See how they brew too

We've come to the end of my summer holiday blog posts. Not before time, given that it's October and time to start planning that mid-term break. I'm finishing up with a visit to two of Amsterdam's breweries, both new ground for me.

The first I'm a little dubious about. There is nothing written that I could find that says Lion's Head doesn't brew on site, but this South African theme restaurant in the Oude Pijp keeps its brewkit well out of sight of enquiring beer geeks and had nothing by way of point-of-sale material about house beers, which most brew-restaurants would promote mercilessly as their selling point. I'm not saying that they're hiding their beer's real provenance, but they're doing the same things that fake brewpubs do when they hide theirs.

Anyway: the beers. Only two house beers were on when I visited, though the balance of styles was good. To the left, Watermelon Wheat, that near cliché of daft craft. I was hoping for light and summery refreshment but it's a bit of a bruiser, 5% ABV and very sweet. The aroma is of boiled sweets and only watermelon in the estery Jolly Rancher way. That gets a little more realistic on tasting but still very sweet and with lots of fizz instead of wheaty softness. It hits the novelty mark bang on, so I can't ding it for stylistic accuracy, but I guess I have different personal standards for watermelon wheat beer as this didn't do it for me.

The other beer was a Dark Lager, and a big fellow at 6.5% ABV according to the server. It arrived a murky brown colour with a light coffee and liquorice aroma, so perhaps Baltic porter would have been a more suitable designation. No matter. There was a lovely crisp and fizzy foretaste with well-done toast in the middle and a precisely clean finish. No silly tricks here: it's palate-cleansing and simple, with enough toasty-roasty character to be distinctive. Perfect brewpub material, designed for gulpable serving sizes.

The other brewery was rather more production-oriented. Butcher's Tears is to the south-west of the city centre, near the old Olympic Stadium. Next to the small production brewery (a proportion of their beer is still contract brewed in Belgium) there's a sparse taproom with some outdoor seating. It being a Sunday afternoon, I was able to summon up Ron Pattinson for some company. Amsterdam's great like that.

My first pick from the menu was a mild, of all things: The Dark Possession. It's not of the typical modern English variety, being 5% ABV and quite a pale ochre-brown colour. The texture is thin and while there's a pleasant chocolate taste at its core, there's a sharp and mucky homebrew-ish quality around it that I didn't care for. Not the mild I'm looking for.

A double brown stout of 7.5% ABV is more like it, and that's the one on the left. Headroom has a delicious aroma of rosewater so I was surprised by the intense bitterness, with very serious notes of smoke and iodine. Then there's dark chocolate, espresso and green beans for even more kinds of bitterness. It's all the big stout characteristics all at once. My preference in this line is for something mellower, though I tip my hat to the insane multidimensional complexity on show here.

I got something calmer next: Sucker, described as a "wild session ale" and only 4.5% ABV. Golden-coloured, it's quite watery, which was fine by me at that point. There's a mildly funky quality and some gummy Bretty peach, all set on crunchy brown breadcrust. I needed the palate cleanser, though had begun finding it a little plain and boring by the end.

Not plain and boring is the darker beer beside it: Chrysippus Lowlands. Chrysippus is a strong IPA and this version has been aged in a Scottish whisky barrel resulting in an 8.5% ABV double IPA. It smells like a vodka and orange: very sweet and a little cloying, in quite a '70s or '80s way. The mango and pineapple which came next was much more modern, however. The spirit heat is mercifully minimal, with a long aftertaste that's still sweet but not difficult. It's a balanced sort of whisky-aged double IPA.

Having danced with mild and brown stout, we may as well hit up another retro British style: Burton ale. Aruspex is a peated Burton, which I'm sure is not typical of how this strong and wintery ale was brewed way back when. It's 8% ABV and shows a lovely mix of kippers and toffee in the flavour, backed by a warming peat fire. There's a touch of vestigial vegetal hops as a nod to authenticity. I thought it was rather fun overall, if a bit silly. Ideal cold-weather drinking, though, as Burton should be.

But it's palate cleansing time again, and that brought Animal Space, described as a "wit saison": the ultimate in deciding the style after you've brewed the beer, I guess. It really does do both, as advertised, however: the clean peppery spice of a saison with the citrus zest of a witbier. There's a tiny touch of witbier's downfall soapiness, but nothing too unpleasant. I'm deeming wit saison an acceptable new style, at least when it's presented in this best-of-both-worlds way.

I spotted an interloper in the taproom fridge, a beer I didn't even know had been distributed commercially. A couple of years ago, Ron had assisted Goose Island of Chicago in producing as authentic a 19th century English porter as possible. The result is called Obadiah Poundage. With a nod to the company I was in, Butcher's Tears very kindly gave me the bottle for free. It's 6.3% ABV and the first thing I noticed was a surprisingly wine-like aroma. This unfolded on tasting into a brisk tartness, almost like a Belgian oude bruin, blending coffee with cherry. Ron looked confused when I said this but confirmed it with his own tasting, so it seems three years in the bottle has changed old Obadiah somewhat. As it is now, it represents a half-way point between dark and sour Belgian beer and big roasty porter, with a peppery spice belonging to neither and both. It's a pleasant space to occupy, and while this is not a revelatory beer, it is quite nice. And that's all porter needs to be.

We were homeward bound not long after that, glad to have been out in the world once more. The next flights are already booked.