Belgium does not exactly suffer from a shortage of beers. In a country where brewing is deeply embedded in the culture and where supermarket shelves can resemble encyclopaedias of blondes, tripels, lambics and IPAs, launching another beer requires more than a good recipe. It helps to have a story.

For Tervoerke, that story started with a home-brewing experiment. Sitting on a terrace at the heart of Tervuren, just outside Brussels, I met co-founder Dimitri Tips to discuss how a shared interest in beer gradually developed into a commercial venture.

From beer mats to brewing

His fascination with beer goes back much further than Tervoerke. As a child, he collected beer mats, helped by his grandfather and parents, eventually accumulating around a thousand different examples. Beer returned to his life during his university studies in industrial engineering and biochemistry, where a course introduced him to brewing.

He later completed his thesis at what is now AB InBev, working on a filtration project involving Leffe Brune and getting a first-hand look at industrial brewing on a very different scale. Yet becoming a brewer was still not the plan.

That changed after he met Anirudh Bobbili through work in 2017. The pair discovered a shared interest in beer and beverage development, and in 2019 tried home brewing on Tips’ terrace with a simple fermentation setup. The first result was hardly going to transform Belgian brewing overnight, but the process hooked them.

Dimitri Tips and Anirudh Bobbili © Tervoerke

Equipment followed and, during the Covid-19 period, experimentation intensified. Every few months they brewed another batch, gradually pursuing one objective: creating their own tripel. By 2021, they were refining the recipe through repeated tastings and experimenting with spices and yeast. Six different yeast prototypes were tested by two separate tasting panels, which independently selected the same version.

“We thought spices would be nice,” he explains. “It’s also a good way to differentiate.” After further feedback, including from people in the brewing world, the decision was made to take the beer commercial, with Tervoerke Tripel launching in March 2022.

A beer built around Tervuren

The beer itself was only part of the project. The founders wanted a brand that people could immediately associate with the place where it had been conceived, and a closer look at a Tervoerke label reveals that Tervuren is everywhere.

At its centre is Tram 44, the scenic line connecting Brussels with Tervuren. The tram has served the area in different forms since the late 19th century and remains one of its most recognisable symbols. The label also depicts the building housing the Royal Museum for Central Africa, surrounded by Tervuren’s extensive parkland.

© Tervoerke

In the background, small waves represent the Voer, the river that rises in the Sonian Forest and passes through Tervuren before continuing through Vossem, Leefdaal and Bertem towards Leuven. The river also helps explain the beer’s unusual name. The Voer was historically known as the “Fura”, while Tervuren’s name is linked to the idea of being close to that river.

To this, the founders added the Flemish diminutive “ke”, familiar from the colloquial “pinke”, referring to a pint or “pintje”. The result was Tervoerke, a name designed to sound unmistakably local.

For Tips, that local identity has proved important commercially too. “People from here want to identify themselves with products from here,” he says. “I don’t believe that if we didn’t have this local edge, it would have been that easy.”

© Tervoerke

Local first

Tervoerke does not have its own brewery. Its recipes are developed and tested on a small scale before production is expanded at Brouwerij Craywinckelhof in Lubbeek, near Leuven. Crucially, the recipes remain Tervoerke’s own, with the company working closely with the brewery on the production process rather than simply commissioning a generic beer under its name.

Getting the finished product into bars and shops presented another challenge. Tips describes himself as an engineer and product developer rather than a natural salesman, yet building Tervoerke meant approaching café owners, retailers and potential customers personally.

“It required a lot of effort, which is out of my comfort zone,” he admits, although the experience also revealed another side to the business that he enjoyed. “By doing it, I felt that I kind of like the social aspect,” he says, referring to the relationships developed with bar and shop owners.

© Tervoerke

One early breakthrough was Carrefour in Tervuren. Tips and his then-business partner had to pitch the beer to the retailer during the Covid period, presenting their case online. Local retailers and the Streekproducten Vlaams-Brabant network also helped expand distribution.

The beer can now be found across Tervuren and surrounding municipalities, as well as at selected locations towards Leuven and in parts of the Brussels periphery. However, Tips has deliberately resisted the temptation to turn expansion into an objective in itself.

From Tripel to IPA and Grand Cru

Tervoerke’s original Tripel remains particularly close to its creator. “It’s the first beer. It’s like the baby,” Tips says, although the flagship beer no longer stands alone and has since been joined by an IPA and the seasonal Grand Cru.

In June 2023, the company introduced Tervoerke IPA, a 5.7% hazy, juicy IPA designed to be approachable rather than overwhelmingly bitter. Its development took roughly a year and followed the same philosophy of repeated experimentation. Today, sales of the Tripel and IPA are roughly evenly divided, something Tips admits surprised him. While the Tripel remains the flagship, he says he personally now drinks more of the IPA.

Tervoerke’s original Tripel © Tervoerke

The third creation took Tervoerke in another direction. For its Grand Cru, the company placed its Tripel in bourbon barrels imported from the United States, allowing the beer to mature until the desired balance emerged. The result is a 9.2% winter beer combining the spicy character of the Tripel with notes imparted by the barrels, including vanilla, caramel and bourbon. Initially produced in only a few hundred litres and sold in larger bottles, the Grand Cru proved particularly successful at Tervuren’s Christmas market.

All three beers follow the same principle: start with a recognisable beer style, then find a way to give it a creative twist, whether through spices, hops, barrel ageing or adjustments to the brewing process.

Staying small in a country of beer giants

The Belgian beer landscape is both an advantage and a challenge for a producer like Tervoerke. Small brewers compete for space alongside some of the world’s most recognisable beer brands, and for an independent producer, matching the prices offered to hospitality businesses by major brewers is unrealistic.

Tips says he eventually learned not to spend too much energy trying to convince every reluctant bar or retailer. “Let me put energy in the people that really believe in the beer and in the brand and in the company,” he recalls deciding.

There is also a strong sense of community among Belgium’s smaller brewers. Tips describes fellow producers with the Dutch expression “conculegas”: competitors, but colleagues at the same time. Small beer festivals offer an opportunity not only to reach consumers but also for brewers to taste each other’s creations, exchange ideas and learn from one another.

For now, Tervoerke’s ambitions remain deliberately modest. Exporting is possible, but excise rules make it complicated, while increasing sales dramatically would create pressure on production capacity. Tips would rather protect relationships with existing customers, add a few new outlets and maintain the character that made the project work in the first place.

“Let’s keep it small, let’s keep it relatively small, let’s keep it local,” he says. “If my friends and family and people around can enjoy it, I’m super happy.” A little more growth over the next two or three years would be welcome, he adds, but without fundamentally changing the nature of the project.

Perhaps that is also what makes Tervoerke interesting. This is not a story about a Belgian beer brand plotting international domination, but about something considerably more local: an interest in beer that started with childhood collections, recipes developed on a terrace and in a garage, and a town whose tram, river and landmarks eventually found their way onto a bottle.

In a country with thousands of beers competing for attention, Tervoerke has found its identity by staying remarkably close to home.