Art and craft

The reason I was in the Netherlands at the end of May was to attend the once-in-a-lifetime Vermeer exhibition at the Rijksmuseum. With that out of the way early, the rest of the museum sauntered through and the craft market outside perused, it was beer time. It wasn't the first time I've showed up at Beer Temple just as the doors opened on a Sunday afternoon.

I would likely have been here regardless, but the dark beer selection on the day was a particular draw. Round one brought a 7.2% ABV "fudge stout" from Ohio brewery DankHouse, called Little Dabbie. It goes pretty much down the line with that, offering a strong cocoa aroma and following it through with a silky texture, lactose sweetness, milk chocolate of course, and then some more interesting hints of hazelnut, raspberry and blueberry around the edges. It manages to stay subtle and balanced all the way along, resisting the temptation to go full chocolate foghorn with it. There's a worthwhile lesson here for other brewers of novelty candy beer.

To the right of it, with a more generous head, is Born To Die, a double black IPA by Third Moon of Milton, Ontario. While 10% ABV and full-on black, there's only a mild buzz of green cabbage bitterness from the aroma. The flavour is subtle too, and the alcohol heat, while not excessive, is more immediately noticeable than malt or hops. They do hold up their side eventually: grass and grapefruit with chocolate in the background. It's not at all dissimilar to the similarly-spec'd Jopen beer I mentioned in Monday's post. Maybe that's just what double black IPAs are now. We might consider ourselves lucky when we get two in one weekend but I'd still like more oomph from them. Make it worth my while.

Third Moon were back in the next round, this time with a coffee imperial stout, though a weak one at only 8.5% ABV. It's called Each Beast a God, and the aroma offers a chocolate wafer biscuit to go with your coffee, but not the actual coffee itself. It does arrive in the taste as a fresh espresso kick, though very much playing a supporting role to the basic and good chocolatey stout flavours. This is another gentle fellow, and that's perhaps more understandable here given the cut-down strength. Once again I find myself in search of more wallop than the beer delivers.

A token IPA sneaks in here: Altered State Machine, a hazy double New England job from Spyglass of New Hampshire. There's an odd mix of fun and serious, the 8.4% ABV well hidden and the flavours very clean and distinct. It's just strange that one side is all fruit chews and pink bubblegum while the other is weighty, sulphurous garlic. I tried to focus on the former but the latter ultimately wins out, unfortunately. At least I did get further confirmation of my theory that there's nothing particularly special about the way these are produced in New England: the ones from your local haze brewery are just the same.

I had enjoyed a variant of Epic's Big Bad Baptist imperial stout at a festival in Sweden a few years ago and wasn't going to pass up the chance to try another. This was the Barrel Strength edition, stronger than the basic, at 13.3% ABV. Coffee, once again, is an ingredient, though the aroma is strongly redolent of coconut. The hallmark of the two versions I've had has been the warm and smooth body and an expert balance between severe dry bitterness and warm cuddly wood-matured spirit alcohol. The flavour presents the coffee freshly, alongside more coconut and high-cocoa dark chocolate. While there's not a thing wrong with having it on draught, I got a strong impression that this really deserves to be poured from a 75cl bottle into a balloon-shaped sipping glass.

The beer on the right this time is almost the same strength -- 13% ABV -- though looks considerably paler, brown rather than black, even though it too is a stout. It's called Oatipus Complex, and is by Texan brewery Turning Point. As the colour implies, it's a rather wan affair, plain and porridgey, which at least means it gets value out of the oatmeal component but I'm sure that wasn't the point. A faint hint of chocolate cake is its one nod to good imperial stout taste, otherwise it's extremely forgettable. Them's the breaks picking random beers of any sort from anywhere.

That lot killed off the couple of hours before we could ascend to Walhalla. I had visited this teeny taproom in the northern suburbs back in 2018 and thought I'd like another look since we had the time. It's much the same, occupying half of an industrial unit (the other half holds the brewery) with tables spilling out into a scruffy backstreet. Still, it seems to command a decent-sized client base on a sunny but cool Sunday afternoon.

For the first round we went retro, which is always a nice option to have. The clear gold one on the left of the picture is Zephyros, described as a "west coast India pale lager" and a modest 5.5% ABV. It's surprisingly heavy for all that, and not at all lager-like. I guess the "west coast" bit is meant to signify a degree of malt sweetness as well as the clarity. That does provide a suitable base for piling in the hops, and it has a serious dank and weedy aroma and a flavour loaded with piney resins. On the down side, this turns it a little sweaty as it goes along, and I would have liked a cleaner sort of zing. I could see it working well as a late-session sipper, however: you definitely get a fun C-hop buzz, very welcome after a sequence of sweeter dark beers.

The slightly darker beer on the right is a 5.6% ABV Vienna lager called Brynhild. This gave me the lager vibes I was after: perfectly crisp and clean, and extremely drinkable. Not that the flavour is plain. There's a beautiful balance between brown bread and pale caramel from the malt and topnotes of asparagus and broccoli florets. Both sides are strongly represented in the overall picture, making it enjoyably characterful. Sometimes beers like this can feel like an exercise by the brewer in precision and meeting specifications. If so, this one was a success.

It was back to the stout next, because Izanami looked interesting: a 7.8% ABV export job, hopped with Sorachi Ace. I like a solid dose of bitterness in these, and it delivered in spades, piling in the roast and green vegetable notes. The Sorachi is busy as well, I'm happy to say, and the strong coconut aroma and flavour adds a fun tropical dimension to something that's otherwise very old-world traditional. Everything here was present and correct, as billed.

There was also a piña-colada-inspired sour ale, called Yaya, which I picked solely because The White Hag has done something very similar for this summer, as covered on Friday last. This is a much heavier affair, at 6.3% ABV. That's problematic because it's plainly trying to be refreshing but not managing it very well, being dense and flabby. There's lots of coconut and lime, in fairness to it, as well as late-arriving pineapple, but not much of a sour character. The marks here are all for recreating the cocktail's profile but none for making a tasty beer.

Walhalla was the destination but Oedipus is only around the corner so it would have been rude to leave the neighbourhood without stopping by. This rough-and-ready taproom has changed pleasingly little since Heineken became a major shareholder in 2019.

Here's another retro style: California common, in the form of amber-coloured Dodo. I thought it was spot on for the spec, toasty and crisp, with a decent buzz of spinach-like noble hops and some more new-worldish mango and grapefruit to give it a modern twist. Whatever about the flavour, it was the sheer down-the-hatch refreshment power that I liked most about it.

Oedipus's beer names aren't always in great taste and I've no idea why they decided to call a stout Panty. It's nothing fancy, being a solid 6%-er, packed with roasted grain notes plus hints of coffee bean and very dark chocolate. Quality stuff, and possibly even sessionable, given the chance. I would perhaps have been more impressed if beers like this weren't so readily available where I live. Oedipus deserves props for putting one out.

Just as Sunday bimbles through Amsterdam tend to begin at Beer Temple, they tend to end at its sibling, Arendsnest. We finished here with two on the terrace.

In the tall stemmed glass, Kaapse Hanz, a powerhouse Baltic porter that Kaapse created with Baxbier. It has a big and sticky body, not that of a lager. I guess you can forget about clean crispness when you reach 11.5% ABV. A big caramel and treacle flavour comes with this, but there are nuances too: meadowy violet and lavender from the aroma; rosewater and honeysuckle around the periphery of the taste. You need to like that floral aspect which some dark beers have -- it's one I associate most with The Kernel, and I like it a lot. This didn't scratch any Baltic porter itch but was still delicious.

And we wind down with a clear and golden house session IPA called Zeearend, brewed for the chain's Morebeer brand by Homeland, a brewery in the Amsterdam docklands that's on the agenda for a visit when the opportunity arises next. It's pretty good, clean and clear, with very typical lemon and grapefruit American hops while still low on bitterness and favouring refreshing zest instead. I'd be surprised if many punters come to Arendsnest for a session on the same beer, but it would be perfectly feasible with this.

I hope that the range, the quality, and the suitability to my personal beer tastes go some way to demonstrating why my Amsterdam pub crawls often show up the same handful of places. Some day I'll explore the city and its beer more thoroughly.