On Tuesday fellow blogger, sf fan and friend
Steve Glover mailed to say he would be in Amsterdam the next day and would I care to join him for
a beer or two? Of course I would and so we met in
Cafe In de Wildeman which has been immortalised in Charlie Stross short story
Lobsters. After spending
a few enjoyable hours there we also went on a short trip to another excellent Amsterdam pub,
't Arendsnest. There I left Steve to reexplore the
wonders of Dutch beers a little longer, as unfortunately I had to work today, but he of course didn't.
Both In de Wildeman and 't Arendsnest are excellent pubs for people who
enjoy a good glass of beer and know and care about the differences between stouts, ales, lager, lambics
and trappist beers. The latter pub only serves Dutch beers and tries to have at least one beer from
each Dutch brewery available, though doesn't always succeed in this as there are a few small breweries
who do not bottle their beers, but sell them only on tap at their own pubs. The Wildeman also looks
beyond the borders for good beers, with the Belgian beers especially being very well represented.
I had been thinking about doing some beerblogging before, so with that in mind I took some notes last
nights about the various beers I drunk.
Velkopopovicky Kozel is a Czech beer and this month's special at de Wildeman. Reddish-brown
in colour, with a low alcohol percentage of just 3.8%, this was a nice beer to start the evening with.
It has a slight caramel aftertaste and drinks very pleasantly. When I drunk a second glass of it after the
van Vollenhoven Stout it suffered, as the quite heavy taste of tha latter made it difficult
to discern the Kozel's far more fragile taste.
Maisels Hefe Weizen is a light refreshing German witbier (white or wheat beer) with a
midrange alcoholpercentage of 5.7 %. It's nice, but made no great impression on me. Would be a nice beer
to drink with a spicey meal. On tap at de Wildeman.
van Vollenoven's Stout at 6.5% was for me the best beer of the evening and something I
will look for in future. It looks almost exactly the same as Guinness, but the taste is far from similar.
Where Guinness is a dry stout, with a licquorice aftertaste, this is a sweet stout, with a very distinct
caramel taste and a somewhat 'sticky' feel to it. Very nice and easy to drink. Available in bottles at
both de Wildeman and Arendsnest.
Herengracht 90 MAUP is a special variant of the pub's own housebrew, Herengracht 90
Amber. Amber beers can be roughly compared to pale ales. As the publician explained to me, the
MAUP is what the brewery starts with before it 'dilutes' it down towards Herengracht 90 Amber. Which
means the MAUP is quite a strong beer, at 8% and also a heavy beer to be drinking. Quite nice though.
Also a beer I want to drink more of. On tap only at 't Arendsnest, as is the Amber.
Zondebok (Halve Maan) was the last beer of the evening and as you may guess from the name
it's a bo(c)kbier. Again very strong at 8%. This was actually brewed in 2001 and has been maturing for
a year. I'm sorry to say I rushed the drinking of this a bit as I had to catch my tram, so I have little
to say about it other then that I liked it.
This weekend I hope to drink the bottle of Young's Double Chocolate Stout which I brought back from London
last week. I'll keep y'all informed to how it tasted.
This is just a place for me to jot down some random thoughts and reactions to the news so I don't have to yell at the television or radio, or mutter to myself whilst reading the news.
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