Amsterdam — Heineken Steam Brewery is a brewery in Amsterdam, NL — Netherlands. Pioneer of mechanical refrigeration in Dutch brewing, building on Heineken's 1877 collaboration with engineer Carl von Linde Converted fully to lager production in 1887, with artificial refrigeration installed in 1888, replacing reliance on natural ice Rooftop coolship used a deliberately slanted ceiling so condensation from the hot wort would drain safely away rather than dripping back into the brew.
Photo by Mtcv / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
The Amsterdam Steam Brewery on Stadhouderskade is the most historically significant brewery in the entire Heineken story — the house that Gerard Adriaan built.
He was 22 years old when he bought De Hooiberg in 1864. He was 26 when he opened this brewery in 1867 — and he was building something that would outlast him by more than a century. Designed by architect Isaac Gosschalk, the steam brewery at Stadhouderskade 78 opened on 17 May 1867: a red-brick temple of industrial ambition, rising in a city that was still drinking top-fermented brown ale.
In 1869, Bavarian brewer Wilhelm Feltmann was hired, and the brewery switched to bottom-fermented Bavarian lager. In 1873 the company was formally restructured as Heinekens Bierbrouwerij Maatschappij (HBM). That same year, a second brewery opened in Rotterdam — the empire was expanding.
The awards followed fast: the Médaille d’Or from Paris in 1875, the Diplôme d’Honneur in 1883, the Grand Prix at the Paris Exposition in 1889 — honours so significant they still appear on every Heineken bottle label today.
Gerard died suddenly in 1893, at just 51 years old. By then, the brewery was producing 200,000 hectolitres a year. His son Henry Pierre took over in 1914, bringing scientific rigour, modern quality systems, and a methodical approach to scaling. Then came Freddy. Alfred Henry Heineken joined the company in 1942, and under his watch — from these very walls — the green bottle became a global icon.
The brewery closed in 1988, after 121 continuous years of brewing, when the copper tanks simply could not keep up with the world’s thirst for Heineken. On 22 April that year, staff and board members gathered in the Coolship to mark the occasion — raising a glass to “Brouwsel 1466,” the very last beer brewed from those copper kettles. Production moved to Zoeterwoude. Three years later, in 1991, the building was reborn as the Heineken Experience — today one of Amsterdam’s most visited attractions, and a Rijksmonument. You can walk the same floors where Gerard Adriaan’s brewers once worked.
Visit heinekenexperience.com →
At a glance
Ownership & Control
Signature & Production
📸 Photographic Archive: NL Amsterdam — Heineken Steam Brewery
