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.