What exactly is speciality beer?

No, the word speciaalbier does not appear in Dutch food and consumer goods law and is therefore not a protected designation.

The Warenwetbesluit Gereserveerde aanduidingen does lay down what beer is and also protects the names pils, oud bruin, bok, low-alcohol beer and alcohol-free beer. Specialty beer is on none of those lists. Any brewer or shop may therefore use the word as they like, because no requirements are attached to it.

Pils is protected: that name may only be used on light-coloured beers with an original gravity of 11 to 13.5 percent.

The original gravity is the extract content of the wort before fermentation and partly determines how much alcohol can form. Beer that falls outside that description may not be called pils. Precisely there, in the shop, the shelf called specialty beer begins: everything that does not meet the description of pils.

According to Article 7b of the Warenwetbesluit Gereserveerde aanduidingen, beer is a drink obtained after alcoholic fermentation of wort.

That wort is mainly prepared from starch- and sugar-containing raw materials, hops and brewing water. At least 60 percent of the extract of the wort comes from malted barley or malted wheat. Anything that meets that description may be called beer, however special the rest of the recipe may be.

The usual classification runs via fermentation: top-fermenting, bottom-fermenting and spontaneously fermenting.

Nederlandse Brouwers uses that threefold division and places the well-known styles beneath it: pilsner among the bottom-fermented beers, witbier, weizen, tripel and stout among the top-fermented ones, and lambic and gueuze among the spontaneously fermented ones. Style names are agreements within the trade and not legal categories. There is therefore no body that checks whether a tripel is a tripel.

On a beer label the designation, the net content, the alcohol content in percent by volume, the lot number, the allergens and the details of the responsible company are mandatory.

An ingredient list and a nutrition declaration are not mandatory for drinks above 1.2 percent alcohol by volume; Nederlandse Brouwers does advise brewers to provide them. A tolerance of 0.5 percentage points applies to the alcohol content up to and including 5.5 percent, and of 1 percentage point above that. Beer of 10 percent by volume or more does not need to carry a best-before date.