Event Report: Dragons Businessclub Beer Tasting Event at Jopen Haarlem

By: Jiaying Li

Dragons Businessclub organised a special tasting event to highlight the historical beer brand Jopen at its brewery in Waarderpolder industrial park of Haarlem. Approximately 40 guests attended the event to learn from the brewery tour, enjoy authentic Jopen beers, and share insights on how to bring Dutch beer to China.

Brewing Tradition of Haarlem and Reborn of Jopen
Haarlem’s rich brewing tradition dates back to the 14th century. “Jopen” was the name to represent successful Haarlem beer at a large commercial scale at that time when 112 liter wooden barrels were shipped worldwide. Due to the drop of beer consuming, however, the last brewery of Haarlem had to close its doors in 1916.

A group of local beer lovers decided to reshape Jopen brand in 1994 to recover Haarlem’s brewing tradition. The proposal won the favour of city government, which allowed them to transform the historic Jacob’s church into a fully operational brewery, cafe and restaurant. 20 years later, Jopen opened a second brewery in Waarderpolder and owns a wide variety of craft beers with a unique story, original brewing process and often surprising ingredients.

Jopen to Expand into the Chinese Market
Erwin Klijn, Jopen’s export manager, excitedly mentioned the next step of bringing Jopen beer to the Chinese market in his presentation. Our event guests being experts in Sino-Dutch business discussed the potentials and challenges based on their own background.

“China is a giant market for beer consumers, but not an easy one to enter. We are confident of the Jopen brand and quality, whilst we still need to consider the competition of Chinese local brands such as Qingdao, Snow and Yanjing,” said Erwin.Another brand expert Lu Chen gave her presentation of how tobring Dutch design to China. She mentioned different western brands that have entered the Chinese market during the past 20 years, meanwhile highlighted the reborn of Chinese brands. The presentation was followed by an interesting discussion of Chinese consumers’ behavior among the guests.

The brewery tour, guided by Jopen staff, sparkled the night as guests witnessed how a bottle of Jopen beer was made through the brewing process. It includes eight steps, that is, gristing, mashing, lautering, boiling, cooling, fermentation, layering and racking.

All guests were satisfied with the authentic beer tasting, insightful idea exchange of Sino-Dutch business and a delicious dinner buffet by the end of the night. Looking forward to the next Dragons Businessclub Christmas Charity Event on December 16th, 2016 when we are also celebrating our 10th anniversary!

You can have a look at the photos of the event here, made by Yixiao Shi.

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