HOW IT STARTED
The story of Oud Beersel begins around 1880. At that time Henri Vandervelden was employed as a seasonal worker in the "De Kroon" brewery in Uccle. After all, the brewing of Lambic takes place, depending on the weather conditions, from October to April. This brewing was interspersed with summer and autumn labor in the form of buying and picking fruit from rented orchards and preparing that fruit for sale. This gave him the idea to combine his two professions and to process beer himself.
He bought a piece of land on the Kasteelstraat in Beersel that was particularly suitable for baking carel and had brickmakers from Flanders bake the bricks that would be used to build his brewery. The house, the brewery and the cart house were completed around 1882, so that this can be regarded as the foundation year of the Vandervelden brewery, later renamed into Oud Beersel.
INNOVATION WITH BEER BOX
The elder generation of Oud Beersel customers came to the brewery to purchase lambic straight from the wooden barrels. In the past, bars served the still lambic from their own wooden barrels but that tradition was disappearing. After 10 years of looking for the right solution, Oud Beersel launched the exclusive BEER BOX, a pressure resistant bag-in-box solution that allowed Oud Beersel to ship unpasteurized lambic through distributors and importers.
At the same time, Oud Beersel started innovating with Infused Lambic. Since then, many versions of lambic infused with spices, flowers and tea have been launched.