White bread and herrings

On 3rd October 1574, during the Eighty Years War, the Spanish who besieged the city of Leiden were routed by a band of Dutch rebels. Supplies of herring and white bread were brought to the starving populace, who made it an occasion of annual celebration in the city. Extra stops were pulled out to mark the 450th anniversary this year, including a grand communal meal on the eve of the big day. I arrived a couple of weeks prior, as registration opened for locals who wished to participate. By the looks of queue that snaked along the canal, past where I sat outside the Stadsbrowhuis, that was everyone.

No traditional Dutch food for me, though, just beer. Jopen's 6.5% ABV black IPA, Black Hop Sun, was on the menu. This has a strange but not unpleasant sweet and herbal aroma, of basil and incense. The flavour, too, is sweet to begin, starting on uncharacteristic candy and vanilla. That quickly butts up against a hard bitterness which is part green and metallic hops and part astringently dry roast. It's not very well integrated, and while it does have the boldness of good black IPA, it's rather severe and difficult drinking. 

That's the tall glass. The squat taster beside it is Piece of Cake: Apple Pie Crumble, by Frontaal. This one is 10% ABV. The name indicates what it's supposed to taste like, but it doesn't. It's very sticky, and the aroma goes large on brittle toffee. In the flavour that translates to burnt caramel, coming after a warm and cake-like sweet flavour. There's perhaps a little apple -- stewed, not crisp -- but none of the buttery biscuit side that is the whole point of crumble. I liked it, as a walloping big dessert stout, but it doesn't quite deliver on its promise.

I thought it only polite to order something from the in-house brewery next, and that was Blekkie Blekkie in Je Bekkie ("Pale Pale in Your Mouth", cryptically), a stout. It's unusual to see a session strength stout from a Dutch microbrewery, and this one is only 4.9% ABV. Chocolate, coffee and vanilla have all been added to it, and they're very obvious, leaving little room for any stout character. A sort of vanilla-laced cookie aroma starts us off, and then the flavour loads in the dense filter coffee, according it only a sprinkling of powdered chocolate. It's all a bit basic and home-brewish, an effect accentuated by the shortlived head. It's a valiant effort, but not a great beer, all told.

And while we're on bizarre names, the barley wine beside it is called A Walking Study in Demonology, and comes from the Low Key Barrel Project in Kent, collaborating with the candymen of Vault City in Edinburgh. There's blood orange, maple syrup, tonka beans and brown sugar all wrapped up in this 12.4% ABV package. It's a dark brown colour and has an aroma that's simultaneously sweet and sour. There's a very boozy heat, and while it's sweet, it's not heavy. I couldn't help thinking a beer like this should be heavy, to give it a comforting warmth. This doesn't have that but it does have tonka's inescapable cinnamon flavour, and a squeeze of orange zest. There's not much of note beyond that. For all its convolutions, this is another quite lacklustre strong beer. Refer to Monday's post for examples of how to do these things properly.

I paid a dinner visit to Leiden's other brewpub, Freddy's: the one housed on the ground floor of Heineken Netherlands's headquarters. I had a few of their beers on my last visit and wasn't terribly impressed. The menu seems to have shrunk in the two years since, and the only thing of interest on it was Freddy's Tripel. It's a dark one -- amber or garnet -- and it doesn't taste like a tripel either. There's a lager cleanness, making it seem more like an autumnal Dutch bock, but it's also very hot, the booze drowning out any subtleties which might have been present. Cereal or porridge are all I got from it, really, and maybe a tiny hint of liquorice. It fulfils the role of being a basic strong beer, but I don't think that's what anyone wants from tripel. Where are the spices?

Leiden has much better beer available than this lot. Some poor choices were made. It's just as well there was a festival of great stuff going on nearby. And when that was over, we went to Amsterdam.