My kind of pub crawl

Festival over, we went to the pub. The wife Derek and I headed to Amsterdam on the Sunday after the Borefts festival. High on the agenda was a recommendation from Ron's mate Mike for Oude Jenever, so early on the sunny afternoon we darkened the doors of In De Olofspoort and received a wonderful impromptu tutorial in 3-, 5- and 10-year-old jenever from the friendly barman. You're right, Mike: it does taste like really good Scotch.

While in the area we also paid a brief courtesy call to De Prael. The brewery's eclectic tasting room was little more than a hole in the ground last time I was through Amsterdam, and the comfy chairs they have now are far more conducive to beer tasting than the alley in which they used to serve them. Derek got the round in, serving me Gepijpte Nelis, a smoked version of the dark autumn bock. With its fruity spices, it's perhaps closer to a Belgian dubbel than a Dutch bock, and the gentle smoke character lends a little complexity to an otherwise quite simple strong and sticky beer.

From there we headed down to Beer Temple. I was at the grand opening of this American-themed bar in 2009, or at least I stood outside. This was the first time I've ever been able to sit inside and peruse the prodigious selections. I figured it would be easier and more economical to limit myself to the draught offerings, but then I spotted a can in one of the fridges: Maui Coconut Porter, a beer I've been hunting for several years, having heard amazing things about it. So I duly bought it, popped the ringpull, poured it and got ready to be amazed. I wasn't amazed. It's a very fizzy dark brown beer giving off quite subtle coconut scents. It tastes extremely dry, a little sulphurous, and rather gritty, like a stout that's had a bit too much roast barley added. The sweet coconut flavour makes a very late appearance and lingers oilily on the lips. I definitely think I'd built it up too much. I mean, it's nice, in its own way, but at the same time a huge disappointment. The main thing is that it's done and I won't have to go to Maui to experience the loneliness of the long-distance ticker.

Beer Temple has commissioned its own house beer from Dutch brewery Jopen, and of course it had to be an IPA. Tempel Bier is a little bit on the light-to-watery side: a session beer in a pub without pints. But the refreshing zesty orange flavour can't be argued with. The fresh hoppy benefits of not having to cross an ocean are used to full effect.

There were a couple of strange versions of familiar beers on tap, including Flying Dog Double Dog on cask. The softer carbonation produces a different sensation to the bottled version, coating the mouth with extra-sticky toffee malt and turning the citric hop notes into something funkier and more spicy. John John Dead Guy is a barrel aged version of Rogue's Dead Guy Ale. Rogue's in-house distillery makes barrel acquisition particularly easy for them, and this one had seen some of their own whiskey before the beer went in. I'm not a fan of Dead Guy normally and this was little better. Massive wood flavours don't help the cloying stickiness, though the little bit of bretty sourness helps take some of the edge off, as do the sharp vegetal hops. I'm still glad I was just stealing a sip of someone else's rather than having a glass to myself.

The Maryland-based Stillwater brewing company were holding a tasting session in the back of the pub while we were there and as each tasting tray was brought to the corralled punters, the relevant beer went on general availability to the rest of us. RateBeer tells me that the two we tried were imported from no further away than Belgium. Jaded was brewed with the assistance of De Struise and is a dark red-brown ale doing a great job of balancing Belgian fruity esters with fresh and pithy hop zing. ’t Hofbrouwerijke near Antwerp was the birthplace of Love & Regret, another zesty one, though this time loaded with aromatic spices like coriander and white pepper. Apparently it was actually done with heather, lavender and chamomile, but you get the idea.

There was more white pepper -- a flavour I really enjoy in beer -- in Dieu du Ciel's Route des Épices. This time there is real pepper present: green and black corns are added to the recipe. There's a lovely rich chocolate biscuit aroma, but after that it's all pepper all the way. Before moving on I spent a bit of time with Marshall Wharf Old Ale. The Maine brewery has done a fantastic job with this: cola red and with a pungent vinous, almost vinegar, nose. It's one of those big textured strong ales filling one's face with sweet treacle and moreish umami, finished off with a distinctly sharp hop bite. Amazing stuff. I could have had another, but one does not leave Amsterdam before dropping in to Beer Temple's sisterhouse Arendsnest.

So we made it our last stop. Things have changed a little at Arendsnest in recent years. Gradually, the blackboards are starting to take over the walls. Since the pub serves exclusively Dutch-brewed beers that's probably a clear sign of how robustly healthy the beer scene is in the Netherlands these days.

A couple from Jopen to start: their Extra Stout is a tour de force with some fantastic smoky roasty aromas and a smooth texture given a cheeky burnt kick at the end. Barrevoet is their barley wine: dark red almost to the point of blackness. In combination with some majorly aromatic and grapefruitish hops it's almost a black IPA. But what's in a style? All you need to know is that it's one to look out for.

Perhaps inevitably, De Molen now has a blackboard to itself in Arendsnest. From that came Rijn & Veen, a cloudy pale ale with a lovely big orangey aroma. The taste is a little bit of a let-down, however: sharp and with some unfortunate disinfectant notes. Hemel & Aarde was a much better proposition: a sublimely smooth imperial stout with a touch of smoke on the nose. The flavour is heavy on the roast side but balanced by lavender perfume. Easy-drinking, balanced, but softly powerful too.

The airport train beckoned, so just one more for the road. My big finish was Bommen & Granaten: a dark red ale of a full 15.2% ABV, and possibly tasting like more. It's incredibly viscous, almost chewy. A knife and fork job. The flavours are sweet of course, but amazingly not cloying. "Turkish delight" was one comment as the glass got passed around. I was still tasting it all the way to Schiphol and was still thinking about it when I got to my own bed in Dublin hours later. Sometimes, good beers follow you home.

Hell, damnation and easy listening

I left out the beer from two breweries from my piece on last week's trip to the Netherlands so I could group them all together here. One of them I visited couple of years back, but the other we showed up to on Wednesday afternoon for a tour.

Formerly based in Amsterdam's suburbs, on the delightfully named Helicopterstraat, De Prael moved to a prime location in the Red Light district in the last year, as part of the city's attempt to clean the area up using something more than a powerhose. The building still isn't finished, with a tasting room no further than foundation level. What's standing is a shopfront, backing on to the small brewery at the rear. The authorities forbid serving beer in a shop, but boozing in the street is just fine, so pre-tour tastings are conducted in the narrow alley beside the building. Offered a beer each by our host, Barry, Mrs Beer Nut, a rather stoned Californian tourist and I picked a selection and shared the bottles round.

De Prael beers are quite distinctive from their modernist labels and odd titles. It turns out that most of them are named after local crooners from the '50s and '60s, and their LPs adorn the shop walls. Suddenly that bottle of Willy (their dark winter ale) isn't nearly as amusing.

But I didn't get to taste any Willy as the chap showing us round failed to offer us some. Selfish git. We made do by starting with Heintje, the witbier. This has a little more yeasty spice than your typical macrobrewed Belgian wheatbeer, a sort of rough hand-crafted quality that's enjoyable within the limitations of the style, but not exactly inspiring. There's also a pale winter ale called Willeke which I found rather boring. It left me even more curious about Willy. My wife the bock fiend went straight for Nelis, one of the typically dark ruby autumn bocks that start to appear this time of year in the Netherlands. Again, it's no barnstormer -- some pleasant sweet caramel as you might expect, a mild warming booziness, but not a whole lot else.

So far, so ordinary. But one De Prael beer did stand above the others, one presumably not named after a loaf-haired warbler: Zwarte Riek. This was on tap in 't Arendsnest and poured a dark ruby colour with a blend of light roasted porter notes coupled with very autumnal smoke and caramel flavours which make it much more of a success as a beer for this season than Nelis.

Workmanlike is the word I'd use to describe De Prael's beers: turning out, for the most part, good but unexciting interpretations of the common national beer styles. Not like the next guy.

Judging by the massive selection of his work on the shelves of De Bierkoning, it's a wonder Menno has time to do anything other than brew (though he did make an appearance at BeerTemple on its opening night). As one might expect, the Wizard of Bodegraven features prominently at 't Arendnest, not least because of the striking stark-but-informative labels on most of the De Molen beers. He's also taken to coating the necks of his capped bottles in wax, à la Three Floyds Dark Lord, and I'm not sure I approve of that pretension.

One scurrilous gossip I met told me that he doesn't make the same imperial stout twice, which helps explain why there are so many of them. The first I had on this trip was Mout & Mocca, flavoured, as the name suggests, with coffee. Even cold from the tap this is highly aromatic with a slight sour touch on the nose. The flavour blends bitterness both from the hops and the coffee with a sugary sweetness which, combined with the coldness, had me thinking of your typically Caribbean sort of strong stout. The sort of 10% ABV black beer you want on a warm afternoon like last Tuesday.

To the waxy bottles, then, and a Hel & Verdoemenis. The aroma gives off powerful sweet roasted promises, like sniffing raw chocolate malt, and the mouthfeel is as thick as one might expect from such a big 12%-er. Flavourwise, where do I start? The boozy vapours are the first thing to hit the palate, and there's a lasting undercurrent of big hop bitterness. The middle flavours are all about coffee roastiness, floating on the alcoholic heat haze -- Mrs Beer Nut's descriptor was "Tia Maria made from finest arabica", and I think that about sums it up. Each sip brings flavours that last forever, so even at €7 a bottle down the pub, this is good value for money.

The tap list in Wildeman advertised a 12% beer called "De Molen Black Jack" but I can't find anything about it on the web. Is it the Struis one? (edit: no, it's just very new. Thanks for the update, Barry) Anyway, this was good stuff: lots of sweet coffee and chocolate -- liqueurish again -- and a bit of phenol, though not enough to spoil it. Very tasty. That leaves just one other De Molen beer, and I moved away from the black stuff for this. Heil & Zegen is a double IPA of a beautiful dark ruby shade. There's no head and the body is thick and almost syrupy -- more of an American-style barleywine I'd have said. But it's very well balanced: no harshness, just a strong herbal hoppiness and a smooth weighty body without any trace of sickliness. It's yet another De Molen beer to take some time over.

And the other beers from this trip? They're still capped and stashed away at home for leaner times this winter. I'll be rationing them out to myself when I feel like a treat. Or run out of things to write about. Whatever.