Grutte Pier: Dutch Beer

This being Belgium, in the run-up to Christmas we visited a Christmas market. Me being me, we found a stall selling beers. This stall had a number of beers from a brewery I hadn’t heard of before — the Grutte Pier brewery in the Netherlands.

So I bought a selection and have been, slowly, working my way through them ever since.

The first one I tried was the Dubbel. This is normally a safe bet for me but, in this case, it was way too sweet. Obviously, I finished the bottle, but it’s not a beer I would pick up again.

Surprisingly enough, the Tripel proved to be a lot better. Surprising, because I don’t usually like Tripels, but this one was nicely dry and went down very well indeed. This makes it one of the very few Tripels that I would buy again. And again.

The blonde was a bit watery, but this probably doesn’t tell you anything as I usually find blondes a bit watery. If you like Heineken, you’ll probably be happy with this.

Similarly the Bretttûne was a bit bland. Again, if you like blondes you might like this, but it’s not for me.

The wood smoked double Bock, however, was a lot better. For a winter warmer, it’s quite light and has a nice smokiness to it. While a bit on the sweet side, the sweetness was far from overwhelming.

The Lente Kuit was a tad yeasty but didn’t have a lot of flavour to it.

And finally there was the Friese Boezem, another tripel and a very typical tripel at that. It was better than average but not that great.

All in all it was a bit disappointing. When I picked up this pack I was expecting to enjoy most of the beers. While I would happily drink the tripel again, and would be more than willing to have a few of the bocks on hand next winter, most of the beers were drinkable but unexceptional.

At least I got a free glass out of it.