Southampton Double White Ale

Southampton Ales & Lagers, Southampton, N.Y.

Style: Witbier

Alcohol content: 6.7% abv

Serving temperature: 41˚F

            Sometime in the early ‘90s, before everybody including Coors was making a white beer, an American homebrewer named Phil Markowski set off for his obligatory pilgrimage to Mecca, also known as Belgium, to taste the cloudy, near-mythical called Hoegaarden.

            The tart, aromatic witbier style had been famously raised from the dead some 30 years earlier by the former milk deliveryman, Pierre Celis. It was a success story that any brewer on either side of the Atlantic might look to for inspiration.

            “You could hardly find it in the United States,” Markowski remembers. “I just loved it and decided I had to make my own… I guess I went after it like a typical American.”

            Which is to say: B-I-G.

            “I only wanted to amp it up a bit,” Markowski says, explaining how he added more unmalted wheat, more extra pale barley malt, more flaked oats – more of everything to his recipe. “It just kind of morphed.” Instead of a relatively light drink with just 5 percent alcohol, his invention tipped the scale at close to 7 percent alcohol. More body, more aroma, more buzz. Where Hoegaarden is made for quaffing, Double White is a full-flavored sipper, especially when paired with grilled dishes.

-Joe Sixpack