OPENING OF THE BREWERY SHOP
In 2013 the opportunity arose to purchase the house to the left of the brewery. Besides the building itself, also the ground in the back of the brewery was part of the lot. This gave Oud Beersel room for future projects. The house was transformed into a brewery shop on ground floor, and later on, offices and a tasting room for the brewery visits were installed on the first floor.
After reinforcing foundations, the small room where the brewery shop was held before, turned into a small foeder room with 3 foeders of 38 HL. Above this room, on the first floor, a new barrel room was created as well, to increase stock of lambic on wooden barrels.
FIRST FOEDERS
The first foeders, big wooden barrels of around 45 HL, were installed in the renovated foeder room on ground floor. Over the next few years, a total of 13 foeders were installed in the first foeder room, all around 40 - 45 HL.
INVESTMENT IN BARREL CLEANING
Till then, the wooden barrels were cleaned with iron chains scraping the barrel from within while the barrel was rotating on the machine. The new cleaning installation, a high pressure machine that produces warm water connects to a rotating stainless steel cleaning head, better cleaned the barrels and increased the quality of the lambic beers. This also opened up the door to install foeders, big wooden barrels, that could not be cleaned on the previous machine.
OFFICIAL LAUNCH OF OUDE GEUZE AND OUDE KRIEK
In March 2007, the Oude Geuze and Oude Kriek of Oud Beersel were officially relaunched. The year before, already a small batch was released but it was extremely limited.
Also 4 epoxy coated second hand MEURA beer tanks from the sixties were installed with each a content of 40 HL. This helped Oud Beersel to increase efficiency in blending.
Jos Christiaens, the father of Gert, joined the brewery to help his son out building with the sales and management of the brewery.
OUD BEERSEL BECOMES HORAL MEMBER
Oud Beersel becomes a member of the High Council of Traditional Lambic Beers called HORAL. The mission of HORAL is to promote and protect traditional lambic beers.
DE GEUZEN VAN OUD BEERSEL
Friends founded the association “De Geuzen van Oud Beersel” in January 2007 to promote traditional lambic beers, to develop a museum in the brewery and to lead brewery visits. With the income of the brewery visits, the organization organizes events for its members.
BERSALIS, BRINGING LIFE TO THE BREW
The new company Oud Beersel was founded in July 2005, and the brewery was officially reopened at the end of November of that year with the launch of Bersalis.
Bersalis is the old medieval name of Beersel and this name was chosen for the launch of a blonde triple. The sales of Bersalis Tripel allowed further investment in the traditional lambic production.
START OF THE REVIVAL
After 4 generations, Henri Vandervelden saw with sorrow that the family business was being discontinued and at the beginning of 2003 made an appeal of last hope to find a buyer for Oud Beersel.
Gert Christiaens was sitting in Le Zageman, a traditional beer bar in the center of Brussels where they had a nice selection of Oude Geuze and Oude Kriek. Such places were not that common at that time as the traditional lambic beers had lost their popularity decades ago. Gert went there often, accompanied by his friends, to drink his favorite beer, the Oude Geuze of Oud Beersel. That's where he discovered Oud Beersel closed down.
As Gert could not bring himself to let this part of the Belgian beer heritage be lost, he decided to restart the brewery itself. The restart was preceded by a period of almost 3 years, necessary to gain sufficient experience to restart the brewery. Gert took a course in malting, brewery and fermentation to master the basic techniques. At the same time he brewed with Henri Vandervelden, who gradually transferred his family brewing knowledge and the art of blending lambic to Gert.
The challenge to revive Oud Beersel was quite big for a 25 years old boy, so Gert asked his best friend Roland to join him which he did till their professional ways parted in 2007.
CLOSURE OF OUD BEERSEL BREWERY AND BIERHUIS
At the end of 2002, Danny decided to stop the brewery and sold the café. The Mortier organ was also sold and the café turned into a flower shop. All beer from the brewery was taken over by the Boon brewery and sold by the 3 Fonteinen brewery.
EXTERNAL BOTTLING
Until 1988, the Oude Geuze and Oude Kriek from Oud Beersel were bottled manually. Investing in a new filling installation was not possible for a small company like Oud Beersel. That is why bottling was outsourced from then on.