Friday 15 April 2016

Brand beers in 2016

Hi there. Another cheap post, courtesy of some other crap I was doing today.

It's still Saturday. But a bit further through the afternoon. And after the Lentebok tasting earlier, I'm three Boks in. Though they were only 30cl bottles. While the Abt I followed them with was a full 33cl. At the same time staring at a bottle of New Glarus Milk Stout that really should get drunk. It's a present from an American friend.


The day is going well. I loaded up at Ton Overmars earlier. Found the blogposts I needed. Started the article. Soaked off some labels. Scanned labels. And went outside to look at the garden with Dolores. In particular, the woodruff she's growing. Which she'll use to make Meibowle*.

This is going great. More irrelevant personal trivia filling the screen. I was going to say that it beats tracking and trapping numbers. But I did a bit of that today, too. Scraping data from Brand's website. Which handily lists some useful technical information. For number fetishists like me.

There. I've said it out loud. Me and numbers have a complicated relationship. But a loving one. From my side. Not sure about those bastard numbers. Never totally trusted them. Always likely to make you look like a fool.

Interesting days for Dutch beer. I hear the non-Pils part of the market has hugely increased its market share.  I wish I had figures, but I'm in lazy-arse bash out the posts mode. There's plenty of circumstantial evidence. Like the number of breweries. The beers you see on supermarket shelves. And what some of the older breweries are making:

Brand beers in 2016
Beer Style OG Plato ABV  Bitterness EBU  Fermentation  Colour EBC 
Oud Bruin Oud Bruin 8.2º 3.50% 16 bottom 105
Pilsener Pils 11-12º 5.00% 25 bottom 7
Weizen Hefeweizen 12º 5.10% 12 top 12
UP Pils 12-13º 5.50% 36 bottom 7
Lentebock Heller Bock 16º 6.50% 24 top 15
Imperator Heller Bock 16º 6.50% 27 bottom 30
IPA IPA 16.3º 7.00% 45 top 19
Dubbelbock Dubbelbock 18º 7.50% 27 bottom 65
Sylvester 17.5º 7.50% 26 top 50
Zwaar Blond 18.4º 8.50% 36 top 12
Saison Saison 12.5º 6.50% 19 top 8
Source:
Brand website http://www.brand.nl

An idiosyncratic bunch. There can't be many breweries with a Dutch-style Oud Bruin, Dubbelbock, IPA and Saison in their range.

One thing that really struck me is the vagueness of the Pils OG's. Most are quite precise. Odd that. Really shocked that more are top- than bottom-fermented.

I would expand more on Brand's beers. But we need to saw the top off the neighbours' conifers. Be quite a surprise for them when they come back from their long weekend.

First bin liners.




* A punch made of woodruff-infused white wine and sparkling wine.

No comments: