It’s quite nice to have a brewery with a little shop only a few minutes’ walk from home, to provide us with a steady supply of freshly bottled beers. Add a real taproom open in the evening — actually quite a rarity in Brussels — and growler filling station, and visits become more frequent and lengthy. The one thing saving us from spending too much time and money at Brussels Beer Project, is that they’re not open every day: only on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, from 2 to 10pm. When you happen to be in the neighbourhood within those hours, don’t hesitate to have a seat on one of the beer crate stools with the hissing malt bag cushions, and taste their newest experimental brew, or one of the guest beers.
The story of Brussels Beer Project starts a little differently than most brewery start ups, usually little garage breweries slowly growing into something bigger. When we first heard of Olivier de Brauwere and Sébastien Morvan in 2013, they didn’t start with just one, but with four beers at once — Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta — letting the Brussels’ beer lovers community decide which recipe should be brewed on a larger scale. A series of tastings — widely publicised on social media — would give anyone interested the opportunity to cast their vote. The winning beer, at the time predictably an IPA, was Delta.
Who not only liked what they were tasting, but believed in the Project as well, could sign up for another new phenomenon: Beer For Life! A small investment (then € 140) would entitle the crowdfunder to a dozen bottles of beer from the brewery for each year of the rest of his or her life. Delta wasn’t a bad beer at all, but I wasn’t going to invest in this “one-trick pony”, as I expressed it at the time. If only I would have known of all the beers to come…*
Without a brewery of their own at the time, the brewing of the first Brussels Beer Project beer — and the few next ones — would actually happen at Bier Anders, in far away Limburg. You can imagine some of the reactions! In 2015 Brussels Beer Project finally opened their own brewery in the Rue Dansaert, making it the fourth brewery opening in the Brussels region, just after En Stoemelings.
Co-creation is an important part of the brewery’s philosophy. That doesn’t just refer to the ‘beer election’ — which they repeated a couple of times — or crowdfunding — which they also repeated a couple of times — but collaborations with other innovative brewers as well. Weird Beard, Anspach & Hobday, La Pirata and Kaapse Brouwers are just a few of the brewers they’ve collaborated with so far.
It didn’t take long before a brewery taproom opened as well, giving everybody the opportunity to try what Brussels Beer Project had been brewing. Ten different beers are available on draught, and not just Brussels Beer Project beers, but usually some guest beers as well, often from breweries they’ve collaborated with. Some beers — like their #EXP-series — are only available in the brewery anyway, but you might find some other beers already sold out on bottle, available again on draught. All draught beers can be ordered in either 12,5 cl or 25 cl glasses, perfect if you’d like to try more than just a couple.
The Brussels Beer Project taproom is a Verified Venue on Untappd, so Untappd users can set an alert to be notified whenever something new is added to the beer menu.
If the beer crate stools in the front are already full, in the back are some more — and more comfortable — seats, with a view on the brewing installation. If the brewery is operating, it can be a bit louder back there — and smelling of wort — but that shouldn’t bother a real beer lover too much.
The newest addition to the taproom is a growler filling station, the same PEGAS CrafTap counter-pressure filler as used at Malt Attacks, and many other growler filling places abroad. Of the ten draught beers, only the three leftmost beers can be ordered to fill your growler with. However, those three are most likely not available on bottle anymore, or will very soon, so a growler might be the only option to still enjoy those beers at home!
The growler itself is the same 1,89l-model as used at Malt Attacks and Beerstorming, so it shouldn’t be a problem to use one of their bottles at Brussels Beer Project, or vice versa.
The food menu is limited to one — but an excellent — option: a board with cheese and charcuterie from Saint Octave, a shop in the Marolles. To get the best beer pairings, you’ll have to order a few rounds, but that shouldn’t be a problem, once you’ve secured a seat!
*At the end of 2016 there was another crowdfunding round, and this time I finally did buy into #BeerForLife. Even though the amount that had to be invested had risen to € 180, I still think it will pay off, especially with the 5% discount in the taproom.
tl;dr
Beers
- 10 beers on draught
- At least half of them Brussels Beer Project beers
- A couple of guest beers, usually from breweries they’ve collaborated with
- Bottles of all Brussels Beer Project beers that haven’t ended up on the ‘graveyard‘ yet…
- Growlers (1,89l) of three draught beers that (almost) aren’t available on bottle anymore
Bites
- A cheese and charcuterie board from Saint Octave
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What have people been drinking here recently?
- John Williams is drinking a Harvest IPA at Brussels Beer Project
- John Williams is drinking a Let’s Dance at Brussels Beer Project
- Jerome Francoisse is drinking a Beer For Life at Brussels Beer Project
- Jerome Francoisse is drinking a Harvest IPA at Brussels Beer Project
- Jerome Francoisse is drinking a Mexican Cowboy at Brussels Beer Project
- Jerome Francoisse is drinking a Low Carbon IPA at Brussels Beer Project
- Tom McClure is drinking The Future Is Europe at Brussels Beer Project
- Glen Schaillie is drinking a Vorozhba Wild Elderflower Ale at Brussels Beer Project
- Glen Schaillie is drinking a Beer For Life at Brussels Beer Project
- pvjp is drinking a Forêt Sauvage - DANSAERT at Brussels Beer Project