Dutch dilemma

When I signed up for World Cup Beer Sweepstake I thought, knowing my luck, that I would end up tasked with finding a beer from somewhere like Uruguay or North Korea to write about. I actually drew The Netherlands, which kind of gives me the opposite problem. There are loads and loads of Dutch beers and I need to decide which to choose.

The beer scene in the Netherlands has changed dramatically since the times that Tim Webb described thus: "Beer was Pils; Pils was Heineken or Amstel; Heineken and Amstel were the same company; take it or leave it."

And it seems cheating to just go down to Tesco and get some Grolsch or Oranjeboom, when other people will be scouring the local ethnic grocery stores, ordering online, calling in favours from friends living abroad or, who knows, crossing international borders to track down that elusive lager from Honduras.

On the other hand, Dutch pils is ~90% of the beer market so it's tempting to say, "this is what Dutch fans will be drinking, this it what I'm going to drink." On the other, other hand (I have three hands), I wouldn't even think of doing that if I'd drawn England or the USA. I'd much rather write about good beer.

I still haven't decided.