Heineken
pale lager beer by the Dutch brewing company Heineken International
Heineken Lager Beer (Dutch: Heineken Pilsener), or simply Heineken (pronounced [ˈɦɛinəkə(n)]), is a Dutch pale lager beer with 5% alcohol by volume, produced by the Dutch brewing company Heineken N.V. It is typically sold in a green bottle with a red star.
History
On 15 February 1864, Gerard Adriaan Heineken (1841–1893) bought De Hooiberg (The Haystack) brewery on the Nieuwezijds Achterburgwal canal in Amsterdam, a popular working class brand founded in 1592. In 1873 after hiring Dr. Elion, a student of French chemist Louis Pasteur to develop a suitable yeast for Bavarian bottom fermentation, the HBM (Heineken's Bierbrouwerij Maatschappij) was established, and the first Heineken brand beer was brewed. In 1875 Heineken won the Medaille D'Or at the International Maritime Exposition in Paris and it began to be shipped there regularly, after which Heineken sales topped 6.4 million litres (1.7 million U.S. gallons), making them the largest beer exporter to France at the time.
In Heineken's early years, the beer won four awards:
Medaille d'Or (gold medal) at the International Maritime Exhibition (International Exhibition of Marine and River Industries) in Paris in May 1875.
Diplome d'Honneurs (Honorary Diploma) at the International Colonial and Export Exhibition in Amsterdam in 1883.
Grand Prix (Grand Prize) at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1889.
Hors Concours Membre du Jury in Paris in 1900.
The two awards that are still mentioned on the label are the Medaille d'Or and Diplome d'Honneurs.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Heineken” as pale lager beer by the Dutch brewing company Heineken International. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as pale lager beer by the Dutch brewing company Heineken International. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q854383. 2 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1864, 1841, 1893 and 1592.
Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
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Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Heineken”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Heineken primary sources, Heineken archive and Heineken research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Heineken” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.