Want to drink a lot of beer as a Carnival prince in the coming days? That’s not special. But if you brewed that beer yourself, then it is. Prince Jelle d’n Uurste van Nuland made dozens of liters of specialty beer in his barn to toast during carnival in his Woaterrijk.
Jelle van der Doelen (27) is not only a Carnival prince in his spare time, but also a beer brewer. And how could it be otherwise that he makes his own carnival beer? “I’ve been making a few cases for drinks with friends for years. Now that I have finally been chosen as prince, I wanted to make a beer to toast special moments during carnival.”
The Nulander has a real mini-brewery in his shed. With a kettle, taps and beer bottles. He has been busy brewing his own beer for carnival for two months. “Because it is a hobby, you need at least two to three evenings to make a few liters of beer,” says Jelle as he bottles the last beers. The question was whether I would be able to brew dozens of liters due to my busy schedule as a prince.”
“You shouldn’t drink too much of this beer.”
But now there are dozens of bottles with yellow-blue ‘Janus beer’ stickers ready for the carnival. The beer is named after Janus de Zeebink, the symbol of the Woaterrijk. Before and during the carnival he stands in his sailor suit on a pedestal in the middle of the village. “He connects everyone in Nuland. I named the beer after him, because that is also my goal as a prince.”
After Prince Jelle d’n Uurste gains power over the Woaterrijk on Saturday, he toasts with his Janus beer together with all carnival revelers. But the prince knows that it won’t stop at just that one beer.
“That’s part of it. Fortunately, I like beer,” he says, laughing. “But you shouldn’t drink too much of this beer.” There is six percent alcohol in the specialty beer. That is one to two percent more than in a normal beer in the pub. “If you drink a few of those, you’ll soon be drunk.”
“As a prince you have to be present everywhere.”
Normally he doesn’t turn down a beer, but this carnival he will have to. “As a prince you have to be present everywhere. You can’t cancel a day because you drank too much the day before.”
But he has no problem with that. “I used to be the first one there on Thursdays and stay until the last hour on Tuesdays,” he says. “I have plenty of friends who skipped a day because they drank too much, but I never did that. I want to enjoy every minute.”
