Beering in Amsterdam: Heineken Experience

Basically this post is some free pub for Heineken, as if their company and brand were hinging on a 19,000 hit blog out of Houston, TX. After flopping around that day and night getting into Amsterdam, we dragged ass out of bed the next day and walked over to the Heineken Experience.


Apparently this is their old brewery that has sinced been turned into a kind of a Discovery Zone (shout out to my Charlotte, NC folks). For 15 Euro, they have lots of educational videos, mini-lectures, interactive exhibits; you can crush some grains, mix up the grist, and even take pictures of the horses they use for delivery. Not to mention that you can look inside the old coppers, etc. Fantastic for the beer geek and nonbeer geek. The best part is you get three free beers.

The first beer you get is at this funky tasting room with a bartender who breaks down the way they like to serve their Heineken. Trust me, this is probably the best you'll ever have Heineken in your life. They serve it on these taps that are "Extra Cold". They also wash out the glass with water before each pour, and slice off the top of the head with a plastic knife. The man says that they do this to surround the beer with water to hold in the flavor. Without this slicing technique, they believe the beer would lose some of its essence as it would float away with the carbonation. I don't know about all that bullsh8t. Personally, I don't think it does much of a damn thing, but everybody in Amsterdam at the bars and pubs were doing it, so whatever. The beer was excellent. Take everything you normally dislike about Heineken, and throw it out, and that's what you're left with.

Everyone in our crew and around the table wanted to know why this tasted so much better than the Heiny's we get in the US of A. The man said it's just the long trip causes more oxidation. I didn't want to raise my hand mention that your lovely green bottles cause waaaaaaaay more harm than the FedEx trip. Letting in all that light is NOT good. What's funny is that their Heineken Dark (in a brown bottle) is fantastic.