Brasserie de la Senne

UPDATE: Moved to Tour & Taxis, and added their Zennebar taproom!

On this blog, we’ve mentioned Brasserie de la Senne several times. For us, it’s always a reassurance to see their beers on draught in a bar, and a good indication somebody made at least some effort to put together an interesting beer list, including a selection of local products. It was high time we headed to Molenbeek and paid the brewery itself a visit!

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The brewery is mainly a place of work, as you would expect. Consequently,  Brasserie de la Senne is only open for visitors until three o’clock in the afternoon, meaning an evening drink ‘at the source’ is not an option, special events notwithstanding. On draught you’ll find some of their headliners — we’ve noticed Zinnebir and Taras Boulba — and in the fridge there are some other of their well-known beers. If you’re looking for unique, small batch beers — as is customary in a lot of foreign breweries — you’re out of luck: they’re not in the habit of doing so.

We visited them just after they won some awards at the Brussels Beer Challenge, and we were lucky to be able to taste one of them, the slightly bretty spelt saison Racines. They already ran out of the other award winner, Winter Mess (the new name of Zinnebir X-mas), but fortunately we had it elsewhere before.

Brasserie de la Senne is all about getting people into Brussels bars to drink good beers: it’s there where their beers are primarily available. They don’t even sell their beers to supermarket chains, just to encourage people to go out for a beer instead of drinking at home! The best example of this is their Obbrussel: this beer is only available in bars in Saint-Gilles — not even in the brewery — just to promote going out and discovering the bars in this municipality.

That being said, sometimes they brew beers almost exclusively for export, like Kuro Oni for Japan, and Manneken-Penn for the United States. “Almost exclusively”, since you might find they dropped off a keg at Moeder Lambic before shipping off the rest!

We’d advise against going to the brewery for just a drink, unless you’re in the neighbourhood anyway, and we’re quite sure the brewers would instead prefer you to visit one of the many bars selling their beer. But if you want to stock up on bottles, De la Senne branded glasses, T-shirts, or other merchandise, go ahead, and have a fresh beer and a chat with the member of staff manning the shop and bar. You’ll discover they’re just as passionate about beer as we are!

   

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tl;dr

Beers

• 4 Brasserie de la Senne headliners on draught
• Most of their commonly available beers on bottle

Bites

• Nothing at all, unless you bring your own lunch, as the brewers do

 

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What have people been drinking here recently?