It must have been somewhere in 1995 when I took my first steps as an amateur brewer. I had been a lover of all those wonderful beers in Belgium for some years now. However, my interest went further than just tasting, I wanted to understand how those special beers were brewed. Through self-study I picked out every brewing book I could get my hands on. I also built an amateur brewery at home where I could brew my own recipes in small quantities. This enabled me to apply the theory I had studied in practice and to taste the results and then make improvements to the recipe again. At the same time, I continued to improve my knowledge with a few years of brewing training at the University of Applied Sciences in Ghent.
In the years that followed, I gradually built up a network in the professional brewing world and even gained access to the brewery of a Trappist abbey. My family and friends encouraged me to start my own brewery but I didn't want to jeopardize my career for an expensive brewery project that was uncertain whether it would be profitable or not. However, after I had to reorient my professional life due to illness, the idea of owning a brewery came back to my mind and I decided to follow my passion. In 2015 I founded the Basanina brewery and a year later we launched the first beers on the market with Saison du Lucien and Père Glorieux. The recipes for these beers were developed by the knowledge gained from these years of experience in test brewing.
- Bart De Wolf -
brewer
