Hoegaarden - Belgium

Hoegaarden is an village and municipality in the Belgian province of Flemish Brabant, the villages of Meldert and Outgaarden are part of it to. There are few hamlets scattered around and the population is 6886. Hoegaarden has an strong Roman history because in 1980 an amount of Roman villa's where dug up. Even in the early Middle Ages it was one point in time the center of the medieval county of Bruningerode which last from 7th/8th century till 987. Alpaïdis the last countess of Bruningerode gave her county and fortress to the Prince- Bishopric of Liège. The fortress was eventually replaced by the Saint Gorgonius church and Hoegaarden became an enclave, this lasted to 1795 after the Liège Revolution the prince-bishop ousted and the French took over. But as enclave surrounded by the Duchy of Brabant it was an small tax haven for quite some centuries. Nowadays Hoegaarden is famous of it's witbier and type of beer brewed with wheat and give the beer an cloudy yellow appearance and some thirst-quenching abilities. In 1966 Pierre Celis founded brewery De Kluis after couple of years when the last witbier brewer was stopped. Many people were happy that the beerstyle witbier returned and to this day many brewers in the world brewed an witbier inspired by the one from Hoegaarden. So let's take an look at the flag.

The flag has three vertical stripes, two blue and one yellow. The colors are derived from the coat of arms and let's continue with that one. The coat of arms are granted by the United Kingdom of the Netherlands in 1819, Belgium and the Netherlands were briefly one country from 1815 to 1830. The colors are so called Nassau colors from the Dutch royal house, there are Dutch and Belgian municipalities using this colors, the background of the coat of arms are always bleu with something yellow in the center. Hoegaarden have an arm with an bishop's staff and this symbol probably refers to the fact that in the Middle Ages Hoegaarden was owned by the Prince-Bishop of Liège. So we have an simple flag and an variation of the coat of arms on the beerlabel of Hoegaarden Wit.