Put a Little Ho in your Gaarden!

Posted on June 20, 2010 Bren

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No that was not a typo, this post brings you our second beer review – first if you don’t count the Budweiser berating on our beer review intro post: Hoegaarden’s Witbier-Biere Blanche. This cloudy little citrusy cluster of crisp, clean, coriander creativity hails from the great country of Belgium and it brings with it the image of summer afternoons spent at beer gardens being served by buxom bar maids! So needless to say, we like it! But enough alliteration, lets get down to business and throw this Belgian beauty up against Bren’s Beer-o-Meter.

If a beer brings this to mind... the beer-o-meter becomes a little pointless!

1. Taste- This beer is a quintessential wheat beer. It has a light, crisp, balanced, sweet taste with citrus and spice undertones. Due to the low alcohol content (4.9% ABV), and the well-controlled hops flavor (there is barely a bitter bite in the beer), the flavor is great for a newbie to the beer world or someone who is just looking for something nice and refreshing to sip on during a summer afternoon. The true drinkability and mildly complex citrus undertones of this beer warrants a 4 out of 5 for taste.

2. Texture- Given that the beer is an unfiltered wheat beer, the texture is light but it still has a bit of weight to it due to the yeast floating around in it like little boozed-up sea monkeys. The beer leaves a little “grit” or bready-like film on one’s mouth after drinking it. Now I know that these don’t sound particularly appealing, but to be honest it was very good, it lets you know you are drinking something of quality and you’re getting a bit more than pissy pasteurized pilsner (*cough* Budweiser *cough*) in this golden lager. Overall the texture is light, and the “grit” like afterfeel does not detract from that. So given that the beer balances itself well, it has earned itself a 4 out of 5 for texture as well.

3. Appearance- Now thanks to the first American Pie movie, I have been forever wary of a lager that you can’t see through, especially one that is noted as pale (the word blanche in the beer’s title means pale). So needless to say I was initially put off by the swirling cloud of yeast monkeys floating around in this witbier, but luckily I had done my homework and knew that this was to be expected. Once you accept the fact that this golden straw-colored beer is not see-through, the overall appearance is very nice. If poured properly the beer has an inch-thick, light and bubbly head which allows its citrus and spice aromas to escape, as we will discuss next. Overall the beer earns a 3.5 in appearance (sorry swirling yeast monkeys still reminds me of spunky mini-man monkeys, so I just couldn’t rate it higher).

4. Aroma- Following this beer’s “light” theme, the aromas that radiate from that inch-thick, pale head are crisp and citrusy with a mild aroma of spice and hops. The scent of this witbier is not overly complex but provides an excellent olfactory teaser to let your taste buds know what they are in for, and that it deserves a 4 out of 5 for aroma. Please note, that due to this beer’s light scents and relatively delicate demeanor, it should be consumed in a glass to fully appreciate all the nuances of the beer. Drinking if from a bottle neuters the poor wheaty brew.

5. User Friendly- Does this brew have bromance… you bet! Thanks to this little wheat wonder’s crisp taste and refined appearance it would be well-accepted at any backyard BBQ or evening dinner party. That versatility is what truly endears us to this beer, it provides one with a cool crisp lager and the unique suaveness of being a sexy import. It’s lighthearted class in a sexy Belgian bottle! It completely deserves a 4.5 out of 5 for its user friendliness!

Hoegaarden how I love you and your wheaty wonder! So there it is, our first true beer review with Bren’s Beer-O-Meter, and we must say it has set a high bench mark for those many brews that shall follow.

Hoegaarden 300x300 Put a Little Ho in your Gaarden!