Thousands of people pass a large representation of a man made from beer crates as they enter the Beurshal on Hauwerstraat. It’s a creation of local artist and beer lover Philip Lavens made especially for the 9th Bruges beer festival.
Beer lovers and tourists happily pinball between 82 brewery and beer firm stalls tasting beer from their 20cl ronceva stemware glasses, each of which is adorned with either a painted set of lips or a moustache. “Ceci n’est pas une pipe,” says Marc Vandepitte, Chairperson of BAB, the Zythos affiliated beer consumers group who organise this festival. “This is not a moustache. It’s a reference to work from the Belgian surrealist painter René Magritte. There are 20 places throughout the festival where you can stop and see artwork about beer.”
The Bruges beer festival is one of the biggest in Belgium. But there are layers to the festival which also make it a yearly nod to the rich history of Bruges, a focal point for the city’s creativity and perhaps most uniquely of all, a celebration of art.
BRUGES BEER FESTIVAL
The name of the beer club stands for the ‘Brugse Autonome Bierproevers’ (Bruges’ Autonomous Beertasters), but it’s also an emotive throwback to a former brewery in the city, Brouwerij Aigle Belgica. “It was the biggest brewery Bruges has ever had,” says Marc. “It was the second biggest in West Flanders after Rodenbach but the brewery disappeared in 1978.”
During its long history, one of the owners of Brouwerij Aigle Belgica was André De Meulemeester. “The brewery was passed down from his father and his grandfather,” says Marc. “He was the owner of the brewery but he went to help the army as a pilot during World War I when he was 19 years old.”
Meulemeester was also an artist. “He was a painter and a composer of piano music,” says Marc. “His daughter is now 90 years old and she has all of his art work. There were 2,000 paintings, but no one had ever seen them. His complete work hadn’t been shown to the public until 2 years ago at our beer festival.”
Not only did Meulemeester’s artwork feature on tasting glasses and on boards around the Bruges Beer Festival in 2014, but BAB worked with the government and the post office to create special postage stamps featuring his paintings.
“When people buy their starter packs with glasses and tokens at the festival they receive a postcard,” says Marc. “They can write a message to their family or friends and we will post it from the Bruges beer festival for them for free with these art stamps.”
Marc sends the postcards himself. “There were 478 sent across Belgium, 329 to other countries within Europe and then another 307 to the rest of the world,” he says. “The cards went to 39 different countries worldwide. It is great fun to read some of the messages on them. It’s fantastic to read the poems people write. They’re always very positive about the festival.”
MUSIC, ART AND BEER
Born in Switzerland to Belgian parents, Marc has been in the insurance business in Bruges for 32 years. While his main passion is beer, he’s an art enthusiast and a music lover.
“I play guitar,” says Marc. “I am a very great Bob Dylan fan. I got married last month. I am 24 years together with my wife. We have grown up children. Now it was the moment to marry. I sang a song for my wife when we got married in the City Hall. ‘Make You Feel My Love’. It’s a Bob Dylan song, but Adele covered it recently.”
Marc has been to see Bob Dylan live in concert every year since he was 20 years old. In 2015, he attended no fewer than 3 Dylan concerts, in Madrid, Brussels and London. “The third time I saw him last year was in the Royal Albert Hall,” he says. “That was exactly 50 years after his first appearance there.”
He’s got an impressive collection of music, from David Bowie to Eric Clapton and gets as excited about the record artwork as he does about the music inside.
THE CALL OF ZYTHOS
BAB’s beginnings rest in a conversation back in 2006 between Marc and famous beer writer and brewer Jef Van den Steen. “Jef asked me to start a branch of Zythos here in Bruges,” says Marc. “There were two organisations in West Flanders at that time, but nothing in Bruges. I pulled together some school friends and became the founding president.”
The first meeting of the club was on 13 October 2006 in Brouwerij De Halve Maan. “This year we are celebrating 10 years that we work together,” he says. “To mark that, we’ve got our own beer for the festival this year.”
That beer is the BAB Mystère (7.4% ABV). Marc describes it as a Spéciale Belge, a style with a malt backbone and pronounced bitterness which was born at a time when Belgian breweries sought to create a flavourful beer that could compete with the rise in popularity of the incoming German lagers.
But the BAB Mystère is also described by some as an India Pale Ale. The malt bill includes pilsner, munich, pale ale and biscuit with some candi sugar to boost gravity and thin the beer. It’s bittered with Styrian Goldings and Hallertau Herzbrücker and dry hopped with Cascade, Nelson Sauvin and Amarillo.
“We had a test brew in Brouwerij Strubbe 2 years ago in the brew kettles that they bought from the old Brouwerij Aigle Belgica,” says Marc. “The artwork on the label of that beer is also from a painting of André De Meulemeester. And on the label it says that it is brewed in the kettles of the former BAB brewery. People were very enthusiastic about the beer at the Bruges beer festival this year.”
TEN YEARS IN
The first Bruges beer festival took place in October 2006. “The famous place where we started was in the Belfry of the Halletoren,” says Marc. “It was right on the market place of Bruges and that was a superb location. The building has been there since medieval times and it’s so central. We were there for 7 years but it just wasn’t safe enough. There were too many people. That’s why we moved to the Beurshal.”
The Beurshal is a large functional space, devoid of the personality of the Belfry but much more appropriate for an event of this nature. “We had 8,000 visitors in our first year,” says Marc. “Every year, the number of visitors grows. When we moved from the Belfry to the Beurshal we had about 14,000 visitors. This year we reached 20,000 people. There were 13,000 visitors on the Saturday and 6,000 visitors on the Sunday. We sold 7% more consumptions than last year. We usually see mostly tourists on the Saturday and more locals on the Sunday.”
Despite it being the 10th anniversary of the club, it’s only the ninth festival. “We had a festival from the first year, but there was one year we didn’t have a festival,” says Marc. “Normally the beer festival was in the month of November. But the government asked us to have the festival in February because there weren’t so many tourists in the city at that time of year and there were a lot of hotels free. We had one festival in November but we couldn’t manage to get organised in just 3 months for the following February. So we missed one.”
INVITEES AND POLITICS
Attendance at the festival as a brewery is by invitation only. “We are loyal to all the breweries that supported us at the beginning,” says Marc. “We send out three sets of invitations. First, it’s those breweries and beer firms that were on the festival the previous year. Then it’s breweries that weren’t there the year before. Then it’s beer firms that weren’t there.”
There is plenty of politics in beer and especially at festivals, but Marc is clear that their job is to champion Belgian beer. “We don’t have any problems with inviting beer firms,” he says. “We have a very good relationship with them. In the booklet, we state whether it’s a brewery or a beer firm. Nearly all the breweries are brewing for someone else anyway and it’s not fair that someone who starts to commercialise beers has to buy their own brewery immediately. We have a lot of examples of people who started as a beer firm to get some money and then they go on to start their own brewery. For instance, Paljas started on our festival when nobody knew him and after 3 years, he will now start his own brewery. It was the same for Anne-Catherine from Dilewyns. Here in Bruges we have Fort Lapin who now has a brewery. Andy De Wilde from Préaris has a brewery since last month and brings 6 new beers to our festival.”
Bruges beer festival is one of the biggest non-commercial beer festivals in Belgium. No-one pays in. The beers are reasonably priced. It’s not about making money, but rather about promoting beer culture. “We even get beers from Westvleteren with approval from the Abbey,” says Marc. “That’s not usual. We have 4 charities that we work with so they are happy to do that for us. And we only charge 1 token for those beers as we do with all other beers. We could charge 2 tokens and nobody would have any problems with it but that’s not how we operate.”
Attendees at the Bruges beer festival vote on their favourite beers each year. In 2016 the honours went to the Waardamse Tripel (8.6% ABV) from Brouwerij Stokhove. Other winners included De Poes (a Belgian strong ale of 8% ABV) from Brouwerij De Poes (brewed at Deca Services), Herborist (a witbier of 4.5% ABV) from De Haeckse Brouwers (brewed at De Gulden Spoor), Gouden Carolus Indulgence Whisky Infused (a Belgian strong ale of 11.7% ABV) from Brouwerij Het Anker and Inglorious Quad Whisky Barrel Aged (an Abt/Quadrupel of 11.4% ABV) from Inglorious Brew Stars (brewed at Brouwerij Anders).
TRADING PLACES
Next year’s Bruges beer festival – which will take place on the weekend of 4-5 February 2017 – will be the 10th edition and the festival’s continued growth will signal another landmark change. “Together with the Bruges Council we are looking for a new location for our festive 10th edition,” says Marc. “It will be an exclusive and special edition but at a location which is for now still unknown.”
In the meantime, BAB continue to run activities, whether that’s organised tastings, brewery visits or trips to other beer festivals. In October 2016, they’ll have a ‘muzikale kroegentocht’ – essentially an organised pub crawl with music, poetry and art. “The pubs will have live music and a horse coach will circle all the cafes,” says Marc. “For those taking part there will be special beers in all the cafes. It’s for everyone to participate, and not just members of BAB.”
