Maand: mei 2021

Brouwerij Stijl: Pioneering in Almere

Almere is not the first city you would think of when it comes to beer. Though close to Amsterdam it mainly consists of residential, suburban areas. In a country of century-old cities, Almere is an outlier. A city no one in this country really wants to visit.

Yet I decided to make the trip to visit one of the few breweries in Almere: Brouwerij Stijl. I first met Raymond of Brouwerij Stijl (Style Brewery) when pouring at a beer festival. The beer was good but what most intrigued me was where they were from.

De Blauwe Reiger

I met with Anneke, the other half of the married couple that is Brouwerij Stijl, at their Bierlab. The Bierlab is located in a building with many more tiny creative businesses. There were woodworkers, people working on boats, a food truck, an artist working with iron and more. It also houses a small theatre.

Also part of the building, called de Blauw Reiger (Blue Heron) is an institution that provides care and activities for people who need help because of a handicap. It gives the area an atmosphere of collaboration for people who have qualities than can help others.

Bierlab

Stijl’s Brewlab is located in a hallway that also houses their storage. Their 8 core range beers are therefor brewed at other breweries. They use the Bierlab to experiment with new beers. During my visit I got a taste of a Black IPA. The batches are very small but interesting. They sell the bottles to beergeeks in Almere who will have to make the trek to the industrial zone where they are located, but they happily do so. Think of beers like a Dark Rye Saison, a Grisette, an Imperial Orange Stout or Loganberry Black Barley Wine.

Raymond works teaching new air traffic controllers and Anneke takes care of their two children, besides doing a lot of work for the brewery. They are taking things slow, but there are plans for their installation. We will of course let you know about these plans as they evolve.

Their beers and ingredients

Anneke and Raymond have a shared love for the U.S.A., a country they have been numerous times already. Their beers are also influenced by, but not limited to, this country. Their best known beer is the Ally (the nickname of Almere) Pale Ale, a beer made in collaboration with local professional football team Almere City FC. They have won national awards for their excellent Russian Imperial Stout.

Other beers in their 8 beer core range are a pinetop blonde, a Dubbel and a pilsner. Stijl uses many different ingredients in their beers and hardly ever stick to the usual four. For a saison they made for the Zuiderzeemuseum in Enkhuizen they used beets and carrots from a local farmer. The beer has a strange color because of these vegetables but be assured, it’s not some weird berry milkshake stout. Their pilsner is made with local malt made from locally (Flevoland) grown grains and hops. It is a truly local beer in that way.

Circular

This focus on local produce runs through everything they do. A few articles ago we wrote about Pieke Brood Bier and how they use leftover bread in their brews. Stijl does the same for every beer they brew, no matter what the style. When it is a brewday they load up the car with as much bread as they can and drive to the brewery where they brew that day. They have good contacts with a local bakery who saves bread in the freezer for them. The spent grain in turn is being made into bread again. Not too far from the Bierlab the cultivate some different varieties hop plants that have been used in the beer. Same for locally grown herbs. Flevoland, the province Almere is in, might be very new but it is a perfect breeding ground for produce, especially for hops apparently.

Almere

The city they live in was a big part of the conversation. Both are from the South and Anneke studied anthropology and has a keen insight in how the city behaves.

If you are not from around here let me explain to you what Almere is. In a country where most cities are at least 600 years old and some date from Roman times ,Almere is young. Incredibly young. Some of you reading this would have been adults already when the first house was inhabited in 1976. The city was build on the created land in the former Zuiderzee, now IJsselmeer. Almere was founded near Amsterdam and many families from the capital moved here for bigger, cheaper housing that was still close to work. Ever since the city has grown with new neighborhoods up to now where it is now the 6th biggest city in the country. And that it only 45 years.

But for its size and number of inhabitants, specialty beer culture in Almere is virtually non-existent. It is a city of immigrant families from all over the country. First it was people coming from Amsterdam, later it attracted people from all over the country and even from abroad. It can be conceived to be a miniature America. It has given Almere a feel that is different from most other cities, a newer city that is still trying to discover who it is.

Like other newer cities in the country (Hoofddorp for example) it seems hard to start some sort of beer culture. Beer stores fail and there are no classic bars and restaurants that serve locally made specialty beer. In fact most restaurants are of the all-you-can-eat type with no room for anything special.

Future

Let’s hope that Almere keeps growing in the right direction to provide a good garden for a craft beer culture to grow in. The city of Almere isn’t the most flexile when it comes to helping, so that might provide an extra challenge. Anneke and Raymond, beer pioneers in Almere, will be ready for it with Brouwerij Stijl.

From the Archives: ’t Uiltje from August 2014

uiltje2

For the few of you who have missed it, this week it was announced that Swinckels Family Brewers (Better known as Bavaria) took over Brouwerij ’t Uiltje. A Sell-out? For some maybe, but you can also see it as a logical next step.
We here have been Uiltje fans from the very beginning, so we thought it would be interesting to post an article (then on the Dutch Beer Pages) about ’t Uiltje and founder Robbert Uyleman. Enjoy!

An Owl flies in Haarlem

Haarlem once was a city that had hundreds of breweries. They all vanished over time until Jopen started brewing to become one of the biggest breweries of the smaller ones. Jopen’s logo can now be found all over the city. But from its ranks sprang a second Haarlem brewery: Het Uiltje.

Owlman Robbert Uyleman is an example of how being around good craft beer is infectious. His job and his love for highly hopped American style beers made him start brewery Het Uiltje. Robbert was working behind the bar in the Jopen Kerk in Haarlem because, well, he just liked working there one day in the week. On one other day in the workweek he was an accountmanager for a company specialized in audiovisual techniques, something he had studied for. But the call of the beer was louder than techniques for the eyes and ears so he bought the gear and started brewing with two friends at home. Of the three he was the only one to persevere and that perseverance gave us Het Uiltje. The rest is the usual story of a starting brewer. Jopen had already asked Robbert to substitute as brewer when one of them sick or to make the third brew of the day. When in February one of the brewers left, Jopen needed a new one and turned to Robbert, a logical choice. He gave up his job and started working for them fulltime, already being familiar with the installation and way of working. Brewer at Jopen is now his fulltime job, with het Uiltje being extra work besides it. But Het Uiltje is 100% his, as we will see.

The Owl Robbert’s last name is Uyleman. Uil is the Dutch word for owl. Using an owl as logo for his own beer was only logical. When he had decided on an owl he started drawing some owls. The first try was the best and that is now the simple but effective logo of Het Uiltje. Robbert designs everything himself: the labels on the bottles, the photography, building and keeping up the website, the texts on the site and labels. For him running a brewery is a creative outlet in more than one way than just brewing great beer. Robbert is in the Jopen brewery all day anyway so it was the most logical place to brew his Uiltje beers. That and living nearby. The Uiltje beers are all his own recipe and when the brewing is done, he buys the beer from Jopen and can do with it as he wants. He does part of the distribution himself but Melgers (the great store in Haarlem) takes care of some of it as well. Robbert is working on a more national distribution network.

Debut Robbert’s “debut” with Het Uiltje was in Haarlem at Café Briljant where he staged a Tap Takeover. In the crowded bar people could sample the beers and hear about his plans. The second beer (The Velduil) was launched during the Dutch Beer Week in May and was beer of the month at the Arendsnest in Amsterdam. The next two will be released shortly at different locations. At the Takeover he let people doodle on het Uiltje coasters to get some funny plays on the logo. Twelve ideas were picked up, and these drawings can be found on some of the labels too! If you find one you can make a picture and send it to Robbert. This has already happened a few times and the best photographs will be put in the monthly newsletter. The winner was Uilbelix, a little owl dressed up as Obelix from the Asterix comic books. He enjoys the interaction with drinkers, so that it is not a stuffy old way of just boring labels with text.

Local boy At the beerfestival in Haarlem I wrote about in the last article, I saw het Uiltje beer was also for sale in the café on the square. I wondered if he had help from Jopen with this but Robbert this is not the case, he does everything himself. As a true Haarlemmer he knows the local bars well and stepped inside them to try and sell his beer, with success. The bottles are already for sale in all of the eleven provinces, and he delivers the bottles himself so he has already put up many kilometers. His beer has crossed the border already too and can be found in Finland, Denmark, Germany and Belgium.

The Beer So what does Robbert actually brew? He is definitely of the American school of brewing: beers with a lot of hops. My first beer from Het Uiltje was a Double IPA and that was everything an IPA should be. Great floral notes and a very nice bitterness. A bitterness even my wife liked and she is not a fan of IPA’s (yet). The beers have the names of different owls. The Velduil, Steenuil or Dwerguil. Robbert likes a pun or two as well for the special releases; who wouldn’t want to try beers called Do Not Eat The Yellow Snow, Lekker Bakkie Kobi or Sai-so-niet dan toch? The last two are hard to translate into English but they are a coffee stout and a saison. The Lekker bakkie Kobi was made with raisins and dates.

Robbert at the Botermarkt Bierfestival 2013
Robbert at the Botermarkt Bierfestival 2013

Hoot The owl has long been a symbol of wisdom and some brewing wisdom reached the creative part of Robbert’s brain. As a brewer at Jopen and as his own separate brewer of Het Uiltje it is good to see yet another new face in Dutch brewing, and Robbert is one of the more talented ones. So walk into any Dutch beer shop and there is a good chance Robbert’s colorful label with the black owl is laughing at you, begging to bought. If you do, you won’t regret it.