Welcome my beer loving friends.

I don’t know if you remember me. For a long time I wrote a blog about Dutch beer. But about two and a half years ago I stopped. And for a great reason! I was one of the fortunate ones who made a hobby into a career. For two years I helped out Oproer, a brewery I was already a fan of before when they were still Rooie Dop and Ruig.

It was an experience that made me look at the world of beer from the inside. An experience that I think will be invaluable for the restart of what once were the Dutch Beer Pages. My plan about a decade ago was to build a site that gave the reader all the needed information about beer in Holland. But the number of breweries and cafes is now so vast that an attempt to be all encompassing will only lead to a huge muddled mess. And the name was rather lame right?

But the blog will still be about the world of Dutch brewing and the people who create, form and inhabit it. It will definitely not be about me. I see too many blogs where the focus seems to be on the writer and not the subject. So here is what I promise:

1. No pictures of me. I don’t think your appreciation of a brewery, bar, or festival is in anyway enhanced with my face.
2. No reviews of beer. Just read my rating on Untappd if you really want to know. Taste is very personal and I see no reason to tell you a particular beer makes me think of some long last candy from the 80s. Do you guys really read a page long review of an Amstel light? It will definitely be part of articles if I really like it, but never the focus.
3. No style hierarchy. Of course I have my preferences. I will never be a triple fan and love Russian Stouts. But that doesn’t make one brewery less than the other. Only quality does. What I aim to find out is why a brewery chose to make a triple instead of DIPA. If they didn’t make both of course.

What I am going for is making the brewery or bar the main focus. Why do they do what they do? What has influenced them to take this route and how have their own views changed over the years. My former blog was always focused on telling the reader things that were new. Background or a deeper insight if you will. That will not change.

And this won’t only be about the present. I will also write about beer culture in the past. There are a lot of stories still untold about that as well. Maybe not for a local, but a lot of it has never really been told in English.

So I present to you: Hop Culture Reference. A blog on which I am going to attempt to tell you more about this wonderful sub-culture. Because of family and a fulltime job I don’t know how often I will write something. The aim is two new articles per month. I already have some things lined up. Follow the blog on all the social media I am using.

I am looking forward to writing again and I hope you are willing to read it once in a while. The blog will grow and change and I would like you all to be part of it. A lot has changed in a decade, let’s see what the beer world looks like now.

See you all soon.