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