The Disneyland of Amsterdam. The Heineken Experience is basically a 90 minute marketing ploy, and they do it so well.
After we hopped off of the canal boat, we walked down the street and into two separate Heineken offices that were so fancy we thought they were the museum, until we finally found our way into the true location.
After you weave down the long hallway, past a digital bar with a digital bartender explaining a little of the history, you get to see some of the original artifacts from the beginnings of the brewery.
And then it gets weird. I heard a creaking sound and a booming voice and looked up. In the style of Disney, a video of and actor portraying Gerard Adriaan Heineken began playing, talking down on us as if we were in a fermentor.
The do-it-yourself tour continues through the museum with information boards about the history…
Old flip top bottles…
The original brewniforms…
The evolution of coasters…
And then you emerge into the former brewery where you can look into the mash tuns, lauter tuns and boil kettles and watch an informative video about what occurs in each one.
They also give you samples of wort. Yup, tastes like sugar water. We skipped the section where they explain the ingredients of beer and continued upward.
I was wondering why the brewery smelled like a farm! The stables right outside house the Heineken branded Shire horses. Immediately after is the 3D ride where you “become the beer”. You stand on a platform, hold tight to the bar in front of you and are shaken as they mill, mash, boil, ferment, bottle and pasteurize you. Basically, the platform shakes, shifts and bounces while they alternate between squirting water on you, turn on heaters above and release “fermentation” bubbles. Not the most exciting “ride”, but entertaining nonetheless.
Then it was time to learn how to taste beer. According to the Heineken crew, the head of the beer is there solely for the purpose of “protecting the beer”, and they cut the head with a “beer foam skimmer” to help retain it… Interesting theory…
We looked at the color, took a quick sniff, raised our glasses and sipped.
“How does it taste?” Asks crew member #15. “Sweet! Refreshing! Bitter!” Yells the crowd.
After the tasting session, we sat in a miniature movie theatre and watched some of the commercials they created for the different sports and movies Heineken has promoted. These were truly impressive and entertaining: each was like a mini-adventure movie that went on for three minutes.
More large playrooms awaited, full of flashy branding.
They had a DJ booth where you could spin your own mixes…
A “club room” to feature their new stainless steel bottles…
Regular lighting…
And black lights!
A screen that follows your movements in flashes and swirls of light…
A pouring game where you can test your skills…
Boom.
Creepy claymation from a movie they made on the history of the brewery…
And the bar! At the entrance they gave us wristbands with three tokens on them. Two for beer and one for a free bottle opener.
Since we’d begun the tour half an hour after they opened, we were able to snag a booth and avoid the massive crowds we saw piled up as we left.
So yes, it’s a big marketing trip from a mass-production brewery, but I still had a wonderful time and enjoyed every aspect, especially being able to try the beer from the source. I’m a beer nerd, not a beer snob.
Except for that whole “beer foam solely protects the beer” thing where they didn’t mention the importance of the head holding the aroma. I’m a little snobby about that.
