West Friesland and beer: a seemingly excellent combination. Especially on Friday afternoon. And nowadays there is more than just the national brands, local beer brewers are knocking harder and harder on the door. There are 14 in West Friesland alone. Such as Joep Schagen from Brouwerij Tamesteut from Hoorn. “How nice is it when someone next to you on the terrace orders your beer?”
‘Eat what you make!’: theme week about West Frisian food and drinks
This week, NH Nieuws/WEEFF pays a lot of attention to food and drinks in West Friesland. Under the heading ‘Eat what you eat!’ we delve into local delicacies and look for the answers to other pressing food and drink questions. And therefore also about specialty beers.
De Werf Brewery in Enkhuizen, De Brouwerij in Medemblik or Bierderij Spanbroek. Nowadays, almost every village or city has its own maker of specialty beers. The three types of beer from Joep Schagen from Brouwerij Tamesteut can be found in many places in Hoorn. It all started for him in 2016. Schagen then brewed his first own beer, the ‘Naughty Badass Modder Fokker’.
Champagne
Schagen: “My cousin worked at Brouwerij ‘t IJ and always brewed beer for a fair drink in Hoogkarspel. We thought of brewing a beer especially for cousins’ day,” he says. At home the cousins got to work, with Using an electric pan they made 15 liters of wheat beer. “It looked like champagne, that’s how it foamed.” With purchased items from Marktplaats, a goal was created for Schagen: “How nice is it when someone at the table next to you orders your beer when you sit on the terrace in Hoorn.”
“We thought of brewing a beer especially for cousins’ day. It looked like champagne, it foamed like that.”
In October 2018, Schagen founded Brouwerij Tamesteut and sold its beer to the catering industry in Hoorn. A year later he won the NH Nieuws beer election for the ‘Best Heavy Beer’ and came second for the most popular beer. Before he knew it, his beer was sold throughout the Netherlands. Last year he produced around 6,000 bottles and has now launched three beers: Naughty Badass Modder Fokker, Yippee-Ki-Yay Modder Fokker and Unkel Dunkel Hefe Weizen.
The brewery’s logo was invented by someone who was distanced from the labor market. “She can put something on paper within two seconds. She really has a lot of talent. After fifteen minutes this rabbit came out. I saw the first draft and I immediately knew: don’t do anything about it anymore!”
The rabbit has several versions. In the ‘Unkel Dunkel Hefe Weizen’ the rabbit is wearing lederhosen and in the ‘Yippee-Ki-Yay Modder Fokker’ the rabbit can be found on a skippy cow. “I don’t know yet whether there will be new beers, but I will continue with the current beers.”
Will an increase in excise duties on specialty beer cause a devastation?
From the new year there will be an increase in excise duties on specialty beer. Joep Schagen thinks this will have an impact on many brewers. For a beer with an alcohol content of 10 percent, the bottle becomes about 27 cents more expensive for the consumer. For breweries themselves, brewing costs can vary by tens of euros per hectoliter. Because: the higher the alcohol percentage, the more excise duty is charged.
There are currently about 900 breweries in the Netherlands. Schagen expects that there will be a ‘major clear-cut’ next year. “The price of my own beer is rising by almost 20 percent. I will soon pay a few hundred euros more in excise duty for 1,000 liters of beer.” Yet he continues to brew. “There is a good chance that I will bottle the beers that are currently in the barrels anyway. It will save a lot of money if I do it this year.”
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