Brouwerij Het IJ

The Netherlands

"For us it’s just the greatest place to go to work."

Amsterdam might have some major and well known beer producers, but craft brewery Brouwerij ’t IJ, founded in the mid-80s, was one of the first to brew well-crafted beers in Belgian style. Founder Kasper Peterson, a Dutch musician who wrote a few chart-topping songs, started the brewery in 1985 in a former municipal bath house. The tasting room and a few of the brew rooms are still located here, right next to an iconic windmill.

After more than twenty years, Bart Obertop and Patrick Hendrikse took over the brewery and continued brewing the beers Brouwerij ’t IJ had become known for. As the demand grew they opened a second brewery in 2013, a few hundred meters form the original location, to be able to fulfill the demand. The original brewery in the former bath house now produces all the beers for consumption in the bar in the same building.

Brouwerij De Kromme Haring

‘Quality and experimentation’ are two foundational buzz words at brewpub and brewery De Kromme Haring in Utrecht. With a background in the biology field, Stephen Grigg and pub manager Gijs van Wiechen, started out as contractbrewers but quickly decided they needed their own place to realize their dream.

Brouwerij Kaapse Brouwers

The general thought was that no one would come to Katendrecht for good drinks and good food, as it is a part of Rotterdam with a rough past. Now craft brewery and brewpub Kaapse Brouwers and the Fenix Food Factory are a major tourist attraction that draws quite a crowd, especially in the weekends.

Brouwerij Maallust

Maallust is the name of the area around an old grain mill in the small village of Veenhuizen in the north of the Netherlands. An interesting and isolated place that was used for a social experiment back in the 19th century, then turned into a penitentiary institution and now is the home of this Dutch craft brewery.