Heineken Experience- Amsterdam

One of my favorite brewery tours I went on was the “Heineken Experience” in Amsterdam. This was not only a tour, but also a history and chemistry lesson on beer. I thought it was extremely interesting and the two free beers were just a bonus! The Heineken factory was established in Amsterdam in 1864 and today is one of the largest beer producers in the world. Heineken has always been a family company; Charlene de Carvalho-Heineken is one of the biggest stockholders and her husband Michel is on the company board. The brewery was renamed the Heineken Experience after adding some amusement park attractions to the exhibit. In 1988 Heineken closed the brewery and opened a tour experience for the fans of its beer. At first, it was a small admission charge to get in and you could drink as much as you wanted. After 2008, the tickets were more expensive and this factory became a tourist attraction.

The factory itself still has some of the original buildings and authentic interiors. When you first walk in you can see all old advertisement photos, pictures of the old factory, and family portraits. I really enjoyed the old photographs and medals that the Heineken family received. Also, there are all the old cans and bottles that were used for special events and in different years.

After seeing all the old history of the factory, I learned the major ingredients in their beer.  Heineken only uses four ingredients: barley, hops, water, and yeast. Barley is the major ingredient used in brewing beer, to use the barely for brewing it must be malted. Malting makes the starch and protein available for brewing. That starch is converting into sugar, which will produce alcohol during fermentation. We were offered barley water to taste what malted barley tastes like. It was very sweet but I would not recommend drinking it. The next ingredient is hops, which gives the flavor to the beer. It is the bitterness you taste at the end of sipping your beer. When smelling the hops, I smelled something equivalent to a wet dog, quite revolting! Beer contains 95% water and is important in giving beer its flavor. The last main ingredient is yeast. Yeast is used to convert malt sugars into alcohol during fermentation. In 1886, Dr. Elion discovered the famous Heineken A-yeast, which is a strain of yeast still used only by Heineken and is also a secret.

Once we observed and understood all the ingredients, we moved into a room with big tanks to understand how the beer is brewed. First, the barley is malted, ground, mixed with water and then heated. This converts the starch in the malted barley into sugars. They get rid of the solids in the mixture and what is left is “wort.” Then the hops are added to the brewers, which give the bitter taste. This mixture is then cooled down, moved into fermentation tanks, and the yeast is added. The beer will remain there for several days. After, it is cooled and put in storage cellars for post-fermentation. The final step is filtration, which then puts the beer into bottles, cans, or kegs. I found this process very interesting and it was cool to see the beer at every step of the process.