44 WW wftwï wx-x-x-x-x-: v.v.v.y* DBCOJrc«!*V«V'iv.v.v.v.wl •aw. Dl e St oru Of HEINEKEN'S BEER F all the luxuries of the table, beer is doubtless one of the oldest, not the oldest of all. Its history goes back to the dim past. The Babylonians and Egyptians knew it, thousands of years before Christ, and one of the Egyptian Pharoahs had his own court-brewery, which relinquished every year about 10,000 HL beer to the priests. Little is known about the earliest his tory of European beer-brewing, but ac cording to Greek and Roman authors, it can be presumed that in the North of Europe people manufactured beer about three centuries before our era. real brewery-industry came into being at the time of the development of the cities, which did not take place before the year 1300. From then on until the middle of the 17th Century the brewing of beer assumed great propor tions in Holland and the North of Ger many Gouda, and especially the beer from Delft, Haarlem, Groningen, The Amsterdam Brewery "de Hooiberg" (The Haystack), birthplace of Heineken's, dating from 1620. Hamburg, Lübeck and Dantzig was very beer was steadily going down there, that the existing establishment was too well-known. This beer was transported because of the poor quality and the small, whereupon a beginning was made over comparatively long distances, so competition of other kinds of drink, in- with the erection of a new brewery- even then one could say there was beer- eluding French wines. The growing im- building on the same spot where this exportation of a kind. People drank very port of Münchener beer, however, was is situated at present. This location was large quantities of beer in those days, an indication that there still was a then on the outskirts of the town, but because it did not carry infective dis- market for good quality beer. eases something which could not ways be said of water. In the Netherlands the consumption M BORN IN DECENCY R. G. A. HEINEKEN, the father of the present President-Director i*1*0 a limited liability company now it is approximately in the center of Greater Amsterdam. In 1873 the business was converted for of beer diminished steadily from 1650 of the H.B.M., saw the danger of exces- the purpose of establishing another on because of the competition of gin, sive drinking as it was done in those brewery, this time in Rotterdam. Here coffee and tea, and also on account of days, and it was clear to him that a to° the first H.B.M. leaders showed the quality, which left much to be de- great improvement could be brought their foresight by establishing a second sired. These factors also applied to the about by supplying the people with a brewery in the quickly growing busi- other beer-producing countries, until decent glass of beer. And as a business- ness-town of Rotterdam, for in this way 1806 when Napoleon founded the new man he saw the possibilities for a Dutch the H.B.M. is now able to cover directly Bavarian kingdom, and a new develop- Brewery, organized on modern lines. ment came into being from München In 1863 he bought the brewery The from its two breweries the whole of the intensely cultivated, prosperous part of This led to a new production method Haystack." which was situated in Am- the ancient province of Holland in process of fermentation by low tem- sterdam, on the same spot where the which about half of the population of perature) which in combination with well-known restaurant "De Port van the country lives. the severe requirements the raw mate- Cleve" is established now. rials had to conform to, soon gave the 4 The building-site in Rotterdam, which The Haystack" dates from the first at first was situated on the outskirts of "Miinchener-Beergreat popularity lo- flourishing-period of the Dutch brew- the town, can now be considered to cally as well as in the surrounding coun- industry. The exact year of its founda- belong to the central part of the town. tries. tion is not known, but from 1620 on- has by no means been fully built But it took quite some time before wards its name appears time and again over. There is still sufficient room even things became more lively in the brew- in the municipal records of Amsterdam, for a brewery big enough to supply the eries in Holland. The consumption of As early as the year 1867 it was clear whole of The Netherlands with beer. Illlili i«ii ......a......... m .............I mmm m&m ■111111

Jaarverslagen en Personeelsbladen Heineken

The Windmill | 1949 | | pagina 2