At the end of 2019, more than 700 companies were registered as a brewer with the Chamber of Commerce. That’s really a lot! Even in the Middle Ages, at the time every village had a brewer, it wasn’t there as much as it is now. Compared to then, there is a difference. At the time, a brewery always had its own production site where the beer was brewed.
Nowadays, however, many breweries use the boilers of breweries with overcapacity. Of the 700 breweries, about half brew the beer in someone else’s boilers. And even breweries that do have their own boilers sometimes still make some of the production elsewhere. Just because demand is greater than production capacity. For example, Hertog Jan brews her lager at Dommelsch and Mannenliefde is brewed in Belgium. But that doesn’t matter because it’s about the beer in the end. That must be good.
Of the more than 700 breweries, the majority are relatively small. These small breweries have united in an association with the matching name CRAFT. As of today Bierverbond is one of the small 200 members of CRAFT. Because we take ourselves very seriously.
