AVBC Brewer Select Series: Dutch Kuyt
A Taste of History
If you have ever wondered what beer tasted like in the seventeenth century, you finally have a chance to find out. Anderson Valley Brewing Company has brewed a traditional Dutch Kuyt beer (also spelled Kuit, Koyt, Keut, or Keute). Kuyt is a three-grain beer that is brewed with oats, wheat and barley. Until late in the 19th century Kuyt beer was the most commonly consumed beer in all the Netherlands.
The Most Popular Beer You’ve Never Heard of
Kuyt was a remarkably long-lived beer style. The style dominated the beer market in the area of the “Low Countries” (what is now known as the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg) from the late thirteenth century until the early seventeenth century. And, it was even brewed in the neighboring parts of Germany. As with many more historic beer styles, Kuyt has been replaced by larger more commercial lagers like Heineken.
The last commercially brewed Kuyt beer was made in Münster in the late 19th century. Remnants of this once popular beer style can still be found today in family names such as “Kuitenbrouwer,” which means “Kuyt beer brewer.”
Technically Speaking
Kuyt beer is a pleasing amber-color with a natural cloudiness reminiscent of a German wheat beer, but with its own bready, and fruit forward aroma and flavor. Kuyt beers have an alcohol range between 4.5% and 8%. Most of the color comes from longer boiling times that lasts up to 3 hours, traditionally over an open fire. What makes Kuyt beer unique in the world of beer is the amount of oat used. According to original Dutch regulations, the malt proportions were 9-6-3: 50% oat, 33% barley and 17% wheat. Once oats were the most widely grown grain for brewing in the Netherlands, but now for brewing they have been displaced by barley and wheat. Most beers today contain no oats at all, and even those that do might contain only as much as 10 – 15%. The Great American Beer Festival guidelines proscribe: only oats, wheat and barley are to be used in Kuyt beer, with a minimum of 45% oat malt, 15% wheat malt and 35 – 40% pale ale malt. No herbs, spices, fruit or other foods are to be used in brewing Kuyt beer. As for fermentation, a neutral top-fermenting yeast is used. Kuyt is a bitter beer, with a dominant hop flavor. Kuyt beers were brewed with hop varieties that are no longer in existence, therefore, for the current Kuyt beers are brewed with varieties like Hallertau Mittelfrüh, Saaz, Tettnang, Spalt, or East Kent Goldings.
Step back in time and taste a beer like no other being brewed today – come to Anderson Valley Brewing’s tap room for your taste while it lasts.
Cheers,
Brewmaster Fal Allen
