need I remind you that just a dozen years ago, Milwaukee tried to sell us something called Miller Clear?
The irony is all the more remarkable because witbier (or blanche, in French) had been virtually wiped out by those famously crisp, clean European-style lagers. Witbier goes back 500 years, to a period when beer was made with wheat and typically balanced not by hops, but by a blend of herbs and spices known as gruit. Brewers in the Flemish town of Leuven perfected the style, using spices and oranges that had been imported from the Dutch colony of Curaçao. Modern brewing methods, the now-universal use of hops and a fascination with golden lager conspired to force the white ale into near extinction.
Enter one of the heroes of the modern craft beer renaissance, a milkman named Pierre Celis.
His story should be required reading for any beer fan, but here's the quick version: In 1965, longing for the ancient, mostly forgotten wheat beer style of his Belgian hometown of Hoegaarden, Celis started brewing a version in a washtub in his barn. He developed a recipe for what would become Hoegaarden Original White Ale, opened his own brewery, watched it burn down, rebuilt it, sold out to a bigger brewery, moved to Texas, developed the recipe for Celis White, sold out to a bigger brewery, moved back to Belgium and started yet another brewery.
His witbier was delicious, refreshing and unique - and within 30 years it would become the benchmark for 1,000 others.
"I wasn't trying to imitate any particular beer," said Rob Tod, who made Allagash White his brewery's flagship in the mid-1990s, "but I loved the flavor and refreshment of Hoegaarden and Celis White."
