At this café, you can choose from 52 Dutch beers
On the Herengracht in Amsterdam, you’ll find this gem of a beer café: Proeflokaal Arendsnest. For a unique beer tasting, this is the place to go, because there are no fewer than 52 beers on tap. And they all come from the Netherlands.
Witbier, a stout, an American-style IPA—name it and you can find it here. But why everything from the Netherlands? “I’m a huge beer lover and had always dreamed of owning my own beer café. I was a representative for Haarlem-based Jopenbier in 1998, and back then nobody wanted Dutch beer because Belgian beer was supposedly much better. Out of frustration, I opened a café two years later serving only Dutch beer,” owner Peter van der Arend explains. “At the time, there were only 30 Dutch breweries, and I drove all over the country to bring the beer to my café.”
Difference
So what is the difference between Dutch, German and Belgian specialty beer? “The Netherlands has little history when it comes to specialty beer, and we became known through the pilsner revolution and a small amount of herfstbok. There is a lot of variety in Dutch beers because we aren’t bound by tradition. Think, for example, of Germany with its famous Weizen and Belgium with its tripels and dubbels. Dutch brewers experiment more with styles from countries such as Germany, America and England.” And where is it brewed? “Small independent breweries are mainly found in the Randstad, especially in Amsterdam.”
A little French
So is everything in the café really Dutch? “The wines come from France, but they’re made by a Dutch farmer. The snacks come from the Netherlands, as does the soda as much as possible, but there simply isn’t enough supply for that.” So Dutch products wherever possible, although things have been different at times: “We once organized an afternoon when you could drink Belgian specialty beer here, under the slogan: have an afternoon affair. In the end, we only did that for two hours.” Proeflokaal Arendsnest can be found at Herengracht 90 in Amsterdam.
