
Keith Villa
Head Brewmaster and Founder of the Blue Moon Brewing Company®
After earning his Ph.D. in brewing from the University of Brussels in Belgium, an honor only a handful of brewers have achieved, Keith came back stateside with the idea of crafting beers inspired by Belgian styles, but with a twist.
He returned to Coors in the early 1990s and got what seemed like a dream assignment: to create a microbrewery at Coors Field in Denver. Sandlot Brewery was born. Mr. Villa had his own take on the Belgian wheat beers he encountered overseas.
He used barley malt, wheat and coriander, like most Belgians. But instead of mixing in the traditional tart Curacao orange peel, he used a Valencia, which gave it a subtle sweetness, and added oats to give it a creamier texture. The brew is unfiltered, which makes it cloudy. (That's why it's called a Belgian "white.") He branded it Blue Moon on the advice of an administrative assistant, who said beers like this only come around "once in a blue moon." But in America, where the craft-brew scene was still in its infancy, drinkers did not get it. This murky brew scared them away.
So Mr. Villa traveled the country, going bar by bar to explain his creation, even touting the health benefits of the fiber in the oats and Vitamin B in brewer's yeast. "I would tell them, 'I'm a beer doctor, I know these things,' " he recalled, laughing. In 1997, a breakthrough came -- in the form of a garnish. While wheat beers were usually served with a lemon, Mr. Villa began hanging an orange on the glass. He gave bags of oranges to bartenders, even including free cutting boards and knives.