Since I was in the neighbourhood...

On the current, and I hope temporary, schedules there's no evening flight to Dublin from Brussels. Since Schiphol essentially serves as one of the local Brussels airports, and has late departures, we figured we would come home that way. And why not add a day or two in the Dutch capital while we're here?

I celebrated my arrival into the Netherlands with... Hertog Jan Pilsner. I was thirsty and the selection in Albert Heijn wasn't very good, and I've never reviewed it before so here goes. It's 5.1% ABV giving it a slight edge on its arch-rival Heineken. The body is a pleasing rich golden colour with a perfect fine froth on top. Unsurprisingly it is plain drinking. There's nothing actually wrong with it -- maybe a hint of unwelcome warm fruitiness, but that's far from a spoiler in big-bodied pils. The hop element is mostly confined to the finish where it contributes a lightly dry grassiness to balance the golden syrup sweetness up front. For thirst-quenching, I think Grolsch has the edge on it among the mass-market Dutch lagers, but this absolutely works as a more considered sipper, at a rock bottom price too.

Looking for decent beer and outside seating without wandering too far, the first pub was the ever-reliable Arendsnest. I opted for one of the house beers under their Morebeer brand, Godless Eagle. This is a porter of 5% ABV and has an enticing aroma of sweet milk chocolate leading on to a matching creamy texture. I like porters which have that meadowy floral effect and this demonstrates it in the foretaste, alongside chocolate which begins sweet but turns more serious and roastily bitter as it goes. Balance is the key, and this beauty has it in spades.

That was enough to encourage the trying of another Morebeer product in the next round: Bijna Twintig. It's a big imperial stout, 11.9% ABV, and with an extremely floral aroma, like old-fashioned medicinal bath soap. The flavour is understated despite this, with mild coffee and chocolate alongside lavender and eucalyptus. This builds gradually but never quite reaches the intensity I would like from a stout of this strength. It's fine but I was after something more involved.

And that's what in the glass on the left of it: Curiosité No. 11 from Bronckhorster. 12.5% ABV of imperial stout, blended from beer aged in Amontillado and Laphroaig barrels. Like I say: involved. There's a gorgeous sweet and smoky aroma featuring all the peaty goodness of the whisky, backed by creamy chocolate. It was jarringly sweet to taste, however, starting out on burnt caramel and brown sugar before switching to bitter dark chocolate and acrid TCP. It's nearly brilliant but is missing any sense of subtlety, piling in too many contrasting flavours. There's a reason nobody makes peated Irish coffee: the elements would not work well together.

I was back at Arendsnest towards the end of the trip for more smoky fun. That opened with Smoking Pils from Uiltje. A clear gold colour it has a crisply smoky barbecue aroma and the rounded malt quality of the good stuff from Bamberg. Like those beers, the smoke is strongly prominent but not overdone and is entirely complementary to the base lager. A 25cl Dutch taster was completely inappropriate for a beer that would work brilliantly by the half litre, or bigger.

A smoked wheat beer finished these explorations: Jopen Rook Witte. This is no low-strength yellow grodziskie but 7% ABV and a hazy shade of orange. It smelled like a sweet weissbier with lots of cloves and candy, while the flavour brought bubblegum and mandarin segments. The smoke is almost missable and I had to go hunting to find it. How sad when a novelty beer loses its novelty. What remains is a decent but unexciting weizenbock: not what I was expecting but not unpleasant either.

At Arendsnest's faux-American sibling, BeerTemple, I opted for the Belgian Barleywine from North Carolina brewery Sugar Creek. This 10%-er is an odd orange-pink colour, looking like a particularly sticky and artificial soft drink. The aroma was nothing of the sort, however, wafting fresh and natural peach blossom and elderflower my way. The flavour is plainer, starting on sweet strawberry but with a balancing tart tang to clean that up. That's your lot, though. For a big strong beer it lacks complexity and, for a double-digit barley wine, it lacks warmth too. The thickness of the texture is no substitute. Another one for the fine-but-expected-better pile.

This crawl of classic central Amsterdam boozers heads to In de Wildeman next. The beers started with Leckere's Rising Sun, an IPA brewed with kumquat, as well as more prosaic ingredients such as Citra and Cascade. It's a summer seasonal, as evidenced by a light 5.1% ABV and perhaps also the clear yellow appearance. A dank aroma makes it obvious that Citra is in charge, and it provides a resinous finish to the flavour too. Before that, it's bright and zesty, with the kumquats pulling their weight, joined by a spicy bergamot quality from somewhere. There's no aftertaste and the whole thing gives enough of an impression of orangeade to be pleasingly summery, which I'm sure was the intention.

On a second visit to Wildeman I had a look through the German lager menu and picked Sternla from Bamberg maestros Keesman. This 5%-er is no specific style but a dark honey colour and is lager-crisp with plenty of noble green spices and a roasted edge. The texture is huge, chewy and wholesome, all of which adds up to something resembling those unpleasantly intense medium-dark bocks, but much gentler on my sensitive palate. This is only my second ever Keesman beer, after the mighty mighty Herren Pils, and while it's not up to that celestial standard, it shows the same level of expertise.

Naturally, a visit to Gollem was fitted in, and a hasty session IPA on the mezzanine, from Jopen and called Let There Be Light: barely-there at 3.3% ABV. We go zesty again with a buzz of sherbet lemon aroma from the hazy yellow glassful. There's a good Belgian-style body with no wateriness, though still easy-drinking and thirst-quenching. An impressively complex flavour includes bitter lemon, meadowy wildflowers, mixed leafy herbs and a chalky minerality. I get a classy grisette vibe from it, making it more enjoyable than many a so-called session IPA.

I made just one call on the sour beer specialists Nevel, with Dwaal, ostensibly a witbier but with a sour culture, Szechuan pepper and common hogweed seeds. It looks like a wit, just maybe a little darker and clearer than usual. You can't really taste the hogweed. Well I couldn't, though maybe that's because I don't know what hogweed seeds are supposed to taste like. At 5% ABV it's light bodied and makes for refreshingly easy drinking, as should be the norm for witbier. The sour culture makes a big difference and really helps it along, adding a peachy and earthy funk while retaining an overall light zesty zing. Brettanomyces isn't named but its fingerprints are on the flavour. The peppers don't get much of a say, unfortunately, confined to a very mild peppery aftertaste but without much heat or spice to go with it. Overall it's fun and interesting, and very much in keeping with Nevel's funky way of doing things.

On to new business and I dropped in briefly to Café 't Monumentje, a charmingly unkempt corner bar in the Jordaan, a part of Amsterdam I've never explored properly. It was back to the stout for me, and one from Amsterdam's own Oedipus, their Kinderyoga. Doubtless thanks to The Unpleasantness the bottle was 18 months old and I'm sure that helped the taste. Said taste is of dark sticky treacle and espresso coffee with a spirituous Irish-coffee finish, dusted with chewy liquorice, floral jasmine and honeysuckle. Each element dovetails neatly with the next, creating an integrated whole, complex without being any way difficult, even at 11% ABV. Textbook stuff and highly recommended.

Finally for today, we had dinner at Het Lagerhuys, a city centre restaurant where the beer and food pairing is taken very seriously. A little too seriously, to be honest: I'm sceptical of the whole concept and would rather order what I want rather than evaluate the pairing recommendations of my waiter, but he was only being helpful and I'm sure plenty of customers find it useful. Anyway, the food was good and the beer list rivalled that of BeerTemple for international interest.

My starting beer was London Thunder, another porter, this time from actual England, though Roosters in Yorkshire, not That London. It's a mere 4% ABV and shows a straight-up burnt-toast roasted aroma leading on to a bitter chocolate foretaste which is verging on acrid. But then it finshes indecently quickly, leaving a slight sourness behind. It's not bad but would be quite sharp for pint drinking. It certainly doesn't compare well with the lovely Morebeer porter above. More creaminess is required.

To Maine for the beer next to it, looking identical: Big Bright Lights by Mast Landing. It's anything but bright; a dense obsidian-black and 10.5% ABV. A serious liquorice aroma is how it introduces itself though the taste is more welcoming: a civilised teatime treat of almonds and brown sugar. As the alcohol unfolds that turns to Amaretto, seasoned with herbal red vermouth. It's beautifully mellow and lovely to sip. This is why I'm unconvinced that pairing with food matters: something this good is enjoyable regardless of what's on the plate.

Round two stayed on the dark side, this time with a Baltic porter called Blackheart from Birrificio dell'Aspide in Campania. It's a little low in strength for the style, being 6.6% ABV but still has plenty of character. There's a touch of bitumen in the roasty aroma, while the flavour goes big on chocolate, adding nougat and hazelnut to that, and a spritz of raspberry. It finishes clean, but only just, and I got much more of a sense of warm-fermented extra stout from it, than cool-fermented Baltic porter. Nevertheless it's tasty, if just a smidge sweet for how I think the style should work.

Finally, going big before going home, Weekend by Prairie Artisan Ales in Oklahoma, a decadent beast of a pastry stout: 13.3% ABV. It is extremely thick and extremely sweet, smelling of pink marshmallows and tasting of the not-quite-custard that fills custard donuts. Add some cherry liqueur and a big slice of gooey fudge cake to that and you have something that doesn't really resemble beer any more. You have to be in the mood for a concoction like this. I approached it with the sense of daftness it deserves and had a good time as a result. The mind boggles at the thought of producing a serious food pairing for it, but doubtless our helpful waiter could have advised.

That's it for today. In Friday's post I'll be visiting a brewery, and maybe two.