Words by Breandán Kearney
Photos by Ashley Joanna
Published by Luster Publishing
Launch date: September 2024
This is a behind-the-scenes snippet from the making of Hidden Beers of Belgium, a book which will take readers on a journey of discovery through some of Belgium’s most interesting but under-appreciated beers. Read more here.
When researching beers which are lesser-known, you check in not only with producers newly arrived, but with those well established. Old breweries are often rich in story, such as the Gavere-based brewery of Willy Contreras. Willy passed away on 26 October 2020, aged 86, having guided his family brewery between 1982 and 2005. He wasn’t big on change: he altered nothing in the line-up of Contreras beers during the twenty-three years he led the brewery. Until labelling laws required him to reconsider in the early 1990s, he continued packaging beers in old enamel bottles with no label, on which the only information—burned on to the side—was the name of the brewery and the coat of arms of the Contreras family. Consumers were only able to determine which beer was in the bottle if they knew which colour Willy had assigned to the crown cap of a particular beer. But drinking culture was different then. Willy’s customers always knew.
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