The best craft breweries in the Netherlands
No country in Europe has a wider gap between what the world thinks its beer is and what is actually worth drinking there. Heineken, Grolsch, Bavaria and Amstel own domestic volume so completely that Dutch speciaalbier grew up explicitly as an argument against them, and it did so in two clearly separated waves.
The eight breweries below are the ones worth your attention. We have ranked on whether the beer is distinctive, not on who owns the brewery, but we state the ownership for each one anyway, because most guides get it wrong and because some readers do care.
Best craft breweries in the Netherlands at a glance
The short answer: Kees in Middelburg for imperial stout and historic porter, Jopen in Haarlem for medieval recipes nobody else brews, and Nevel in Nijmegen for oak-aged wild ales on foraged Dutch botanicals. The table sorts the eight we profile by what you like to drink, with the owner where it is not the founders.
| Brewery | City | Known for | Go here if |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jopen | Haarlem | Historic city recipes: Hoppenbier and the gruit-style Koyt | You want beer nobody else brews |
| Brouwerij 't IJ | Amsterdam | Belgian-leaning beer at the De Gooyer windmill; owned by Duvel Moortgat | You want a warm afternoon under a windmill |
| Brouwerij Kees | Middelburg | Caramel Fudge Stout and Export Porter 1750 | You like big, dark beer |
| Oedipus Brewing | Amsterdam Noord | Bright, spice-forward beer; Heineken-owned since 2023 | You want something playful |
| Uiltje Brewing Company | Haarlem | American-style IPA and imperial stout | You want hops, and lots of them |
| Walhalla Craft Beer | Amsterdam Noord | A constantly rotating, hop-forward tap wall | You want a taproom near the ferry |
| Brouwerij Frontaal | Breda | Crowdfunded, so the drinkers are co-owners | You like IPA, stout and barrel-aged beer |
| Nevel | Nijmegen | Oak-aged wild ales on foraged Dutch botanicals | You like Belgian-style wild beer |
Jopen: a brewery rebuilt out of a city archive
Haarlem. The first Jopen Hoppenbier was brewed on 11 November 1994, by a group of enthusiasts set on restoring a brewing tradition the city had lost completely. That is the opposite of the usual craft origin story: not a startup copying Portland, but an archive project that turned into a brewery.
The historic recipes are still the reason to drink it. Hoppenbier and the gruit-style Koyt are beers you cannot really get anywhere else, because almost nobody else is brewing from fifteenth and sixteenth century sources. The brewpub occupies a converted church, which is the most photographed brewery interior in the country for good reason. Independent, and describes itself as the largest independent craft brewery in the Netherlands.
Brouwerij 't IJ: the windmill, and the first wave
Amsterdam, at the De Gooyer windmill. With Jopen, 't IJ is the other founder of Dutch speciaalbier, and it looked to Belgium rather than America: abbey styles, wheat beers, strength and yeast character rather than hops.
The site genuinely is special, and drinking there on a warm afternoon under the windmill is one of the better things you can do in Amsterdam. Duvel Moortgat took 51% effective 1 September 2015 and the remaining shares in 2019, so it is not independent. It is still very good, and if ownership is not your filter then nothing about the beer has given anyone cause to complain.
Kees: the one that inherited the big dark beers
Middelburg. Kees Bubberman decided to start the brewery in his home town in 2014 and began brewing in January 2015. Independent and owner-operated.
Kees built an international reputation at the heavy end, and the two names that travel furthest are the Caramel Fudge Stout and the Export Porter 1750, a historical-strength porter. With De Molen gone, Kees is the clearest inheritor of the Dutch reputation for big barrel-aged dark beer.
Oedipus: the second wave at its most playful
Amsterdam Noord, founded 2011 by four friends brewing in a kitchen and selling at festivals, with their own brewery and taproom in Noord from 2015. Oedipus is the most purely fun brewery in the country: spice-forward, bright, frequently strange, packaged in artwork that looks like nothing else on the shelf.
On ownership, and stated plainly because most guides have not caught up: Heineken took a minority stake in 2019 and took full ownership in June 2023, so Oedipus has been wholly Heineken-owned since mid-2023. Kitchen homebrew to Heineken subsidiary in twelve years is quite a story. The taproom is still one of the best places to drink in Amsterdam Noord.
Uiltje: hops, stouts and a lot of volume
Haarlem. Uiltje came up in the post-2010 wave that skipped Belgium entirely and went straight to American IPA, imperial stout and barrel ageing. It is unsubtle by design and very good at what it does.
Uiltje announced on 28 April 2021 that it would become part of Swinkels Family Brewers, and there have been later reports of an insolvency and a restart. Where it stands now is genuinely unclear.
Walhalla: the tap wall by the ferry
Amsterdam Noord, founded 2015 by local homebrewer Aart van Bergen. A 2017 crowdfunding campaign funded the move into a former truck-tyre garage and the taproom opened in 2018. In early 2025 it moved to a site five minutes walk from the Centraal to Noord ferry, which makes it the easiest independent brewery in Amsterdam to actually get to.
The beers are Norse-mythology-named and the range rotates constantly, hop-forward rather than built around one signature.
Frontaal: owned by the people who drink it
Breda, founded 2015 by Roel Buckens, who began by supplying one cafe on the Grote Markt. The structure is the unusual part: everyone who invests through Frontaal's crowdfunding becomes a co-owner with a share of profits, and the brewery calls itself the first Dutch brewery that belongs to everyone.
IPA, stout and barrel-aged beer, with a range that turns over fast.
Nevel: the one doing something nobody else here does
Nijmegen. Started 2014 as Katjelam, renamed Nevel Artisan Ales in 2016, trading as Nevel since 2020, founded by two physics graduates. Independent and founder-run.
Oak-aged wild ales built on foraged Dutch botanicals, in small rotating batches. It is the Dutch brewery doing the thing Belgium is famous for, but with local ingredients rather than borrowed ones, and it is the least replaceable brewery on this page. Buy whatever is current.
Two waves, and the era that closed in 2025
The shape of Dutch beer makes sense once you know there were two waves, and that the second one effectively ended when De Molen shut on 1 October 2025. The first, in the 1980s and 90s, looked to Belgium: Jopen and 't IJ brewing abbey styles, wheat beers and historic city recipes, defining themselves against macro lager by going older rather than newer.
The second, after 2010, skipped Belgium entirely and went straight to American IPA, imperial stout and barrel ageing. Kees, Uiltje, Frontaal, Walhalla and Oedipus all belong to it, and for roughly a decade the Netherlands punched far above its weight in big barrel-aged dark beer, with De Molen's Borefts festival in Bodegraven as the international meeting point.
That era has closed. The Dutch beer market contracted hard from 2023 and the macro groups absorbed most of the famous names: Heineken took Oedipus outright, Duvel Moortgat took 't IJ, and Royal Swinkels bought both De Molen and Uiltje. De Molen shut permanently on 1 October 2025, its Bodegraven site sold for housing, and Borefts ended with it. Any guide written before 2026 still recommends a brewery you cannot visit.
One structural note worth knowing if you are coming from Belgium or Germany: nothing in Dutch beer is legally protected. There is no Dutch equivalent of Kölsch PGI or Oude Geuze TSG, no protected style, no legal definition of speciaalbier. The word on the label guarantees nothing at all. So write down the brewery and the beer, not just the style; our guide on how to track beer covers what to note.
The full list, Haarlem to Groningen
The eight above are the ones to understand first. The full list adds the only Trappist brewery in the country, a social-employment brewery in the red light district, and the breweries holding the line in Utrecht and Groningen. Several of these are mid-move right now, which is what a consolidating scene looks like from the outside, so look each one up before travelling.
-
Jopen
First brew 11 November 1994. Independent. Medieval and gruit-style recipes including Hoppenbier and Koyt, brewed in a converted church.
-
Brouwerij 't IJ
Duvel Moortgat took 51 percent in 2015 and the remaining shares in 2019, so it is fully owned. Belgian-leaning abbey and wheat styles from the first Dutch wave.
-
Brouwerij Kees
Brewing since January 2015, independent and owner-operated. Imperial stouts and historic porters including Caramel Fudge Stout and Export Porter 1750.
-
De Koningshoeven (La Trappe)
The only Trappist brewery in the Netherlands and one of the few worldwide carrying the Authentic Trappist Product mark. Commercially tied to Swinkels under licence from the abbey, so not simply independent.
-
Oedipus Brewing
Founded 2011 by four friends. Wholly Heineken owned since June 2023. Playful, spice-forward beers and one of the best taprooms in Noord.
-
Two Chefs Brewing
Independent, and one of very few Amsterdam breweries of its generation still to be so while its peers went to Duvel and Heineken. Sixteen taps at the taproom.
-
vandeStreek bier
Independent, owned by brothers Sander and Ronald van de Streek, who went from homebrew to contract to their own plant in seven years.
-
Baxbier
Independent and founder-owned. Crowdfunded its brewhouse and anchors craft beer in the northern Netherlands, a region with almost no other scene.
-
Brouwerij de Prael
A genuine social-employment brewery, employing people with a psychiatric history since founding. It stopped brewing on the Amsterdam site in October 2025; the tasting room remains.
-
Walhalla Craft Beer
Founded 2015, independent. The surviving independent of the Noord cluster and the easiest brewery in Amsterdam to actually reach.
-
Brouwerij Frontaal
Founded 2015, independent with a crowd-ownership structure where crowdfunding investors become co-owners sharing profits. IPA, stout and barrel-aged beer.
-
Nevel
Founded 2014 as Katjelam, independent and founder-run. Oak-aged wild ales on foraged Dutch botanicals, the closest thing the Netherlands has to a lambic culture.
-
Uiltje Brewing Company
Hop-forward IPAs and imperial stouts from the post-2010 wave. Announced in April 2021 it would join Swinkels, with later reports of an insolvency and a restart.
-
Lowlander Beer
Botanical beers brewed on a botanist-led premise. A joint venture with the Nolet Group rather than an independent.
View in Crumble opens the map with that name already typed into the search, so you can find the branch nearest you, see what is actually there and log it yourself. Street addresses are deliberately absent: places move, open second sites and close them again faster than a guide gets updated, so the map is the more current answer.
Keep your own record
A scene that reshapes itself this fast makes your own memory unreliable too. Crumble's beer journal is a free add-on: every beer logged with brewery, style and origin, scored on six axes from hops through finish, so what you actually thought survives the brewery changing hands or closing. Coming from Untappd, your check-ins import rather than starting from nothing.
Matching free journals cover coffee, tea, matcha, whisky and wine. Our beer tracking guide covers the habit and the Untappd alternative page covers the switch.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best Dutch craft brewery?
It depends what you want. Kees in Middelburg for imperial stout and historic porter, Jopen in Haarlem for medieval recipes nobody else brews, Nevel in Nijmegen for oak-aged wild ales on foraged botanicals, and Brouwerij t IJ in Amsterdam for Belgian-leaning classics under a windmill. Nevel is the least replaceable of them, because no one else is making that beer.
Is Oedipus still independent?
No. Heineken took a minority stake in 2019 and took full ownership in June 2023, so Oedipus has been wholly Heineken-owned since mid-2023. It is still here because the beer is still distinctive, and the taproom in Amsterdam Noord remains excellent.
What happened to Brouwerij De Molen?
It closed permanently on 1 October 2025. Royal Swinkels, which owned it fully from 2019, took the decision on 19 March 2025. The Bodegraven site was sold to a developer for housing and the Borefts beer festival ended with it.
Which Dutch breweries are independent?
Of the eight profiled: Kees, Jopen, Walhalla, Frontaal and Nevel. Brouwerij t IJ is Duvel Moortgat owned (51 percent in 2015, the rest in 2019), Oedipus is wholly Heineken owned since June 2023, and Uiltje announced in April 2021 it would join Swinkels, though its current position is unclear.
What does speciaalbier actually mean?
Nothing legally. It is the Dutch term for beer that is not macro lager, and unlike Kölsch in Germany or Oude Geuze in Belgium it carries no protected designation, no legal definition and no production rules. There is no Dutch equivalent of a PGI or TSG for beer, so the word on the label guarantees nothing.
Where can I visit a brewery in Amsterdam?
Brouwerij t IJ at the De Gooyer windmill is the classic and the setting is genuinely special. In Amsterdam Noord, Oedipus and Walhalla both have taprooms, and Walhalla moved in early 2025 to a site about five minutes on foot from the Centraal to Noord ferry, which makes it the easiest to reach.
What is the difference between the first and second wave of Dutch craft beer?
The first wave, in the 1980s and 90s, looked to Belgium: Jopen and Brouwerij t IJ brewing abbey styles, wheat beers and historic city recipes. The second, after 2010, skipped Belgium and went straight to American IPA, imperial stout and barrel ageing: Kees, Uiltje, Frontaal, Walhalla and Oedipus. Knowing which wave a brewery belongs to tells you what is in the glass before you order.