A Marketing Man's Dream! (Hoegaarden White)

Member Name: Muddy250

Product:	Hoegaarden White
Date:	05/11/03 (123 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Refreshing, distinctive flavour, clean

Disadvantages: Pricey

A Marketing Man's Dream!
Yep that's me! Offer me a box of beers with a branded glass and I'll rip your arm off. Never mind that I don't really know what I'm buying, magpie instincts take over and it's in the trolley and I'm legging it to the till. To be fair to me I had read a couple of reviews of this beer before and thought it sounded different to my usual so decided to experiment so it wasn't quite the usual impulse but the 'heading for the till' speed was still impressive.

Homeward Bound, all excited (sad isn't it)
So I gets it home and stick some in the fridge and settle back to read the info on the remaining bottles and box. Yes, this particular offer comes in a neat box with four 330ml bottles and a nice branded glass, which helps release the flavour of the beer. At least that's what it claims, at £4.45 (a whole quid dearer than Asda when I left it on the shelf, damn fool) it had better work. It's a Belgian Beer from the Brabant Province where white beer has been brewed since 1445. That?s over 550 years so they ought to have their act together by now eh?


What's it like then? Get on with it!
SO how do we go about describing this then? I've never tried to review a beer before which is odd, considering my quest to rid the world of as much as possible by myself! (Is it my fault the brewers work faster than I can drink?) Here goes?..

Pouring it.
The bottle has a handy pouring guide for the novice Belgian Beer pourer (me) which tells you to pour it down the glass as you would for a normal beer BUT when you get to the last third, swill it around and dump it in there to form a head, which it does very nicely, and to get all the yeast out of the bottle. The head dies off a little but not too much but if you're really thirsty it won't die off at all will it!

Cloudy and Flowery?
The first thing you notice is the cloudiness of the b
rew. It
9;
;s supposed to be like that though, made from blended wheat and malted barley which adds to the 'distinctively refreshing taste' all of which I agree with. It is refreshing and very distinctive, not unlike Earl Grey Tea (flowery smell?) but beery! Now I'm no Oz Clarke or Jilly Goolden when it comes to booze, I'm afraid when I drink wine or beer I just don't get transported to a Finnish pine wood smelling of burnt tarmac and camel dung, but to my palate it tasted of cinnamon, apples and lemon. The box claims that it has subtle hints of orange and coriander so you can tell that Oz's job is fairly safe here, as I didn't get coriander at all but it is VERY different, VERY nice indeed and I can only recommend you give it a try.

That Glass
The unique hexagonal (fairly ugly actually) glass does release the flavour of the beer, but in the spirit of further enquiry ;-) I tried some more in a different glass and it wasn't any worse, maybe I was getting worse (for wear) but it's a chunky strong glass that could stand being dropped, if you like to drink so much that you can?t hold on to it any longer. Not that I'd ever do that, my hand is like a birds foot when it comes to holding a beer glass, the relaxed position is a death grip!

Available from
I bought this from Morrisons as I said at £4.45 for 4 bottles and the glass, whereas Asda had the same at £3.45, but I can't vouch for it still being available. There are also some 75cl bottles at £2.99, which is comparable to a bottle of plonk, and although it's not as alcoholic at just 5% vol. it's a little expensive but well worth it, and anyway I deserve it!!
It is apparently available on draught at a premium price but I have never encountered it. Then again I've never looked, you know what it's like you see one and you suddenly see ?em everywhere so I'll probably find it in every pub I visit from today on!

L
et's go look!


Thanks for reading
Chris

Summary: