Make your own excitement

The Hague gets a bit of a bad rap among the cities of the Netherlands. The administrative capital has neither its own university nor the hoards of tourists which spice up life in the likes of Amsterdam, Utrecht and Leiden. I quite like that about it. There's proper culture and history, good shopping and food and, most importantly, plenty of places worth drinking in. I spent a few days in town over New Year, with time to amble into several of its interesting beer venues.

Top of that list, for me, is Haagsche Broeder, which I first visited back in September and was keen to come back to. There were a few new ticks on the taps, beginning with coffee stout Inproc. This is 6.5% ABV, looking terribly continental in its stemmed glass with a thick café crème head. The aroma is sweet, coffee combining with milk chocolate and hazelnuts. The flavour balances that side with bitterer coffee roast, some dark toast from the roasted grains, and a hint of leafy green vegetable hops. I was braced for it being packed full of slick Belgian-style esters but they've kept it clean, finishing on a jolt of real espresso. I've got so used to coffee being used with vanilla and other sweeteners in pastry stouts, that finding a plainer, more straightforward, example was a welcome discovery.

Prior was the brewery's first beer, described as a double porter and 8.5% ABV. It's jet black and smells floral, giving me black IPA vibes. A surprising pink raspberry foretaste opens the flavour, followed in quick succession by a dry metallic bite, some dark chocolate bitterness and then roasted grain to finish. There's little sign of all the alcohol, so luckily the intense roast was there to stop me quaffing the whole thing quickly. That gave me time to discover an additional element to its taste: a hint of cinnamon and clove. Dark, spicy and bitter is an unusual combination but it's one which works extremely well. I suspect this is a well-honed and fine-tuned recipe, and that has paid off.

Somebody here likes strong and dark, because they have an even bigger porter in regular production: Zebedeus, at 10% ABV. There's no mistaking the strength here, with its very boozy fortified-wine aroma. Add some chocolate cake and marzipan to that, for a promise of luxurious intensity. While it's appropriately smooth and warming, there's a dry and savoury character to the taste, with an off-style saline note. I looked hard for the chocolate promised in the aroma but its not really a feature. Instead it's sharp and quite rough; tangy, and a little too bitter for comfortable drinking. There's a barrel-aged version which I didn't try, but I think the base beer is an excellent candidate for that. I trust that some time in oak gives it a mellowness which is otherwise sorely lacking.

I finished with a glass of Noordeinde, described as a golden ale, but looking decidedly amber to me. There's elderflower in this, and it's extremely obvious from the aroma. It turned out to be surprisingly light and clean beyond that -- almost lager-like, despite 6.5% ABV. The elder adds a summery, white-grape, flavour which combines with light, iced-tea tannins to make something simple, elegant and extremely refreshing. It's not what I was expecting but I thoroughly enjoyed it regardless.

Haagsche Broeder's taproom remains a top pick for the town's drinking establishments.

The other place where you can drink beer at source is The Fiddler, a barely-changed relic of the 1990s Firkin pub chain, where the original brewkit is still in situ and in use. It makes beers under the Animal Army brand, sold on cask and keg, and exclusive to the pub, as far as I'm aware. I arrived in on the evening of New Year's Eve, finding it one of the few venues open for normal business.

The range doesn't change much, and I've had most of them over the years, but Maximilian was new to me, described as the summer ale. It's 4.6% ABV, and after being pumped through a sparkler, settled to a clear golden colour. I don't know what, if any, established beer style the brewer was aiming for, but it smelled most like a Belgian blonde ale to me, a sticky mix of tinned fruit and honey. The flavour confirms its sweetness, adding a strong floral, perfume-like effect and some bubblegum. That almost hides the weissbier-like banana and strong burst of diacetyl butterscotch, both of which took me a while to spot, despite being at an intensity which would stand out a mile in most beers. It just about still works by the pint, a dry grain-husk base going some way to balance it and improve the drinkability. I still wouldn't see myself caning pints of it in hot weather, however. One pint was plenty.

For that increasingly dated-looking noughties craft beer bar vibe, local brewery Kompaan's city taproom has you covered. 20-odd taps and no guest beers means you need to be OK with Kompaan's general offer.

I opened my tab with Levensgenieter, the New England-style IPA. It's a little on the dark side: rusty orange, and fully hazed. It's tropical out the wazoo, smelling powerfully of mango and passionfruit, and delivering a similar mix in its multicoloured foretaste. It turns a little gritty and savoury after the initial juice rush, with a rub of garlic and pine resin. The finish is strangely abrupt and a little watery. So, while this starts well, impressive for the first sip, it loses its way soon after. I thought I was about to experience haze perfection but, like so many other examples, this one couldn't stick the landing. Only at the end did I spot it's a mere 4.5% ABV, which goes some way to explaining things.

5% ABV isn't considered strong by Kompaan, as that's the strength of the lager they've called Daytime Drinking. Those of us who have chosen to drink it find ourselves unwitting guinea pigs for Yakima Chief hops, currently trying out HBC 1134 on the market. It's pitched as a hop for modern American-style lager. I don't get any sense of its old-world roots however. It is, at least, present in spades in this beer. Its pithy, zesty, floral character fills the aroma and the flavour, starting as musky perfume and finishing on lime and grapefruit peel. It has been added in such quantity that I swear the oils are contributing to the body. This is no easy-drinker, despite the name: the body is chewy and the hopping intense, requiring some slow sipping. It's good, though. I don't know that HBC 1134 is especially suited to lager, but it has a very interesting profile, particularly in how it combines rose petal perfume with citrus zest. That would work just as well in a pale ale. Keep an eye out for this one.

As a kind of palate cleanser,  I went with the tripel next. Maverick Monk is 8.4% ABV, and I guess it looks the part, being hazy and orange-yellow, though not quite right for the style in a straight-sided glass. There's a lot of banana ester in the aroma, and the flavour does its best to temper that with citrus, but it's still largely a banana show, plus a growing toffee character as it warms. There's a little Germanic hopping -- celery and grass -- but not enough to call it balance. This is a sweet, candified example of the style, with a raw and uncouth boozy heat. I have nothing against a consciously craft brewery taking on a classic style like tripel, but I don't think Kompaan has made an especially good go of it here. "Maverick" doesn’t necessarily mean "good".

Smoked weizenbock isn't something one sees often. I think the one Jopen made a few years back is my only other encounter with one. Well, here was another: Smoked Wheat Everyday. Another 8.4% ABV meant I dropped down to 20cl measures at this point. It's a mahogany colour and fully fleshed out for the strength, almost syrupy but with lots of fizz. The smoke side is not a major part of the flavour. There's a kind of maple bacon savoury sweetness, dovetailing with the caramelised aspect of the malt. For the most part, however, it's a bock. Caramel malt flavours meet honey and cereal, spiced up with noble hops, bringing a red cabbage and asparagus bitterness. It's less of a gimmick than I thought it would be, and I don't know whether to be relieved or disappointed. 20cl was just the right measure; more would be a chore. I like the heft, and its balance of intense sweetness and bitterness. It's a fun experiment, but perhaps I can see why smoked weizenbock isn't brewed more regularly.

I finished on The Anchorman. This imperial stout takes its name from Het Anker brewery in Mechelen, famous for Gouden Carolus beer, but which also does a line in whisky, barrels from which were used to age this. Though 11% ABV, it's very light of body, doubtless helped by the cold serving temperature. I get Rioja and dark sherry from the unmistakably fortified, oaked-up aroma and foretaste, but not whisky, necessarily. There's a lot of grape, then rich and smooth cocoa, and a mild dry roasted kick on the finish. At every sip -- and it's a sipper -- the taste circles back to strong dark wine, and the drinking experience matches that more than it offers beer. This is a classy number, showing a maturity in advance of both the brewery and distillery's youthful ages. The basics of stout are reduced to a mild oily coffee note and a hint of chocolate syrup, but having these as support players to the fun and fruity barrel is a fully valid approach. It's not subtle but it's bang on. As we mourn the loss of De Molen, it's good to find someone still doing their kind of sumptuous schtick.

To complete the Kompaans, I had their West Coast Best Coast IPA at Hoender & Hop, a smartly modern bar and restaurant in the centre of town. Despite the provocative name, it arrived rather murky, and a dull ochre shade. A heavy and sweet marmalade aroma leads to a dense and chewy texture, even bigger than its 7% ABV implies. I guess that's a valid take on west-coast IPA, but I had been hoping for cleaner and crisper. The foretaste is plenty bitter, though in a gooey and resinous way, rather than spritzy zing. The citrus oil and flesh effect is much more orange than grapefruit. The way this turns sharp and pithy on the end is the beer's saving grace. There are some pleasantly subtle garden herb notes as well. It took me a while to warm to this, but I eventually did. While it's an unarguably off-kilter example, there's just enough good west-coast character to make it enjoyable for anyone but the most extreme sort of IPA purist.

It's been a few years since I visited the Peaky Blinders theme pub, The Sixpence, but it's still on the go and, with its Swinkels tie, does a good range of Uiltje beers these days. I had Juicy Lucy, a most unoriginally-named hazy IPA. They're not joking about the juice, though. It smells of sweet orange cordial, ramping that up in the flavour to passionfruit and pineapple. The blurb makes no mention of actual fruit being added, so it's very impressive that it's seemingly all done with hops. A spark of dank resin reminds me at the end that it's an IPA, not a tropical soft drink, though its light body and supreme drinkability makes that an easy mistake. It's pretty good stuff: accessible, flavoursome and fun. Flagship haze done expertly.

Finally for today, an unfussy but very decent dinner at chain restaurant Loetje provided an opportunity to try Jutters Bock, from Texels. Funny, I thought that Dutch bock was a fairly strictly autumn seasonal thing but there was still plenty of it in evidence in January, including this one from Heineken's coastal microbrewery. On draught it's a chestnut brown colour with a thin but persistent head. There's a rich and dubbel-like aroma, centred on banana and bourbon biscuits, with a sharper herbal complexity, which is all very inviting. Bitterness leads in the flavour, and bock's German lager roots are on show: noble hop characteristics like fresh green cabbage and celery. The sweet side of the equation grows gradually, adding banana bread and chocolate cookies, ramping up towards glace cherry and Parma Violet candy. All of this snaps off abruptly and cleanly in the finish. A bit more warmth would have been appreciated, though that's not really part of the bock spec. And while I'm no expert, I thought this was a very good example, with more complexity than I remember finding in the classic bocks from Amstel and Grolsch.

And before I finish up, Loetje also has a house beer, Loetje's Blond, which I'm guessing is a rebadge of whatever 6.5% ABV blonde ale Heineken NL makes. This is clear gold and has a mild peach and pineapple aroma. While the flavour is syrup-sweet, the body is lager-light, and an uneasy harmony ensues. As a take on low-countries blonde ale, this is definitely a blander sort, but maybe that's an improvement, avoiding excessive cloy but also the drabness one often gets from rebadged pilsners and pale ales. Generic house beers seem much less generic when they're this kind of strength.

Thus concludes our wander around central Den Haag. I could equally have taken you to Hoppzak and/or Rootz to pick through the interesting stuff on their respective beer menus, but time did not permit. I did make a side trip to the nearby town of Delft, and what I found there follows next.