Dutch detour

I didn't go directly home after Brussels but instead took a Sunday morning train up to Amsterdam to pay a flying visit to some of my favourite and familiar haunts.

A burger in a randomly chosen burger place was accompanied by Jopen's Blurred Lines, a hazy IPA, of course. The brewery is generally a reliable one and they've done this well. There's decent head retention of the sort not enough beers in this style have. The juice quotient is plentiful in the flavour, and it genuinely does taste of freshly-squeezed orange. That includes a certain amount of pithy bitterness which balances it very nicely. And then there's a clean finish with no time for grit, garlic or any other nonsense. 5.3% ABV means you can order another straight after. It's not a complex or demanding beer but is very well-made. I would happily have it as a supermarket regular.

Onwards, then, to Foeders, in anticipation of some more sour goodness. Alas the menu was rather light on that front so I settled for dark and sticky goodness instead. That began with a 12% ABV imperial stout from Moersleutel in collaboration with Polish brewer Funky Fluid, called Suska Sechlońska. I would never have guessed the secret ingredient from the sweet and smoky flavour, nor the aroma like Islay whisky. In fact, there must be peated malt in this. All that the brewers own up to is smoked plums. Intensely smoked plums, if it's not from the malt. There's very good dessert stout in here, with lots of cream, coffee and chocolate, giving a certain impression of tiramisu, except smoked. The mix of gooey pudding and medicinal phenols is not unpleasant but odd and somewhat disconcerting. I wouldn't be running to order this one again.

I followed it with another from Moersleutel: a freeze-fortified stout called Magreet, at 16% ABV. For all that it appears dark and sticky in the glass, the aroma is light and bright as a summer market, heaped with fresh strawberry and cherry. The foretaste adds a pinch of almond paste to the cherry and serves it with a cup of hot, strong coffee. It's a lovely example of the complexity you can get with seriously strong stout. Stroopwafel. Raisin. Hazelnut. With a larger measure and more time I could have kept going but it was time to pay up and leave.

Obviously I'm far too grown up to go chasing cool or trendy beers, but I did notice an IPA from The Veil on the list at Beer Temple and reckoned I should check in with what the plucky Virginian brewery was up to. IdontwanttoBU³ is the name. It's 6.9% ABV and hazy as hell with no head. Its aroma is strangely herbal, presenting a mint and eucalyptus sharpness. The flavour is mostly sweet with merely a residual remnant of the savoury herbs. That gives the impression of chewing a raw hop cone, and maybe that's the point. If this is an attempt at the optimisation of beer hopping then we've gone past the point where it tastes nice. I would take Jopen's Blurred Lines over this any day.

Beer Temple is part of the MoreBeer chain, and I'll usually try the house beers on the grounds that they're only available in these pubs, and they generally tend to be worth drinking. Here there was Ninth Secret Eagle, a 5.5% ABV stout (not The Secret Eagle of the Ninth, my gritty reboot of the classic children's novel) brewed with/at Amsterdam microbrewery Walhalla. It is extremely dry, opening on crusty, dusty grain husk before moving on to green and acidic old-world hops. I also got black coffee and Shredded Wheat as other types of complexity, though all at the dry end of the spectrum. I liked it, but you really need to like your stouts bitter and dry to count this as a recommendation. Be warned.

One more MoreBeer beer here: a schwarzbier brewed by Poesiat & Kater called Schwartsmannnnnnn. It's nnnnnnnot bad at all, being lightly smoked and offering an aroma and foretaste of blackberry and plum, which is then seasoned with smoke before the dry roasted-grain finish. It's quite full-bodied, so not terribly lager-like and far from a classic schwarzbier. I think it's a worthy twist on the style, though: creative, not disruptive.

It's almost a tradition that the last beer in Amsterdam is at Arendsnest on the way to the station. I stuck with MoreBeer here and was intrigued by the listing of a lambic-like, produced with Vandenbroek, and called Mispel. Mispel is Dutch for medlar, a fruit which Wikipedia helpfully informs us is also known as "open-arse and monkey's bottom". I'm glad they didn't get too creative with the name of this beer. It's 6% ABV, amber-coloured and smells spicy with a hint of vinegar. Despite this sharpness in the aroma, the flavour is very smooth and mature, giving mulled citrus, clove and peppercorn set on a low-carbonation cask-like texture. It's an oddity, for sure, but very tasty.

I finished that fast enough to allow myself one last beer: the delightfully named Smook from Frisian brewer Het Brouwdok. It's a smoked Märzen and I'm always up for trying out a Schlenkerla clone. How do I know it's a Schlenkerla clone? Well, it's dark brown, for one thing. Doesn't anyone make Märzen-coloured smoked Märzen? The aroma of this is quite chemically, suggesting TCP and bleach. The flavour is dry and toasted with a little meatiness -- the crust of a baked ham, say, rather than proper bacon. It lacks the understated richness of Schlenkerla, which makes it such a satisfying beer to drink. This is drinkable, but will inevitably invite comparisons which aren't in its favour.

And on that note I was out the door and homeward bound. Always a pleasure, Amsterdam. See you again soon.