Tag Archives: netherlands

Dutch Lager Tasting

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I was in the mood for something new, but Bert’s in Utrecht was closed, and we’ve had a few bottles from our local beer shop that seemed off (pouring Trappist quad down the drain is pretty painful).  So on a lark, I picked up some half liter cans of the popular Dutch lagers at the grocery store, and we did a tasting (in order of cost):

Albert Heijn Pilsener: This store-brand pilsener was the cheapest of the batch (€0.57/can).  Also the most different from the pack.  It had more color and body than I expected from cheap lager.

Bavaria Pilsener: Not really much “there” there, for this mid-range (€0.67/can) lager.

Amstel Lager: Not Amstel Light (commonly available in the US), but Heineken’s mid-market lager.  A little grassy, and something elusive in the aroma.

Heineken Lager: This is the main premium (€0.91/can) lager here, and obviously the most famous worldwide.  Much more inoffensive in cans, since it’s not lighstruck and skunky as is typical with their trademark green bottles.

Grolsch Premium Lager: Probably my favorite of the bunch, but still pretty bland.

Hertog Jan Naturzuiver: This is the “ultra-premium” (€1.23/can) lager, which we often see at nicer restaurants.  Not noticeably better than Heineken and Grolsch.

So, I think my main conclusion from the tasting is that I’m an ale snob, spoiled by an ample supply of strong, interesting, artisanal beer, and the mild, mass-produced lagers just can’t keep up.  But I was also surprised at how much more I liked Heineken from the can than from bottles.  Although I’m generally a big fan of bottles, this makes we think I should go for cans over at least green and clear bottles.

Brouwerij de Molen

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We went to visit Brouwerij de Molen in Bodegraven today.  Their brewery and restaurant are located in an old windmill on the bank of the Old Rhine.  It was a bright, clear day with puffy white clouds floating by. So we sat on the terrace even though it was a little chilly, with the windmill towering above us.

Brouwerij de MolenWe started with their lighter beers: Jaar & Dag (Year & A Day) and Licht & Lustig (Light & Lusty).  Year and A Day is listed as a saison, but it doesn’t have the expected sourness.  But it does have a fuller body than most saison, balanced with nicely mellow hoppiness.  Light & Lusty is a much more straightforward hefeweizen, with a nice haze and grainy astringency.

Their lunch menu is a little limited, but we were able to find good choices, even for the kids.  Everything was great, even their croquettes (I have found these to be barely passable at some other places, but their filling was very creamy, almost like a nice pot pie).  So we hung around for dessert (nicely spiced apple tart) and stout: Hemel & Aarde (Heaven & Earth) and Nacht & Ostij (I’ve seen this translated as “Ungodly Hours”, but our waiter said “Monkey Business”).  Whatever the translation, the Nacht & Ostij was a very nice, creamy stout.  It has a good, strong sweetness without being cloying or syrupy.  But the Heaven & Earth was truly amazing.  It’s made with peated malt and aged in Bruichladdich whisky barrels.  The result is a rich, velvety smokiness.  Left to my own devices, I could spend an afternoon with my nose in a snifter of this one.

After lunch, I paid a visit to their beer shop (which they nicely opened just for me).  In addition to a full selection of their own beers, they also had a ton of foreign beers, including a good selection from Mikkeller, Hoppin’ Frog, Southern Tier, Saranac, Smuttynose and even a few bottles from Cigar City (Guava Grove and Jai Alai).  I resisted the temptation to get much American beer, since I’m going back the the US in less than a month.  Instead I got a few bottles from Mikkeller, and of course a few of the de Molen beers.  Alas, neither of the stouts we enjoyed are available in bottles, but I did get a bottle of Tsarina Esra aged in Cognac barrels, which I’m really looking forward to.

Quad Tasting Notes, Part 1

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We’ve had quite enough tripel for now, so we decided to move on to quads.  These are heavy enough that we’ll just do a few at a time.  So we started with a few of our favorites:

  • La Trappe Quadrupel: The most commercial of the Trappist breweries (and the only one in the Netherlands).  This quad was actually on sale at our local grocery store last week (no Guinness here, even for St. Paddy’s).  It’s got a good CO2 bite up front, yielding to a nice malty sweetness.  A little toffee.  A very nice, well-rounded quad, with a lighter color than most.

  • Straffe Hendrik Quadrupel: This beer was first brewed by De Haalve Maan in the early 80’s for the inauguration of a statue of St. Arnold (patron saint of brewers) in Bruges.  Sweet and creamy, with an herbal note that is almost like licorice (but not overpowering).  Reminds me of some of the sweeter Russian Imperial Stouts I’ve tasted.

  • Westvleteren 12: Widely regarded as the best beer in the world.  It’s got a ton of sweetness with malt, candi sugar, and some fig. Also spicy, earthy, and a definite boozy kick. Packs the usual abbey aromatics. Since it’s such a pain to come by, I keep hoping this beer will disappoint me, but it hasn’t yet.

  • St. Bernardus Abt 12: The former contract brewer of Westvleteren’s beers (before they brought them back in-house in ’92). I was definitely looking forward to trying this side-by-side with the Westy 12. Alas, our bottle was chipped, and the beer poured totally flat. Though I have to say this was the best spoiled beer I’ve ever had — with the candi sugar, caramel and a hint of vanilla. Really brings out how much of the beer experience depends on carbonation, since this was drinkable, but completely unrecognizable as a quad. We’ll definitely have to get another bottle for the next round.

Tripel Tasting Notes, Round 2

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We had enough disagreement over some of the tripels from our first round, that we did wind up doing a second round of tasting.  Just for fun, we got the top seven and did them all side-by-side.

Upon further reflection, a few interesting tidbits came out:

  • We didn’t agree on an exact ordering, but we did wind up agreeing on the best three tripels (Westmalle, Chimay and St. Bernardus).  These are all slightly different takes on the style, and all very good.
  • I didn’t like the Tripel Karmeliet as much in the side-by-side comparison.  It is much sweeter than the Westmalle and Chimay.  Especially as it warmed up, this didn’t hold up very well.
  • Brouwerij ‘t IJ’s Zatte also did not stand up well to the side-by-side treatment.  Wind and I had almost diametrically-opposed impressions in the first round, and I came around to her way of thinking, as I found the herby, rosy flavor very grating.

Though these last two items really amount to the stronger-tasting beers not doing as well.  This might be because drinking seven beers at once just takes longer and they have time to warm up.  Regardless of the reason, the Westmalle really stood out as the clear favorite.

Tripel Tasting Notes

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There are a million tripels around (I was a little surprised when I started looking at my notes and Untappd checkins and realized we’ve had two dozen in the last week or two). Truthfully, it’s not my favorite style. It’s inconsistent and has no unifying characteristics other than being strong and pale.  In theory, they should be roughly similar to Westmalle Tripel, but that’s a pretty loose standard. Many use pilsener malt that has a creamy sweetness, but not all. Most are lightly-hopped, but some have a lot of floral, herbal notes.  So I’ve generally been more interested in the dark abbey beers. Wind, on the other hand, generally likes tripels and tends to gravitate to them when she’s not sure what else to get.

But as I think about moving back to Florida in June, and being able to brew a batch of beer, I know we should brew something on the lighter side. So, since Wind likes them a lot and I do like some tripels quite a bit, we decided to try a bunch and see what we liked.  We’ve seen some American beer around (especially at De Bierkoning in Amsterdam), but we stuck with Belgian and Dutch tripels for this experiment, since there were a ton to choose from.  Hopefully, it’ll help us narrow down recipes when the time comes.

In general, we found them very drinkable, and agreed on our assessments of them. But, there were a few that only one of us liked, and a few that were standout cluckers:

  • De Leckere Razende Swaen (Raging Swan): this is local, and we’ve liked some of their beers. But it was too herby, and funky.
  • Muifelbrouwerij Broeder Everardus: this is a little bready and biscuity, with more aggressive hops than typical. The typical pilsener malt shows up in the aroma. But the flavor gets lost in the hoppy bitterness.
  • Hertog Jan Tripel: the best thing about this beer was the bottle (it comes in a squat, black earthenware bottle). It has a nice, rich golden color, but the flavor is bland and syrupy.
  • De Koninck Tripel  This seemed OK at first. But it has a lot of unfermented sugar and caramel. I wound up finishing Wind’s glass (she would have poured it out), mostly because I was trying to remember what it reminded me of. Alas, it was a bad batch of homebrew that had an incomplete fermentation, and mostly wound up sweet and overcarbonated.

The vast majority were very nice, and varied quite a bit. I’d divide them roughly into two groups: the boozy and the herbals.

Boozy (clean, simple, and with a definite alcohol kick):

Herbal (a wide variety of fruit, floral, herbal flavors):

There were a few tripels that we really liked.  We’ve been talking about doing a second round and trying these all side-by-side to really compare them closely.

  • Tripel Karmeliet: this is probably my favorite (and I think the first tripel I ever had). It’s sweet and light. Nothing overpowering. But very tasty.
  • Westmalle Tripel: this is one of Wind’s favorite beers. It’s sweet, boozy and creamy.
  • La Trappe Tripel: just a bit of sourness, and a bit earthy and herbal, but not too much.
  • Chimay Blanche (Cinq Cents): a little bitter and floral, but very balanced, with some creaminess.
  • St. Bernardus Tripel: rich, malty, meady and velvety.
  • Val-Dieu Triple: fizzy, and light, with some candi sugar like a dubbel.

There were also a couple of tripels that were split decisions. We’re thinking of adding these into the second round, too.

  • Brouwerij ‘t IJ Zatte: floral, rose and herbal. I really liked this, but Wind hated it. I even tasted some from her glass to make sure that we had the same thing.
  • Triple d’Anvers: Unlike De Koninck’s other beer we tasted, this was not terrible. It had a definite twang you don’t usually see in triplels, and was also very sweet. I didn’t like it much, but Wind thought it was pretty good.

Local Beer

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I always enjoy drinking a new beer I’ve never had before.  It’s almost never undrinkable swill, and adds a nice element of surprise and discovery.  So it was nice to find some local beer in bottles we could drink at home, and not have to go to the castle to get it.

In our local organic/alternative grocery store, we found a few bottles from Brouwerij de Leckere in Utrecht.  I really liked the Witte Vrouwen, a cloudy wheat beer with a nice grassy, spicy taste and a little creamy.  The Paulus was less interesting — a pale ale with a little bit of biscuit malt, but not much flavor at all.

At the fabulous Bert’s Bierhuis in Utrecht, Wind found a couple bottles from De 7de Hemel (7th Heaven).  They’re not exactly local — they’re near the German border in the southeastern part of the Netherlands.  Donder (Thunder) was a great find — a dark, nutty, earthy Belgian dark ale, which reminded me quite a bit of Cigar City’s Maduro (one of my favorite beers from back home).  The Vorst (Frost), on the other hand, was very strange.  The aroma was spicy and sweet, but the flavor was dominated by bitter mint and resiny notes.  This was a big surprise since I was expecting a more traditional dark, gingery winter ale.

So half the beers turned out to be very good, and the other half not so much.  But De 7de Hemel has quite a few more beers, so we’re going to give them a try soon.  The Donder was good enough to give me hope that they’ll have a few more really fantastic brews.

It Comes in Crates!

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I spent way too long trying to return empties today.  Our grocery store, Albert Heijn, has a nice machine that counts the bottles, randomly rejects a few, and then spits out a receipt you can exchange for cash at the checkout stand.  Except today it wasn’t working.

So there was a line of people with bottles and such to return, and a handful of Albert Heijn employees gamely trying to fix the machine — testing all sorts of bottles, peering inside, and even rebooting it (I sometimes apologize on behalf of all programmers at times like this).  In the end, a little glass cleaner in the right place fixed things and we were all able to get our empties turned in.

Though watching a couple of guys returning crates of bottles reminded me that I can get crates of Westmalle Dubbel and Tripel now.  We’ve been mostly buying one or two bottles of different things, and trying lots of different things.  But Westmalle Dubbel is one of my favorites, so it was nice to get a crate (though I was cursing myself as I lugged the crate home in the snow).

Now my only problem is I want to keep the crate instead of turning it in for refund…

Kafé België and Bert’s Bierhuis

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We went to Kafé België in Utrecht for lunch and a few beers today.  The food was great café food, but not a lot of selection.  This continues the trend of really outstanding food we’ve gotten at cafés.

The beer selection was impressive — they had 150+ bottles (see pic), and a dozen or so taps.  They were dominated by abbey beers, but there were also a few saisons and other styles.  They even had some American beers (Bud, Anchor and Flying Dog).  We were glad to see some saison and Flanders red on the menu, since we hadn’t seen any since we got here.  One of the beers we got was contract-brewed for them specially, and our waiter called it a DPA (Dutch Pale Ale): a milder, less hoppy cousin to IPA.  It reminded me a lot of Swamp Head’s Big Nose: lots of aromatic hops, but not a lot of bitterness.  Though it wasn’t as full-bodied and malty as Big Nose.

After lunch, we strolled down the Oudegracht to Bert’s Bierhuis.  This is a great beer shop owned by the same people who run Kafé België.  The selection is great, and very well-organized by region and style.  It was nice to see the beers I’d seen back home lined up, with all the other beers from the same brewery next to them.  There were a ton of beers I’d never heard of before, and hard-to-find things like Westvleteren 8 and 12.  We got as many bottles as we thought we could lug back to the train station, and they threw in a free totebag.

I’m definitely looking forward to coming back to both of these places, and sampling many more of their broad selections.

Stadskasteel Oudaen

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We took the train into Utrecht today and walked around, looking at the famous churches and generally taking in the sights.  We did a little shopping, but almost everything opens late on Mondays for some reason, so most things were closed in the morning.

Luckily, one place that opened for lunch at 11am was Stadskasteel Oudaen.  In addition to the cafe and a variety of meeting/catering functions, they also have one of the handful of breweries in Utrecht.  Their website touts their 15,000 litres of production, which works out to something like 640 barrels, so it’s a pretty small operation.  We tried three of their beers: Ouwe Daen, Jonge Daen and their Winter Bock.

The Ouwe Daen is a nice unfiltered hefeweizen.  It has a little creaminess and sweetness that I really liked.  The Jonge Daen is the filtered version of Ouwe Daen — and it’s sparkling clear and golden.  It’s got a much gentler taste, and comes across as a refreshing summer beer.  Given that it was just above freezing outside, it was a little out of place.  But still very enjoyable.  But the real treat with the Winter Bock.  This was rich, malty and spicy.  It was also a little smoky, which went nicely with the sweetness, reminding me a little of maple-smoked bacon.

Beside the beer, the cafe itself was also very nice.  Wind had a ham and cheese omelet, and I had a prosciutto and Gorgonzola sandwich, and both were excellent.  The cafe is in a nicely restored castle, in a large hall with high ceilings.  The location is great: a short walk from the central train station, right on the canal that runs through the center of town.  And our waitress barely winced at all when I butchered the pronunciations of their beers in Dutch.

First Week in the Netherlands

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We’ve been in the Netherlands a week, and we have a few bottles to show for it.  The family we traded houses with thoughtfully left a few bottles for us, and our local grocery store also has a handful of Belgian beers.  We have found a wine shop up the road that has a somewhat wider selection, so we’ll be checking those out soon.

We mostly enjoyed the Belgian dubbels and tripels from Westmalle, Leffe, La Trappe, and Duvel.  We hadn’t had any lager in ages, so it was interesting to try Heineken, Grolsch, etc. again.  A few of the lagers were surprisingly good: Grolsch’s Herfstbok and Kanon were both pretty drinkable, and Brand’s Sylvester winter beer was good, too.  But most of them were the same old lager I don’t like much these days (though I did manage to choke them down somehow).  The only total loss was Heineken’s Oude Bruin — I don’t know if it was spoiled or if it was supposed to taste like cough syrup, but it was our first drainpour in some time.