Hoegaarden Original White Ale
12 oz. bottle with "best before" date of December 2011, poured into a tall pilsner/wheat beer glass. Picked this up as a single in a mix-six pack. Review taken from brief notes. Appearance: One of the palest beers I've seen - nearly yellow/bright straw body - hints of bright orange - with some haze and sediment in suspension. Topped by a large frothy head of bone-white foam which recedes fairly quickly to a small cap of foam. No lacing at all. The glass was clean as a whistle when I finished. Smell: This may be an old bottle, so this review is by no means objective. (I may get a fresh batch and re-review.) All of the standard witbier smells are there: Spices, citrus, and fresh wheat; but this beer also has some hefeweizen-esque notes of banana and herbs. Pretty refreshing overall, but there's a slight note of skunk lingering in the background. (Old bottle?) Taste: Not as much as I expected; maybe Sierra Nevada's Hefeweizen spoiled me, or maybe I need to find a fresher six-pack. It follows the nose in the most linear way possible. Fresh wheat sweetness hits the tongue at first, melting into a note of spices and citrus in the middle, followed by a snappy finish of banana and some fruity tartness. Very little hop bitterness to be found here. Not bad, but not great. The flavors overall are rather dull and somewhat watery. Fairly average witbier. Mouthfeel: A little thinner than I expected, but still refreshing. Snappy carbonation makes it go down smooth and there's not a lot of flavor in the finish, so if you don't want to really think about what you're drinking, you might enjoy this. Overall: Good place to start for wits, but maybe not the be-all end-all. Again, maybe I need to find a fresher batch and re-review, but I wasn't terribly impressed by this. Or maybe wheat beers just aren't my thing, as I'm discovering. It's worth a try, but it's not fantastic.