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Photos by Cliff Lucas
This editorially independent podcast has been supported by VISITFLANDERS as part of the “New Arrivals” series of stories.
Today’s podcast is an interview with Bart Delvaux and Ine Van der Stock of Brouwerij De Coureur, a small brewery and taproom in the Kessel-Lo neighbourhood of Leuven in Belgium’s Flemish Brabant province.
De Coureur brewed their first beer on 1 April 2020, two weeks into the first Covid-19 pandemic lockdown in Belgium.
It’s hard to know whether this is the most interesting part of their story; that they were born in the midst of one of the deadliest pandemics in the history of the world and were forced to fight for their survival, before they had even started.
Or whether the most interesting part of their story is that they have since become a true neighbourhood brewpub with ambitions not to grow and distribute, but to embed themselves more deeply into a changing community like Kessel-Lo in a way which feels different to other start-ups in beer today.
Or maybe the most interesting thing about their story is that De Coureur is a true celebration of two of Belgium’s most iconic past-times—cycling and beer—in a way which does not feel cliché or twee, but rather at the core of their identity. Not only are their beers all named after cycling terminology, but their clientele arrive mostly on bike, whether that’s families on longtails, bakfiets, or cargo bikes, recreational cyclists taking a break from their escapades in the hills around Leuven, or those pulled to the city for international cycling tournaments.
Or is the most interesting thing about De Coureur that one of its co-founders, Ine Van der Stock, is allergic to alcohol?
Or that they do not sell beer in small package, making their beer available only on draught at their own taproom?
Or that it’s one of the few breweries in Belgium—a conservative beer market with conservative marketing traditions—that actively uses TikTok as their main social media platform to communicate its beer releases, events, and brand?
It’s hard to say.
Maybe the most interesting thing about this brewery is that it all began with an terrible accident.
Sit back, listen, and enjoy the origin story of Leuven brewery and taproom De Coureur.
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