Local beer festivals
North Holland Beer Fest, June 8, 2014 (Haarlem, North Holland): Holland and The Netherlands are not synonymous, as that would be like calling only the East Coast the United States, but the provinces of South Holland and North Holland have the population concentration. Thirty minutes from Amsterdam, Haarlem hosts this provincial bierfest.
Bokbier Festival, Oct. 24-26, 2014 (Amsterdam, North Holland): The largest beer fest in the Netherlands, since 1978, welcomes over 12,000 thirsty celebrators enjoying “50 types of glorious” bock.
Winter Beer Fest, mid-January 2015 (Gouda, South Holland): The 22nd annual winter beer fest is held in Gouda, home of the cheese, an hour by light rail from Amsterdam. It features some hundred winter warmers from a land that knows something about winter.
Kerstbierfest (Christmas Beer Fest), mid-December 2014 (Essen, Belgium): A stein’s throw from the Dutch border, Essen hosts one of the largest beer enthusiast festivals on the planet, amassing roughly 200 draft and bottled holiday ales.
This story appears in the May issue of All About Beer Magazine. Click here for a free trial of our next issue.
Brian Yaeger
Brian Yaeger is the author of Red, White, and Brew: An American Beer Odyssey.
You mentoined your 2yo being able to drink when he/she’s 16. This is uncorrect unfortunately, we recently bumped up the age requirement on low ABV liquor to 18yo.
… Hollands handful of contract brewers … ? Are you serious? I’d like to see your hands, then. There are now (July 2014) 95 contract brewers (or brouwerijhuurders, as we call them) in the Netherlands. You can check them all out (and the brewers with their own installation, too) at http:// http://www.cambrinus.nl
Cheers!
Kees: For one, I wrote “Holland” when I probably should’ve written “Amsterdam” and let’s not get started on the geographic differences between A’dam which is a city in the province of North Holland (& there’s South Holland) and the Netherlands. So A’dam-wise there are only a handful. But even as far as all Dutch contract breweries, I meant handful in the sense of: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xscZeFD2m_o
Vincent: I’d written this before New Year’s Eve when the law changed. My 2.5-year-old son is now really pissed.