Words and photos by Ashley Joanna
Edited by Breandán Kearney
Humans of Belgian Beer is a series of photographic portraits which celebrate a people and their culture.
In the mid 2010’s, Job Verpoorte would come home from long and stressful days of work, set his briefcase down on the kitchen counter, change out of his suit and tie, and sit down to begin his evening meditation routine of woodworking.
At first, the engineering position he held had been a dream job: designing spaces such as breweries, theatres, schools, and museums. He had been given the opportunity to work abroad on two brewery expansion projects in Kaluga, Russia, as well as on a project for a start-up brewery in Plzen, Czech Republic.
Job was Dutch, and originally based in the Netherlands, but he had always had a connection with Belgium. When he was a child, Job’s family used to take holiday trips to Antwerp and his sister eventually moved to Bruges to pursue her studies. “Even though I was born in the Netherlands, the beer in Belgium was always what I grew up with,” says Job. “The Belgian beer culture has been installed in me from a young age which is partly why I enjoyed designing breweries so much.”
But as he became more successful, climbing the corporate ladder, he seemed to be managing reports and attending political meetings rather than doing what he loved: creating.
All of this living abroad to design breweries gave Job the travel bug. He bought a van, built a bed in the back and began taking road trips to Spain and the South of France every summer. During one of his trips, Job took surfing lessons and fell in love with dancing on the ocean and how it made him feel. As years went by, he continued to fall more in love with the sport simultaneously with woodworking. One night, he was browsing surfboard videos on Youtube and the idea struck: why not combine the two things he loved? Job Verpoorte began making and shaping his own surfboards.
“If you were to ask me 20 years ago if I would be shaping surfboards out of wood, I would have laughed,” says Job. “But in hindsight, it makes sense because I am going back to why I love engineering by creating something with my hands instead of managing a team and attending meetings.”
When Job felt confident enough in his boards, he brought them back to the surf camp in Spain where he originally learned to surf. His boards were a hit with the surfers there, so much so that he made a decision to begin shaping full time. He moved to Bruges to be closer to his sister and with only a 30 minute drive from several potential surf spots, he built boards out of the workshop on the first floor of his apartment. The name of his business was Jabali Surfboards.
Moving to the city of Bruges opened Job’s eyes to new opportunities for his business. Not only was he able to use 2,000 year old oak wood found in the canals of his new home, but he also took advantage of Belgium’s strong business networks, entering a competition to make a surfboard out of only recycled materials.
To create the surfboard out of recycled materials, he first found a wind board foam for the base. He used old curtains from his childhood and laminated them with epoxy to strengthen the board. For the fin, Job used old beer kegs made from Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET), a popular resin used in one-way keg packaging. He cut the PET pieces into small pallets and melted them together in a pizza oven. Once the mould cooled off, he grinded and sanded the piece into a proper “fin” shape.
“It was a challenging project that took me one month to make,” says Job. “I had to be creative in a completely different way, but it was rewarding to create a surfboard out of materials I never even considered before. Especially a beer keg. But growing up so close to Belgium I always loved the beer culture, so this was a fun project for a good cause.”
I had to be creative in a completely different way, but it was rewarding to create a surfboard out of materials I never even considered before. Especially a beer keg.
Job Verpoorte
