The opening of Kompaan Beer Bar, the Tasting Room that once will be a part of the brewery founded by Jasper and Jeroen, surpassed all expectations. The Facebook page indicated 790 people attending and 154 ‘maybes’. They all turned up!

I keep being amazed by the amount of new people being converted to craft beer drinkers every day. This, a fairly ordinary Thursday night, saw close to a thousand people hanging around an otherwise far from inspiring quay who’s main attraction is a splendid view of the pepple storage of a road builders company directly opposite of the tasting room. People had to queue long for tokens, and then again for beer or BBQ – which they did without any complaint, and they hung there until way past midnight. Kudo’s thus for Kompaan Brewery andf their following!

The offering of beers included the familiar range as well as some new ones – at leatst they were new to me, don’t rub it in please. The show stopper was the Session IPA, a style quickly nestling itself as the new lager: without any problem you’ll be drinking this all night long. A well balanced hopmix, not at all in your face and without any over-the-top flavor gimmicks. The stout was a winner for me too: darkish red and ever so slight residual suggars made me think of Export/Milk Stout, or even a mild Porter. Besides these, the 070 Pilsner is proof that the new generation don’t scorn this classic style – in fact, it’s a great example for many of their colleagues in the trade and but few can match this. It was too busy to really see the interior, so I’ll be back… The Hague can praise itself with this new beer hot spot and thanks to the City for redoing the entire local infrastructure right now it was hard to reach it for the opening, but the hordes of beer fans that will soon follow will love it!f

Dutch Drafts

Undoubtedly an extra reason for that will be the recently formed ‘Dutch Drafts’ group: a sort of informal cooperation of craft beer bars, aimed at offering really sensationally crafty beers and dito events. This Beer Bar will be a member, as will Van Moll in Eindhoven,Kaapse Brouwers in Rotterdam anf Craft & Draft in Amsterdam. The group allows only one member per city, with the expected exeption for Peter van der Arend, founder of Dutch Draft. He is okay’ed to have also his Beer Temple be a Dutch Drafts. Given his track record and flamebearing for Holland Beerland a no brainer of course!

More on Dutch Drafts will certainly follow soon. Peter unveiled this, perhaps spurred on by a glass of Kompaan Session IPA: early October a delegation of San Diego based Pizza Port Brewing will visit The Netherlands to do some tap-takeovers at the Dutch Craft members,a s well as collaboration brew with them.  Do you want to know which Dutch brewery will be the lucky host? So am I, Peter wouldn’t tell, not even after all his Session IPA’s… So, what’s you guess: where will that Dutch Pizza Port Drafts collab be brewed?