wheat beer | 2015-12-30

weissbier, wit, weizenbier, hefeweizen, dunkel weizen, kristallweizen, lambic, and gose are all varieties of wheat beer, one way or another.

the oldest known town associated with brewing wheat beer is a small Belgian town (not Bruges) by the name of Hoegaarden. the tradition dates back to the middle ages in that town and it carried on significantly from 1445 until 1957 when the tradition died out in the town. a young Pierre Celis attempted to carry on the tradition about ten years later and started up his own brewery in Hoegaarden — it burned down. as is the warm and friendly tradition in Belgium, other brewers swooped in to assist the poor brewer. this eventually lead to the takeover of Celis’ brewery by InBev (later Anheuser-Busch InBev) who still own and produce the beer we know as Hoegaarden. After the merger, Celis moved to Texas and started Celis brewery which also made wheat beer which was distributed by the Michigan Brewing Company until their closure in 2012.

the tradition is most commonly associated with Belgium but the vastly larger quantity and variety of wheat beer was created and is produced in Germany. in fact, it really is just the ‘wit’ beer that comes from Belgium. what’s funny about that is that using wheat to brew beer was specifically verboten by the Reinheitsgebot (lit. purity order | German Beer Purity Law) due to the fact that wheat was far to valuable for the production of bread (an exemption was made later, similar to the one made for gluten-free beers, despite the fact that they are made with different ingredients).

so, crazy people in the middle ages made beer out of wheat because they had more wheat than other things. from there, people still thought it was a good idea and kept up the tradition until today. i, myself, am still not sure why…

so far on wheat beer