Haarlem shuffling

I found myself in Haarlem for a few days last month. Amsterdam's neighbour to the west is a compact town but scores well in the drinking leagues with a number of interesting places in which to get a beer.

Uiltje's bar is still going, though looking decidedly more lived-in these days than when I visited it, new and pristine, in 2015. And although the brewery produces a vast array of beers, round one went to the guest taps. For me, Lisbon's Burning, a hazy IPA from Portugal's Dois Corvos. The aroma here is quite dry and savoury, which isn't a good start, but the taste takes things in an altogether better direction. Mandarin juice is the first flavour to arrive, and then instead of doubling down on the juice it offers oily rosemary and piquant peppercorns. That's fun and interesting, but unfortunately doesn't last long, tailing off quickly leaving a gritty bitter finish. The first few sips are a delight, but it turns a bit average after that.

A stout for the lady: Chocolate Bunny is an 8% ABV milk stout from Funky Fluid in Poland. It delivers on the promise of the name, with lots of strong cocoa and fudge in the aroma, while the flavour is saturated in milk chocolate, even including the mild salty tang one gets from a bar of Galaxy or Dairy Milk. Given the strength it's surprisingly light-bodied, and this helps with drinkability when the flavour is such a one-note. This is a chocolate beer for people who really really like the taste of chocolate in their beer, and who have few other demands in life.

Haarlem's other major beer landmark is the Jopenkerk, a brewpub and brand home for the local large microbrewery, Jopen. Though the menu board is all flashy digital visuals, there was no indication of what, if anything, had been brewed on site, though the kit was being tended to by a brewer so must still be doing something. Regardless, I took the opportunity to catch up on a couple of Jopen flagships.

The first was Juicy Lager. At 5.5% ABV this looked to me like it's a bit strong for what it is, and the mouthfeel is accordingly heavy. That means that the juice -- and there is juice -- is of the sticky sort, shading towards cordial. The flavour and aroma are enjoyable, though, showing lots of orangey pith and peel, finishing more savoury and resinous. As a thirsty punter, for me this did the job of being both interesting and refreshing, if not exactly as expected.

The brewery's other current core-range lager is called Craft Pilsener, this one a more orthodox 4.9% ABV. A strongly grassy aroma says "pils" while a slight misting of the yellow colour says "craft". The texture is as light and crisp as I was hoping the Juicy Lager would be, so perhaps I should have started on this one. A fun lemongrass foretaste fades quickly leaving a tang of zinc and a touch of the musty vegetal effect I often get from noble hopped beers and do not care for. My tastes aside, this does get the basics of pilsner correct, though is not a stellar example of it. I suspect it's designed to be pitched at the drinkers of mainstream Dutch lagers, and I don't particularly rate those either, so no surprise.

The tall dark fellow beside it is Meesterstuk 2019 -- an example of the Jopenkerk's fondness for vintages of its own beers: there's a sizeable bottled selection in the shop upstairs. The recipe changes each year and in 2019 it was a "Doppelsticke", not a style I've encountered before but which I'm guessing is a kind of strong Altbier. It's 10% ABV and flavoured with pine tips. It doesn't taste of pine, however, exuding instead a spicy, Christmassy, gingerbread aroma which follows directly into the flavour where your gingerbread gets a generous dusting of cinnamon and a fringe of chocolate icing. It was brewed in November for the winter season, for which it was doubtless well suited, but even sipping it on a sunny day was highly enjoyable.

The final round included Nederwit, Jopen's white IPA. This looked like a pale witbier, and has the strength of one at 5.5% ABV. The aroma of zest and coriander doesn't say IPA either but the flavour delivers, bringing fresh and juicy mandarin and nectarine followed by a more serious savoury herbal side. Cashmere and Simcoe are the parties responsible, and they work well together here. I often find there's a clash between herb and hop in white IPAs but here they do their own things in turn and very nicely.

In a change to the usual proceedings, the strong dark beer of the pair was mine. I had clocked the double black IPA on the board as soon as I sat down but was saving it for the end as it's 8.5% ABV. While I'm used to the Dutch people's effortless fluency in English, I'm not sure that Black It Up! was a great name for the beer. Echoes of Zwarte Piet linger there. I liked the tarry bitterness in the aroma here, presented with a little black pepper spice. It was unfortunately rather more ordinary to taste: dry and roasty with only a token treacle effect to thicken and sweeten it, and no proper hop wallop. I feel that something of this nature should be delivering wallop aplenty; instead this is calm, restrained and frankly a bit boring. Oh well.

Across town, and new to me, was the bar De Uiver (not to be confused with the nearby, but unrelated, restaurant of the same name), where we just had time to get a couple of beers in, between its Tuesday afternoon opening and having to leave for the airport.

Herself picked a dubbel from the well-designed rotating beer menu: Mooie Madam by Maallust. This arrived a mucky brown colour but smelled temptingly of chocolate and toffee. Thick and syrupy cereal malt hits against a leafy brassica bitterness. That's OK as it goes, but the quintessentially Belgian element is missing: no fruity fruitcake, no plums or raisins, and no spice. Even though it's only 7% ABV I got the impression that it would be a bit of a plod to drink.

I went for an imperial pastry stout, Black Hole, imported from Brussels Beer Project. This wasn't loaded with sickly sweetness but had a much more grown-up aniseed and lavender taste at the centre. There's a little bit of candy, and the mouthfeel certainly matched its 10.5% ABV. It's predominantly dry and bitter, so if I were marking it to style it would likely score low, but I would personally love to see more "pastry" stouts done like this. Lead the way, BBP!

The one for the road was another dark Belgian: Delirium Black Barrel Aged, an 11.5% ABV powerhouse from the pink elephant people. It's brown, rather than black, looking like a dubbel or quadrupel. It's beautifully smooth and uses the alcohol and barrels well to deliver a sumptuous oaky heat. Behind it I could discern walnut, coconut, dark rum and vanilla -- but not too much vanilla. On the one hand it tasted more like a rum and Coke than any familiar Belgian, but on the other it's gorgeous and classy, and on a par with the similar beers released by Brouwerij Het Anker under their Gouden Carolus range. Not what I expected from Huyghe, but I'll take it without complaint.

The town has an excellent all-purpose drinks shop in Melger's, carrying a wide range of Dutch, Belgian and German beers, as well a few colourful cans from further east in Europe. From them I picked one from Poland's Magic Road: Black Pretty, intriguingly described as a "salted caramel and cherry black pastry sour", and a modest 4.8% ABV. It's a dark purple colour, more than black, with a violet tint to the head. The texture is light and smooth, like a yoghurt drink, and it tastes like one too: sweet black cherries, pulped and treated with a sour culture. I had been looking for something thirst-quenching and this hit the target very nicely. Yes, it's rather one dimensional and very un-beer-like but in a perfectly pleasant way.

Two less craft-focused Haarlem bars to finish up. One is The Wolfhound, Irish-themed, of course, but with an intriguing locally-produced house beer called Thor's Cauldron. They describe it as a "burnt pale ale". Eh? What arrived was 6.5% ABV and a dark brown colour. The dry and roasted aroma says yes, it is indeed burnt, but there's more to it than that. A mix of red cabbage, white pepper, damp grass and rosewater puts this squarely in the black IPA bracket. It's maybe a bit less intense than the usual, which may be why they didn't call it that, but it still had more to it than the Jopen one. Anyway, it's recommended, and there's plenty of other decent beer at The Wolfhound to make it further worth your while.

I picked DeDakkas for after-dinner drinks one evening purely based on its location, perched on the roof of a multistorey car park and commanding beautiful views of the town. There's a house beer here too, Dakuil, a weissbier brewed by Uiltje. It's a light-bodied one and only 5% ABV. Otherwise it's classically constructed, balancing sweet banana and spicy clove deftly and effortlessly. As a house beer it's not meant to do anything fancy, and this definitely doesn't, leaving you to give the sunset your full attention.

From Haarlem we go further afield, next.