Discover Benelux | Special | Top Dutch Breweries
Utrecht’s own organic beer TEXT: KOEN GUIKING | PHOTOS: MARIJN VAN DER ZWAAG/MIZDESIGN.NL
When in the Netherlands, a trip to Utrecht is likely to be on your to-do list. There is much to discover in the vibrant city centre with its magnificent Dom Tower, but on a summer day it is also a great place to sit on a terrace and people watch. This, of course, is best enjoyed with a local beer. Utrecht’s beer is De Leckere. De Leckere brews ten premium beers; all of which are 100 per cent organic. Not because it suddenly became hip to exclusively use organic barleys, malts, hops and other ingredients; but because this small brewery has always done so, since it was founded in 1997; long before brewing beer and going organic was a trend. Four of De Leckere’s beers go down particularly well on a warm, sunny day while relaxing on the quay of Utrecht’s Oudegracht canal – or on the popular squares of Neude and Ledig Erf, or in one of Utrecht’s theatres or art-house 28 | Issue 30 | June 2016
cinemas. These include the wheat beer Witte Vrouwen, the blonde ale Gulden Craen, the seasonal Sonnen Borgh and the award-winning Pilsener.
place them on pellets, for distribution,” Den Daas explains with pride. “We load ten to 15 pellets per day.” In other words: 14,000 to 21,000 bottles of very “lecker” beer.
“It is quite unique that a small brewery like ours also brews a pilsner,” says Casper den Daas, one of merely ten employees at this brewery that supplies Utrecht and its surroundings with 6,000 hectolitres of beer per year. “Consumers are not willing to pay as much for a pilsner as for a craft beer, but the costs of making it are the same for us.” The large-scale brewers produce pilsners at much lower prices, hence most microbreweries avoid that market. Not De Leckere. It ventured into the world of pilsner – and with much success. At last year’s Brussels Beer Challenge, De Leckere Pilsener was awarded a Certificate of Excellence.
www.deleckere.nl
The charm of breweries like De Leckere is that most of the work is done manually. “We fill all casks by hand and we manually put the bottles into crates, fill them up and
De Leckere has been brewing wholly organic beer since 1997, long before it became a trend.