Oud Beersel, Beersel

The story of Oud Beersel dates back to 1882. Jeromius Hofmans was running a village shop with a café next door that served house-blended lambics. Henri Vandervelden, who founded his own brewery, had a son named Egidius who married Hofmans’ daughter.

Henri Vandervelden, who at the time was working for Brewery De Kroon in Uccle during the cold months, and as a fruit buyer and picker during the warmer months, started construction of his own brewery with the help of local brick fabricators. His experience at Brouwerij De Kroon, that at the time specialized in producing various lambics, gave him the necessary skills to continue on with his own brewery. When Henri’s son Egidius married Catharina Hofmans, the groundwork was laid to expand the Hofmans’ family farm and turn it into an actual brewery. In 1922 Egidius set out to update and upgrade equipment in order to begin producing beers. In the meantime, Egidius’ younger brother Pierre Vandervelden continued his father’s blending and brewing business until shortly after World War II ended.

Egidius passed away in 1953, leaving the brewery to his son Henri. Henri graduated from the Institut National des Industries de Fermentation in 1948, and already had first hand knowledge of the brewing process when he took over after Egidius’ death. He immediately made a move to expand production capacity to 50 hectoliters, the volume that Oud Beersel would continue to produce until it closed for the first time in 2002. Upon taking over the brewery, Henri chose the name Oud Beersel.

With the production of lambic restored at Oud Beersel, Henri turned the brewery into the first living lambic museum in 1973. He continued to produce and bottle oude geuze and oude kriek by hand until 1988. Henri reached the point of retirement in 1991. After his son Hubert expressed no interest in continuing the tradition, Oud Beersel was passed on to his nephew Danny Draps. The situation was not ideal for Danny and the lambic industry as a whole was on the decline.

By 2002, Danny had found a new job and made the decision to close Oud Beersel for good. Henri Vandervelden began to search for another successor.

Nearly three years later in November of 2005, Gert Christiaens & Roland De Bus reopened the brewery. Though reopened only as a side project, Oud Beersel continued to grow and Roland De Bus resigned in 2007 leaving the company to Gert Christiaens. Today, Oud Beersel lambic is still brewed at Boon based on specifications from older recipes of the Vandervelden family and then immediately transported to Oud Beersel for barreling. Though the wort is still brewed at Boon, Oud Beersel is blended in-house without the addition of other brewery’s lambic.

2015 Oud Beersel added additional 60 and 120 hectoliter foudres to the second floor renovated loft of the brewery. In 2017, Oud Beersel acquired 1.71 hectares of farmland behind the brewery, where a new orchard of 320 Schaerbeekse cherry trees was planted.