Celis is a beer brand. Originally an independent based in Austin, Texas, it is now owned by Michigan Brewing Company.
In 1966, a milkman named Pierre Celis in the town of Hoegaarden (about an hour’s drive east of Brussels) decided to revive witbier, a regional beer style that had become extinct almost a decade earlier when the town’s last brewery closed.
Pierre Celis’s first brewery was in his father’s stable. In 1972, he relocated to an abandone...
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Celis is a beer brand. Originally an independent based in Austin, Texas, it is now owned by Michigan Brewing Company.
In 1966, a milkman named Pierre Celis in the town of Hoegaarden (about an hour’s drive east of Brussels) decided to revive witbier, a regional beer style that had become extinct almost a decade earlier when the town’s last brewery closed.
Pierre Celis’s first brewery was in his father’s stable. In 1972, he relocated to an abandoned soft drink factory, and by 1985, he was brewing 300,000 barrels a year. But Celis never had luck in business. His Hoegaarden Brewery burned to the ground that year, and Celis, who was underinsured, wound up selling his Hoegaarden brand to Belgian giant Interbrew. That company, now known as Anheuser-Busch InBev, continues to make Hoegaarden to this day.
Celis, at the age of 67, founded a microbrewery in the Hill Country outside Austin in 1992. (At a Brickskeller tasting, Celis, who spoke English haltingly, remarked that he chose Texas because...
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