Now that’s a museum…

After a whirlwind tour of the Van Gogh museum, Marina wanted to go to the Heineken brewery/museum. Paragon of selflessness that I am, I agreed to go too. The brewery itself is about a 10 minute walk from the Van Gogh museum, but with the thermometer hovering below zero, it felt like an hour.One pays 15 Euros for a walk through the museum which includes a live lesson on making and then drinking beer.   A short list of things I learned:

• the most important beer ingredients are water and yeast
• drinking beer doesn’t make you fat, it’s the food you eat with beer supposedly. Given the quantities I’m known to quaff, I find this to be only half true in my case
• a glass of milk has more calories than a glass of beer

The area with the copper beer vats was interesting. I tasted wort, the malted barley cocktail to which hops and yeast is later added. I won’t say I loved it, but assume I could get used to it if the world ever ran out of hops and yeast.There’s also a simulator-like ride that puts you in the middle of the brewing process. On the way to the ride, I was instantly relieved to discover that it wasn’t the beer or wort that smelled like horse manure; it was horse manure! After the ride, one proceeds to the Heineken bar to cash in the buttons affixed to the bracelet one receives upon entry. I’ll save those pics for another post.