Het Boerenerf

Website (Dutch): https://www.boerenerf.bio/

Address: Sollenberg 3, 1654 Huizingen

Phone: +32 471310948

Overview

Senne Eylenbosch and Vincent Alluin founded Boerenerf in 2020. The company was built on the foundations of the renowned Eylenbosch Brewery, which closed its doors in Huizingen in 1965. The Dutch word "Boerenerf" translates to "Farmstead," a nod to the old family farm where the original brewery began, which has been in the Eylenbosch family for generations. Today, the traditions continue in the old stables, where lambic and gueuze beers mature in barrels.

Boerenerf uniquely combines the traditional craft of lambic blending with winemaking, skillfully merging tradition with innovation. This results in a diverse range of surprising blends of lambic, gueuze, cider, fruit beers, wines, and mead, all made with grapes from our own winery. At Boerenerf, three core values are central: Quality, Tradition, and Innovation. Year after year, Senne strives to blend authentic traditions with innovative and refreshing flavors. In this pursuit, centuries-old fermentation techniques are honored and preserved, resulting in surprising and unforgettable tastes.

History

The history of Brouwerij Eylenbosch (Huizingen) dates back to 1864, when the Cammaert Brewery was founded. Anna Maria, Cammaert's great-granddaughter, married Martinus Josephus Eylenbosch in 1871, who took over the brewery in 1895. After Eylenbosch's death in 1922, his sons, Jan-Baptist and Georges, continued the brewery and began blending gueuze.

Although gueuze and lambic were popular in the early 20th century (pushing the family to separate the farm and brewery in 1922), the industry began to decline in the 1950s due to the rise of sugary drinks and the industrialization of lambic after World War II. The last lambic beer was brewed in 1965, and the brewery continued as a liquor store for a few more years. Between 2006 and 2008, the remaining production buildings of the brewery were converted into lofts by architect Steven Winderickx, son of Lambic brewer Edgar Winderickx.

Despite the brewery's decline, the Eylenbosch family continued to run the farm, focusing on livestock, grain, and fruit cultivation, as well as dairy production. Senne Eylenbosch, who had worked at Brewery 3 Fonteinen from July 2016, began converting part of the farm into a gueuze blending facility in 2019, reviving the Eylenbosch beers. The first activities of Boerenerf started at the end of 2019. In 2020, Senne left 3 Fonteinen officially and his collaboration with Vincent began, when the enterprise, formerly known as Boerenerf Eylenbosch, became Boerenerf.

In June 2021, the blending facility announced it's first fruit lambic, marking the first release of an Eylenbosch lambic in over 50 years. Also in 2021, Boerenerf underwent a rebranding and introduced it's iconic barrel logo. This logo symbolizes the four generations of Eylenbosch brewers in Huizingen, with Senne representing the fifth generation of lambic producers. Although they share the same name, there is no recent familial relationship with Brouwerij Eylenbosch (Schepdaal); Senne's great-great-grandfather was a nephew of the family that ran the Schepdaal brewery, but the connection stops there. Brouwerij Eylenbosch and Boerenerf are two distinct lambic producers.

Boerenerf focuses on the local market (B2C, retail, hospitality, and restaurants) while also expanding internationally, and their products are now available in more than 20 European countries, having seen significant growth in the Asian and American markets in recent years.

Brewing and Blending Process

Boerenerf is a blending facility which receives lambic wort from 7 different lambic brewers: 3 Fonteinen, De Troch, Lindemans, Den Herberg, Boon, Sako and Angerik. The first lambic to be barreled was brewed at 3 Fonteinen in April 2020, forming the bulk of the first fruit lambic release in 2021. De Troch and Lindemans began supplying lambic wort in 2021, Den Herberg and Angerik joined in 2022 followed by Boon and Sako. Currently there is no in-house brewing installation. The first two batches of lambic were bottled manually on the farm, but since the 2022-23 season, Boerenerf has used an automatic bottling line. The number of barrels grew rapidly from 25 in 2021, to around 80 in 2022, with a total capacity of about 25,000 L.

In 2021, the first release of fruited lambic was unique in that all ingredients were sourced from the Zenne Valley and Pajottenland. Boerenerf's ambition remains to work as organically as possible, though they prioritize the use of local products before anything else. The blending facility’s commercial season traditionally operates in three releases : in May (though it was originally on Easter weekend), September and December, with the release of new beer batches. The variety in the beer lineup can vary annually depending on the fruit harvest.

In 2022, they released their first traditional 'old gueuze,' named 'Cuvée Heritage', as a tribute to the Eylenbosch family ancestors. While some producers count a season of several months as being a whole year for their lambics, Boerenerf considers a lambic to be a year old after spending an actual year in the barrel.

Lambic, cider, and mead created under spontaneous fermentation are at the core of Boerenerf, reflecting the identity of the blending facility. An example of this is ‘Symbiose,’ a unique blend of lambic, cider, and mead, which has never before been commercially released by a lambic producer. They also experiment with grapes (sometimes by blending them with other fruits for taste or even color purposes), usually blending actual wine with 2-year-old lambic rather than macerating the fruits directly, avoiding extra lactic and volatile acids and leading to a specific expression. Once the blend is deemed stable, it is blended down with more lambic, usually at around 35% of wine per liter of finish product. Boon and Sako lambics are not used in grape blends as they don't fit the profile Boerenerf is looking for, mainly in term of body, more adapted to other fruits and straight blends in Senne's opinion.

With the exception of cherries, fruits are always pre-macerated and fermented before being added to lambic, with regular stirring allowing for the juice and flesh to separate and to avoid unwanted infections from contact with air at the top. Using clear containers allows to later pump the juice into barrels while keeping an eye on the separated flesh staying at the bottom, which would be impossible to do otherwise.

Side Notes

The stag beetle is a recurring symbol at Boerenerf, used on their gueuze labels. Not only did Senne take a liking to that insect while growing up and wrote a paper about it during his Nature and Environment studies, it also has a strong symbolic meaning that draws a parallel to the lambic world, and gueuze in particular: it needs years on hard wood (usually oak) to grow within a specific microclimate and level of humidity, before transforming into its final form. It also endangered.

Some beers are sold with the mention "Reserva". It usually means a variant of an existing beer, which spent more time on oak and was bottled still as a wine, without further blending with extra lambic.

Senne's brother works at a teaching and recreational farm called "kinderboerderij Neerhof" in Dilbeek, and supplies a small portion of raw organic wheat which is then brought to De Troch brewery (who sells lambic to Boerenerf). He also provides rhubarb as well, used in the Boerenerf blends.