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Schans Van Vollenhoven & Co's Extra Stout

Bières sans frontières, Great British Beer Festival 2007. Top Tastings 2008. For more selections see previous post.
Beer sellers: De

ABV: 7%
Origin: Uithoorn, Noord-Holland, Netherlands
Website: www.schansbier.nl

Van Vollenhoven poster

Van Vollenhoven’s Extra is arguably one of the best beers currently produced in the Netherlands, and it’s also a piece of genuine heritage that links back to pre-war industrial brewing. The story of its remarkable survival begins in 1733 when Jan van den Bosch opened a brewery and vinegar factory, De Gekroonde Valk (The Crowned Falcon), on Hoogte Kadijk in Amsterdam’s docklands, southeast of the Dam. The Van Vollenhoven family of Rotterdam took over the business in 1791 and started to use the family name to brand the beers, with the crowned falcon becoming a familiar trademark through its depiction on the labels. The business reached the peak of its success in the late 19th century under the stewardship of philanthropist and politician Willem Hovy, partly thanks to the monopoly it exercised on beer exports to the Dutch East Indies. The Van Vollenhovens marked a century of ownership in 1891 by installing a statue of the falcon on a 5.5m-high pillar at the entrance to the brewery, which by 1900 was the biggest in Amsterdam, ahead of both Heineken and Amstel.

Like many Dutch of the time, Van Vollenhoven was open to influence from neighbouring country’s traditions. Hovy himself was responsible for introducing a strong  inspired by British and Irish models in the 1860’s, motivated partly by social concern for the harm caused among the urban poor by the overconsumption of spirits. A strong, robust and full-bodied beer, reasoned Hovy, could provide a healthier alternative to jenever: the brewery’s own workers were issued with a free of it every week, and, like similar products in the English-speaking world, it was promoted for its medicinal benefits, including for nursing mothers. When at the end of the century the brewery, like most other major breweries in the Netherlands, began to adopt German-inspired lager as its mainstay, the strong remained a key product.

Van Vollenhoven struggled to secure its success into the 20th century, however — the retreat of colonialism threatened its export markets and the 1930’s recession and World War II dealt twin blows from which it never recovered. In 1949 the business was sold to Heineken, one of the key early stages of that brewery’s post-war development into the global giant it is today, and the plant on Hoogte Kadijk finally shut its doors in 1956. The brewery was demolished, but the falcon remained perched on its pillar until 1967, when Hovy’s descendants, who had since emigrated to South Africa, had it moved to their garden near Johannesburg.

But perhaps thanks to its social traditions the brewery wasn’t forgotten and remained a source of neighbourhood pride. The neighbouring “sibbelwoningen”, brewery workers’ model houses dating from 1828 and now listed buildings, were renovated in the 1970’s and came under the management of a very active and campaigning social housing cooperative. Some local people then formed the Stichting De Gekroonde Valk, an enthusiasts’ organisation keen to document the brewery’s legacy, who were partly responsible for the crowned falcon returning to its historic perch when a replica was installed in situ in 1993 that still stands today.

Meanwhile Heineken continued to brew some of the inherited brands, including the stout, which limped on for a surprisingly long time, though inevitably as a cold-fermented and lagered beer rather than as a genuine warm-fermented stout. By the turn of the century it was still emerging occasionally from Heineken’s ‘s-Hertogenbosch plant, still an interesting speciality but generally regarded as a shadow of its former self. I tasted a bottle in 2001 with a declared ABV of 6.5%, and noted a very dark brown, near-black beer, with a coffeeish, lacy and shortlived head and a fruity tobacco, cream and leather aroma. There were marmite notes on a malty, milky palate that was initially sweetish with gentle carbonation, with hops building slowly to a firm long finish with burnt toast, coffee, ash and rum-like alcohol.

Specialities with low and dwindling turnovers don’t generally sit well with megabrewers so it was no surprise that shortly after this Heineken announced the withdrawal of the brand, with the last brew at Den Bosch in 2002. But the stichting, determined to preserve the Van Vollenhoven name, approached the global brewer and negotiated to license the brand, in the end paying only a “symbolic” amount. The stichting were keen to revive the old recipe, warm fermented and bottle conditioned at 7% ABV, with pale, brown, black and coloured malts, sugar and hops, as passed from the Van Vollenhoven brewers to the new owners in 1949 and retrieved from Heineken’s archive. Their search for a brewery with suitable kit led them to De Schans, established in 1998 by former IBM technician and home brewer Guus Roijen at Uithoorn, only 15km from Amsterdam and in the same province of Noord-Holland. The revived stout, complete with a label based on a historic design, first flowed from here in 2006.

My sample of the 2007 version was a near black beer with a fine deep fawn head and a complex fruity dark malt aroma with blackcurrant, coal, chocolate and vinyl hints and a savoury bacon smoke bite. The complexity and the bacon hints continued into a sweetish dark chocolate, caramel and raisin palate with brooding fruity tones and a satisfying nuttiness, before a fruity swallow heralded a roasty finish with tangy notes, charred wood and quite mild malt, notably smoother and less hoppily drying than the lager version. De Schans’ own beers are interesting, if occasionally inconsistent, but this was heads above them, and well on its way to becoming a minor world classic.

The brewery and the brand owners have agreed to keep the beer as a limited edition brew, giving its annual release a sense of occasion. The 2009 batch was launched in November so should still be around from selected specialists at the time of writing in May 2010 — the beer shop in Amsterdam is one of the more reliable sources. It’s well worth seeking out, not only for its heritage but as an excellent and enjoyable contemporary gem.

More Bières sans frontières selections in the next post.
Read more about this beer at ratebeer.com: http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/schans-van-vollenhovens-extra-stout/67281/

4 comments to Schans Van Vollenhoven & Co’s Extra Stout

  • John Schwartz

    Dear Author of this interesting article:

    As the son of one of the family members-owners of the old brewery The Crowned Falcon I attended the 7th annual “baptism” of the Stout of the brewery Schans last November 21, 2012 in the bar “De Engelse Reet” in Amsterdam. This year it was again a memorable evening.

    When I was 2 years old, my Dad Ferdinand A. Schwartz, son of John Schwartz, then one of the director of The Crowned Falcon, gave me a bit of Stout to cure a cold and it worked ( I am told). During World War II, when they still brewed it for a while, it was still a fertile drink for growing up strong.

    It is good to see that this old tradition is being continued in great style and good taste.

    Cheers!

    John Schwartz
    1310 Juliana Place,
    Alexandria – VA 22304
    johnschwartz58@hotmail.com

  • Des

    Thanks for this fascinating reminiscence, John! I’m not sure if the stout would have cured your cold — but it may have made you a bit quieter…

  • It’s five years later and it’s worthy to not that I celebrated my 80th drinking the Stout in Poesie & Kater in Amsterdam-Muiderpoort where the “Enthusiasts” have managed to turn a brick-a-brack old building into a fabulous little brewery annex bar and restaurant with a terrace, now a popular asset to the brilliant neighborhood. I love the entrepreneurship of the Hoogte Kadijk dwellers who never gave up!
    Cheers again,
    John Schwartz

  • Richard Larkin

    If this is worth your while, feel free to edit and use it.
    The Dutch A.B.T. cafés.

    I thought that London Drinker readers would like to know about a group of beer-specialist cafés in the Netherlands called the A.B.T: the Alliantie van Bier Tapperijen. The members are independent businesses which have formed their own cooperative for negotiating bulk buying terms and sharing advertising costs. One of their policies is that all members always stock the draft ‘beer of the month’: always worth trying, and often something new. There is often a ‘bottle of the month’, too. In spring 2018, there were 37 members.

    To illustrate: in the 1980s, they asked Heineken for van Vollenhoven stout on draught. Heineken replied that they did not do it on draught: it was only bottled. The ABT buyer asked that they think again: he represented 15 beer-specialist cafés, all of which wanted it for a whole month. Surprise, surprise: Heineken did do it on draught. And it was so successful with the public, that they continued to do so for many years after. Similar stories are told of other beers of the month, until breweries started approaching the ABT buyer, asking him to feature a new beer they had produced, or to see if a beer, formerly only in bottle, might be accepted on draft, for the ‘beer of the month’. They gained not only the sales, but customer feedback from serious beer lovers; feedback that would have cost them a fortune had they employed market researchers instead.

    After Heinken stopped brewing van Vollenhoven stout, they were eventually persuaded to release the recipe and rights, so it was subsequently brewed by Brouwerij de Schans, subject to a tripartite agreement with Stichting de Gekroonde Valk, (The Crowned Falcon) in Amsterdam. And well worth seeking out, too!
    http://vanvollenhovenbieren.nl/ stub web page, in preparation.
    https://www.facebook.com/schansbier
    https://desdemoor.co.uk/schans-van-vollenhoven-cos-extra-stout/

    The ABT publishes an illustrated list of member cafés which are spread all over the Netherlands. The current edition (2018) is A6, 90 pages of text, 2 pages for notes, fold-out front and back covers, the former giving the legends, and the latter, a map of the Netherlands. The print run was 25,000. One page is in English, the rest in Dutch. The member cafés have two pages each, with a photo, either of the interior or exterior. To find a beer-specialist café (bierspecialistcafé in Dutch), you could ask if there were an A.B.T. or other beer specialist café nearby.
    (A.B.T. is pronounced ‘are bay tay’’) http://www.alliantie-van-biertapperijen.nl

    Richard Larkin
    April 2018

    Updated to the version actually printed in London Drinker magazine, August / September 2018 edition. RL

    The original was ‘Tale-ABT.odt’

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