Heineken

Heineken is the green-bottled Dutch pale lager that became one of the most widely distributed beers on earth, and its parent is the world's second-largest brewer by revenue. Remarkably for a company of that scale, it is still controlled by the founding family through a holding structure — a continuity of ownership almost unheard of among global beer giants.

On 15 February 1864, the 22-year-old Gerard Adriaan Heineken bought De Hooiberg ("The Haystack"), an Amsterdam brewery whose history dated to 1592. He moved the business decisively toward bottom-fermented lager in 1869, and in 1886 the chemist Hartog Elion — a pupil of Louis Pasteur — developed the proprietary A-yeast in Heineken's own laboratory. That yeast strain is still used in the beer today.

From those Amsterdam beginnings Heineken expanded into a portfolio of hundreds of brands brewed in dozens of countries, yet the flagship lager's recipe has stayed deliberately stable. The Heineken family retains effective control through Heineken Holding, which owns roughly half of Heineken N.V. — five generations on from Gerard Adriaan's purchase of the Haystack.

Pale gold and light-bodied, with clean grainy malt and a subtle fruity note from the house A-yeast. The hop character is mild and faintly grassy, closing crisp and dry.