Den Herberg

Photos and words by Cliff Lucas.
Edited by Breandán Kearney.

Café Society is a photographic series which celebrates the spaces at the heart of Belgian beer culture. See more here.

Husband and wife Bart Devillé and Ann Heremans didn’t intend to open a café when they began homebrewing on repurposed soup kettles in the late 1990s. Nor was a lambic pub on their mind in 2000 when they purchased a vacant café and banquet hall in Buizingen (to be used as a storage facility for their family-run construction company). But Café Den Herberg, and the adjoining brewery Brouwerij Den Herberg, have been pieced together over the years using items they’ve found around. Thrifted chairs and stools from local vintage stores surround the café’s tables. Old milk cooling tanks were used to make the kettle and filter tub in the brewery. Ann keeps a box of old light fixtures she’s acquired over the years, unmatching but aesthetically similar, as backups for those hanging above the bar. Mosaic tiles are all over the brewery walls and installations. Brass candlesticks from different eras cover many of the flat surfaces around the café. “We’re pretty DIY around here,” says Roxan, the fifth of Bart and Ann’s seven children, as she pours a Cuvée Devillé behind the bar. Inside Den Herberg, they celebrate materials that stand the test of time. It’s a sentiment shared by the Classic Vespa Club of Geraardsbergen, who have parked outside while they pop in for a refreshment.