Belgian beers: Hoegaarden
Now brewed by the InBev brewery, Hoegaarden is a unique brand with a large fan base worldwide.
Belgian beers have always been of the highest quality, and Hoegaarden is no exception. It's a brand pushed worldwide and well known throughout the world.
The traditional Hoegaarden is a white beer, but many other flavours have been created.
The Hoegaarden brewery
Hoegaarden isn't a very old brand. Around 1966 Pierre Celis started the Hoegaarden brewery to revive the tradition of brewing white beers. This tradition stopped in 1955 when the last local brewery closed its doors.
After a big fire in 1985, Celis' brewery got help from other brewers to get back on its feet. One of those, Interbrew (now InBev), eventually bought the brewery and the Hoegaarden brand.
The brand is now well known worldwide.
The beers: Hoegaarden
The main beer is white beer with 4.9% alcohol.
The standard ingredients are used like water, yeast, wheat, hops and special ingredients typical for the entire Hoegaarden family like coriander and dried Curaçao orange peel.
The cloudy appearance originates from the second fermentation in the bottle.
Hoegaarden has a refreshing taste and a hint of citrus. It's great as a thirst quencher.
The beers: Hoegaarden Speciale
The Speciale is a seasonal beer (October -> January) with a higher alcohol contents of 5.7%. The color is golden blond.
The flavour is more spicy than the original Hoegaarden, the citrus flavour is more pronounced too.
The beers: Hoegaarden Grand Cru
The Grand Cru is a delight when drinking. It's a heavy beer with 8.5% alcohol contents, but unlike many others, the taste of alcohol is well hidden.
A cloudy pale gold color and a flavour of citrus and other spices. Many flavours are hidden in the taste and aftertaste.
The beers: Hoegaarden Rosé
Hoegaarden Rosé is the Hoegaarden beer with a raspberry flavour and colour. It's just as refreshing as the original, but obviously with a fruity taste.
It has an alcohol contents of about 4.5% and drinks like lemonade.
Chicken on a beer can recipe
Hoegaarden is an excellent choice if you want to make chicken on a beer can.
For 4 persons, you'll need 1 chicken, olive oil, seasoning and a can of Hoegaarden.
Prepare your chicken as usual, cover it with olive oil and add the seasoning.
When you put it in the oven, stick a beer can in the bottom, set it upright and the beer will keep the chicken moist from the inside. The regular Hoegaarden is perfect for this recipe.
Mussels with beer instead of white wine
Most mussel recipes are based on white wine. An interesting choice is to replace the wine by Hoegaarden white beer and some lemon. The taste is totally different, the preparation almost the same.
Take a big pot, add olive oil and 1 layer of mussels, then a layer of vegetables (any can be used, but most use celery and variants), then another layer of mussels and so on.
Cook for about 5 minutes, stir and add the white beer and lemon.
Let it cook until the mussels open up & enjoy the meal.
