IJ Brewery

Spring has (meekly) sprung, with leaves popping out of branches seemingly overnight despite still cool weather. Despite daytime temperatures still barely topping 50 degrees, people are flocking to outdoor markets and sun soaked cafe terraces.

While walking through the Dappermarkt, an outdoor market in the Eastern part of Amsterdam similar to the Albertcuypmarkt that I've shown several times, I realized that I was very close to the Brouwerij 't IJ, and that it might be a nice time to have a beer and see how people were reveling in the sunlight.

The Brouwerij (brewery) 't (abbreviation of "het," which is a definite article used for "non-gendered" nouns) IJ (the name of a river in Amsterdam, pronounced like "eye") - or, as I usually call it, the "IJ Brewery" - is Amsterdam's most well known craft brewery. It's been around since the 1980s, and it distributes to most bars that I've been to in Amsterdam. The beers are not up to the standards of U.S. craft breweries (or De Molen, the world class brewery in Bodegraven, NL), but they are a substantial upgrade over Heineken, Amstel, Jupiler, and the other watery pils that are standard on tap in Amsterdam.

The brewery and tasting room/bar are located beside one of the most prominent windmills in Amsterdam. Indeed, the windmill leads to some confusion when I mention De Molen (again, the excellent brewery in Bodegraven). People often think of this as "the windmill brewery" ("de molen" means "the windmill") rather than the Brouwerij t' IJ.  

The brewery logo includes an ostrich standing over a large egg. I'm not sure why the creators decided on an ostrich, but the egg is a play on words in Dutch. "IJ" is the name of the river, and "ei" is the word for egg. The two are pronounced similarly, so you have the brewery on the "eye" (IJ) river with an "eye" (ei) on the logo.

I've heard some locals complain that the IJ Brewery was added to Lonely Planet travel guides recently, and this led to an influx of tourists visiting the brewery. I'm sure I arrived in Amsterdam after the brewery was added to the guidebook, so I can't comment on how much brewery tourism has increased, but I heard far more English there than Dutch. And I also heard something that might have been Russian, some Portuguese (a guess based on the Brazilian soccer jersies that a group of four men were wearing), and some French.

Two of the tourists were a British couple sitting on a bench in front of mine. I did not notice them kissing at any point until I took a look at a picture of my beer and peanuts I'd taken.

The IJ IPA with peanuts. And a kissing couple in the background.

The IJ Brewery snack list. Cheese, meats, nuts, and eggs.

Beers on tap.

Small cluster of apartments across the water from the brewery.

Boater on the water and train in the background outside the brewery.

Bird nest on the water outside the brewery.

Spring Delay

Amsterdam has been remarkably cold since I returned from Thailand a little over two months ago. There was a false alarm of spring in early March, when the temperatures passed the 50 degree mark for two of three days. Since then, though, we have been between five and 15 degrees below normal, often with strong, biting winds.

Some (though not all) of the reason for the long gap between writings about Amsterdam and travels was due to the hectic nature of a conference that I helped organize and hosted in Amsterdam last week. Researchers from all over Europe, and a few from the U.S., came to Amsterdam for the annual conference of the European Human Behavior and Evolution Association. We advertised the often beautiful, late March springtime weather as a benefit of coming to the conference. But the high temperatures hovered around 35 degrees, the lows dipped into the low 20’s, and arctic winds howled through the canal streets that I led conference guests through around dinner time.

Part of the reason for the low temperatures has been the (relatively) dry air and lack of cloud cover. When there has been enough moisture, we’ve seen little snow flurries that remind us how lousy it is outside, but that melt quickly and leave none of the charm of a solid snowfall afterward. Even last Sunday, March 31^st, saw an hour or so of quickly falling dry little snowflakes.

I took my camera out into the streets during one of these snowfalls right after I returned from Scotland. This one did leave snow on the ground for at least a day, and it showed the grit of (some) Amsterdamers in the face of bad weather. Many people biked as they normally would, only with gritted teeth and with squinted eyes that tried to keep the snow at bay.

Now, though, it feels like spring has arrived. The temperatures remain about 10 degrees below normal, but the winds are calm and the sun is shining brightly enough that even 40 degrees feels like a heat wave compared to what we’ve experienced for two months. The ten day forecast shows temperatures rising to the upper 40’s and lower 50’s, with rain and, hence, a return to normalcy. If this normalcy does return, spring will hit Amsterdam like a ton of bricks, with people skipping work to drink beer on café terraces and lounge in the parks as soon as it hits 60 degrees.