In this BeerTalk episode, we head to Belgium — to Leuven, one of the country’s true beer hotspots — and step into a place that instantly sticks in your memory: Bart Delvaux’s taproom brewery in Kessel-Lo, where beer culture meets bike culture in the most Belgian way possible. Bart shares how it all started with homebrewing in a basement, then took a surprising turn during a work relocation to Chicago — and a bicycle crash that (ironically) led him straight into the world of American taprooms. What began as a setback became the spark for a new life: returning to Belgium, building a brewery, and creating a space where locals and visitors can drink fresh beer on draft, right next to the kettles.

We talk about Bart’s crossover brewing philosophy — from an easy-drinking cream ale and a smooth, low-ABV tripel, to a bold West Coast IPA, plus monthly specials that range from refreshing sour gose to stouts with chili, tonka beans, and other twists. Bart explains why they don’t bottle, how they keep quality and freshness in their own hands, and why the taproom experience matters just as much as the beer itself. One highlight: Bart’s obsession with creating beers that surprise you — like a white stout that looks like a pilsner but drinks like a stout, built through careful ingredient testing (and a lot of patience). And yes, we also get into hop water, food collaborations (tacos + jalapeño gose!), and the warm, supportive way Leuven’s brewers work together…

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Link für Apple/iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/biertalk/id1505720750

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Markus: Hello and welcome to another episode of our podcast Beer Talk. Today we make a little journey into Belgium, into maybe the beer city at all, to Leuven, and we meet a great brewer, Bart Delvaux. And Bart, I’m very happy that you’re here, and maybe you say some words about yourself for our listeners.

Bart: Yeah, sure. Servus Markus. So yeah, my name is Bart and I’ve got a small taproom brewery situation in Leuven. Actually, it’s in a suburb of Leuven called Kessel-Lo, and we started six years ago with the brewery, with the idea to have fresh beer from draft, to have a nice evening amongst locals, amongst visitors and obviously also to enjoy good beer absolutely.

Markus: And I can only confirm that I was there and I tried the beers and I enjoyed the beers and it’s a fantastic place and a really surprising place, because it’s full of bikes and bike stuff and of course beer and beer stuff. So that works very well together and it was really a great experience to be there and really a big surprise to find that in that part of Leuven, to find this wonderful place. So really great. How did you personally come into the beer thing?

Bart: So in 2011 I started homebrewing together with some friends in Kessel-Lo, in a basement of a residential house in the area, and after a few brews we found a good recipe that was good to share with other people, not just by ourselves. And we went to a contract brewery and we asked them, guys, could you make this beer on a larger scale? And yeah, that happened, so the first time we brewed two thousand liters and obviously, because we raised a little bit of awareness with our family and friends and the neighborhood, the two thousand liters were gone in a minute. A little bit fast-forward: in 2014 my wife and I moved from Leuven to Chicago in the United States for my job. By the way, I was not active in the brewing scene for all my life. I was active before in software and finance, was working for a German company and relocated to Chicago for the consulting business of that software company. And there it happened: in 2015 I had a bike crash, so a bicycle crash. And instead of having a nice vacation in Alaska, a hiking trip, we had to look for an alternative, because during the crash I broke my hip. And obviously I was not able to go on that hiking trip. So we had to look for an alternative, the alternative being making day trips from Chicago into the areas around Chicago, so some national parks in Michigan and Indiana, where I would wait in a local brewpub for my wife to come back because she was doing the little trips, so she was doing the hiking and obviously, with the broken hip on crutches, I was not able to do that. And that’s how we discovered these taprooms and microbreweries and the experience of enjoying a beer in the location where it’s being made. And we found that such a nice thing that a few months later I got in touch with the brewer and we started thinking about, okay, so how can I help you in the brewery? How can I do an internship and learn more about brewing on a larger scale? And that happened organically: that grew and I got more and more interested in that idea of having that mix of running a taproom and brewing the beer and getting it all together. And then, yeah, that’s how the brewing part started.

Markus: It’s a great story, let’s say it like this. It’s never great if it starts with an accident, but in general it’s a great story. But this job change: what did the company say and what did your wife say if you said, okay, I quit the software job and I go for making beer?

Bart: Yeah, so actually it was my wife that pushed me a little bit. So it was on a Sunday morning after a good night out. She caught me a bit by surprise and she said, so let’s say you have all the money of the world and you don’t have any worries at all. What would you like to do the rest of your life? And then I said actually, I would like to do what a lot of people are doing in Chicago in the hospitality sector and in the brewing sector, which is having that brewery, like the production site, and also being able to share the passion and the taste and the knowledge of the brewing and the beers with your audience, being your guests in the taproom. And she started making a business plan and then we decided to come back to Belgium and start the brewery. Not, yeah, obviously not in the US, but in Belgium and more specifically in Kessel, which is the suburb of Leuven where I actually grew up most of my life and we also lived here before we moved to the US. So that was a logical choice for that. My employer, they started with hesitation at that moment, because they did not want to lose me. And actually it was the CEO and the owner of the company, he was the most open and he congratulated me and he was really happy for me. My direct managers, they were a little bit more reluctant and they kept on calling me every week, every month to see whether the business was going well, actually I think hoping that it wasn’t so I could return to the company. But then when they visited us in the taproom, they saw how happy I was and how good the business was going, even though it was a difficult moment because we started within the Covid or Corona era. But they saw that I was happy and they gave up on trying to get me back into the company.

Markus: Yeah, and they have now a wonderful place to come over for a beer. That’s also a great deal.

Bart: Yes, it’s a bit far away, because most of my ex-colleagues are German, but from time to time somebody shows up from Hamburg or from Frankfurt in the taproom. Yes, that’s a nice thing, that they make the effort to come and have good beer and to have a chat with me.

Markus: So everybody’s happy now, that’s great. And how did you find this theme of biking for the brewery?

Bart: Then we go back to the accident. So it was the bike crash actually that pushed us to look for an alternative for that hiking trip in Alaska. And by doing that and having then the idea of opening the taproom, we said, yeah, where did it all start? It started with the crash, which was negative. Us opening a taproom and a brewery is something positive. And you know, Markus, what is more Flemish or what is more Belgian than beer and biking? So it’s the ideal combination after a long ride in the small hills around Leuven to come into the taproom and have a good pint of beer.

Markus: Yeah, you can sit on a saddle and you have tables in the bike theme and it’s everywhere. So it’s really great and even the names of the beers and things like that and you have a lot of memorial stuff from bikers and all that so yeah, exactly so when you grew up, biking was also something you really were looking admiring or even doing yourself.

Bart: Yeah, I was a big fan of watching cycling, so a big fan of the Tour of Flanders and the Tour de France. That was a time when I still had time to watch those races. Nowadays I’ve got a big lack of time to do that. But yeah, growing up, cycling was part of life. Like for every Belgian, I guess. There’s no Belgian that I know of that cannot bike. So it’s a way to get to school, it’s a way to get to your hobbies. We actually don’t own a car, Ina and myself, so the bike is our main means of transport within the city, but also a little bit outside of the city.

Markus: And your wife is also with you in the company or does she still have another job?

Bart: Yeah, yeah. So my wife is my partner in life and in business.

Markus: Fantastic.

Bart: And we do have some additional work or activities that we do outside of the brewery and the taproom. So Ina is also a tour guide. In winter, she just came back actually from a trip to Norway with the Hurtigruten route, which is the ferry that goes to the cities along the coast side of Norway, and she was guiding or having a group of one hundred seventy-five Dutch tourists, if I’m not mistaken. And myself, I also teach at the evening school, brewing for microbrewers in Leuven.

Markus: Okay, that sounds like a very rounded life, fantastic. And is holiday still like you going into the pub and she goes hiking?

Bart: We both go to pubs. She doesn’t drink any beer or alcohol, but she wants to have the experience and holidays for me, because it’s very busy life during the year. It’s just a week of rest, so eating, drinking and just enjoying the day

Markus: And your beer selection: how do you come to your recipes and do you have a main focus in a beer world like Belgian or German or American? Or is it crossover? What is your idea?

Bart: It’s completely crossover, Markus. So we do have seven to nine beers on tap all during the year and three of them are signature beers. That means I brew them the whole year long. So the three signature beers are a cream ale, which is named Colleke, because it’s the Flemish word for a small hill and here in the Hageland we’re surrounded with small hills, which is nice if you’re a beginning cyclist. We have a tripel, which is the Souplesse. It’s a 6.9 ABV tripel, not too heavy on the alcohol, not too heavy on the taste, so very, very smooth drinking, hence the name Souplesse. And we have a Kuitenbijter, which is a West Coast IPA, so a little bit more on the bitter side in the aftertaste, but still with nice tropical touches because of the North American hops that I used in that one. So those are the signature beers. Every month we make a new beer, so depending on the season, depending on our taste, we make anything between a sour gose, very low in alcohol, very refreshing, to a double stout spiced with some chilies from Mexico or some tonka beans. So yeah, anything in the spectrum. It’s great to mix the different styles a little bit also. And it’s also for our recurring guests a nice feature that each time they come, they can have a tasting panel with different types of beers, so even the locals, even though they’re Belgian, are sometimes surprised by styles they’ve never tasted before and which we offer in our taproom.

Markus: Yeah, I was also surprised because of the of the wide selection and also the intensity of every single beer. So you really had, if there’s an idea how I think for example an imperial stout could be and then I tasted yours and it was really spot on and it also had always a little special touch, little little special idea, some special spices or things like that. Or even on the hop side you have you used all these new hop products also to get really intense hop aromas, hop taste, so all these beers have a lot of character and a lot of expression, so I really like that. And also you have quite a small batch size, so it really changes quite often and you don’t bottle so it’s an experience you have to have on place isn’t it?

Bart: Yeah, exactly. So there’s a very, very easy reason why, or a few reasons why, we don’t bottle. First of all, I don’t like bottling. That goes back to the time that we were homebrewing. Even at that moment, which was very, very small scale, the bottling activity is not the part where a brewer gets happy. Second reason, as you already mentioned, we have very small batches and we need to make a living of those small batches, so that means we like to keep the margins within our own taproom. So we don’t sell to supermarkets and we have only very, very limited sales towards bars in Leuven. Third reason is about control. If we would put the best beer in the world in a bottle and maybe they don’t have the space to put it somewhere chilled and it’s a very hot week in the summer, they put it outside. The best beer in the world will go bad in a few weeks. So those are the three reasons why we don’t bottle. So people can come and pick up some beers to take home. We do have growlers, so that’s two-liter bottles which we fill up from the tap, so they have to keep it chilled and consume it within five days. And we do have crowlers as well, which are smaller-size containers in can form. So it’s half-liter cans which we fill up from the tap and we seal the lid on the can there. Also they need to keep it fresh, so cool, and drink it within five days. Obviously, depending on the beer, right? A very full double stout will keep fresh for a longer time than a very fresh, let’s say, session IPA loaded with

Markus: hops, especially the hoppy ones. And also maybe, if you place this brewery into Leuven, where the biggest brewery of the world has its main seat and there are also other breweries. So how was that? How did the others react? How is the beer scene working together in Leuven? How is that for you?

Bart: My start with microbreweries was in the US and in Chicago particularly the brewing scene over there is very, very helpful to each other in that area. The brewers don’t consider themselves as competitors, but more like friends. It’s a very friendly community, where my experience in Belgium before we started our brewery was a little bit different, where everybody was suspicious about the other. Oh no, they’re gonna try and get into my market, et cetera, et cetera. So we did not want to start our brewery by raising suspicion. So what we did is, we did a little walk around. So we visited all breweries in the neighborhood, like the smaller breweries, not AB InBev, but the smaller breweries, and just explained to them what we wanted to do. And surprisingly we got a lot of good tips and tricks from those local breweries. Most of them came with a lot of warnings about administration and startup and excise taxes and those kinds of things. And we thought it cannot be that bad as they are telling. In the end it was worse than they were telling. But that’s another thing. But now, because we started being very open about what we wanted to do, they are also very open towards us. So I think we have a very good brewers‘ community within Leuven. That being said, we are a bit different than the other breweries in and around Leuven and in and around Belgium, if you want to look at it like that, because we are a brewery with a taproom and people come to us to have an experience, not just for the beer. It’s the beer, the experience, and being able to have a chat with the brewer. So our business model is a bit different than most breweries, so I guess they don’t see us too much as competition either.

Markus: Yeah, and some of them I got to know when I visited you and they were all really nice guys and helping and looking forward and working together and so, also talking about collaborations and whatever. So that’s really a good thing to help out and to share experience, because everybody makes mistakes and it’s not necessary that all do the same mistakes again exactly. And there is enough differentiation options in the beer world. So you can do so many different beers and different, follow different paths and whatever. So it’s really great. I enjoy that, especially how you all work together. What about the food in the tap room? So do you have also a food site and is there a specialization or what can I get there?

Bart: Yeah, no, we don’t really have food. So we do have a popcorn machine where we put on popcorn freshly made every day, especially on weekends. So kids, they really enjoy the popcorn machine. We do have a dry sausage that our local butcher is making for us. Nice thing about that one: the butcher is using our spent grains for the sausage. And we do have some crackers, that’s it. So our focus is on the beer. We don’t have an equipped kitchen for it, that would be another type of business obviously. But people can bring their own food, so we do have a bring-your-own-food policy, so people can either bring their homemade food or they can order in. Friday is typically pizza day, where a lot of people order pizza in or even fries. They bring fries from the friterie or they order the fries in. And once a month we also have the concept of a food truck. But because we are in a residential area, like houses in a row in the street, it’s not easy to put a food truck outside, but we have a food-truck kind of thing inside of the brewery, where for example empanadas are being made by an outside company. Or this Friday we’ve got Taco Friday, so Leah is gonna come and make some nice tacos al pastor and some vegan tacos. So yeah, it’s gonna be a great night again on Friday.

Markus: And now I’m getting hungry. Thanks.

Bart: It’s only nine o’clock, that’s right.

Markus: Yeah, but it sounds a bit like. Also the concept we have in the Franconian beer gardens, where you also can bring your own fruit and That is another way to have a lot of variety and to have people enjoy what they want and share things. Of course, that’s also great.

Bart: I’m still actually, now that you say the Franconian beer garden, I’m still looking for a good baker that could make me a good, nice pretzel. That’s the best combination: beer, pretzels, a good mustard to go with it. And then, yeah, nothing can beat that.

Markus: Okay, perfect. So when you come over, we can meet some bakers, so we will. We will find solutions for that. Perfect. When you were talking about the popcorn, did you ever try to make a hop popcorn?

Bart: No, no, never had that idea. You’ve had it before.

Markus: Yeah, at the last BrauBeviale, BarthHaas had it on a booth and I think they added some.

Bart: Oh, I did have it, I did have it there. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. I did have it there. No, we do popcorn, so our popcorn is unseasoned, but we have a ton of seasonings next to it and people can go wild. So we’ve got just plain pepper and salt, but also chimichurri or some Mexican spices to heat it up a little bit. So that’s the nice thing about popcorn. It’s just a container to put other spices on.

Markus: Yeah. And if you like it sweet or salty and spicy, you can choose whatever you want.

Bart: We don’t do sweet, we don’t do sweets. We just do the hearty stuff.

Markus: Okay, here I would say it’s mostly eaten sweet. What I was also really enjoying was your non-alcoholic variation. So with non-alcoholic stuff like hop water or other creations, what about that? Is that important for you? And what do you do there?

Bart: If you look at our revenue, it’s not an important part of our revenue, but it’s important for us to have something for people that for whatever reason don’t drink beer or alcohol. So we, yeah, we tested a lot. We experimented a lot with different beverages. So we did have for a long time ginger ale. So Ina actually made the brew, the ginger ale. It’s a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot of work. And we did it in very small batches, because after a while it alcoholizes, because it continues fermentation even at lower temperatures. And we do not pasteurize our beverages, neither the beers nor the non-beers. And yeah, that’s the reason why we stopped doing the ginger ale and now we have our hop water and our hop-water-derived hoptails, which people like, so adults, but also children, they’re into those. They think it’s Sprite sometimes, so they think it’s a soda. Even though in the hop water we don’t put anything else than just water and hops, so no additional sugars or juices. It’s just a natural product and it’s a good alternative. People don’t know it, so sometimes it’s difficult to sell, but once they’ve tasted it, they like it and they’ll go for another one and another one and another one. And that’s the whole idea. You have to make something that is a drinkable alternative to beer or alcohol-containing cocktails.

Markus: Yeah, absolutely. And I really also like the intensity and the variation of your hop waters. And in Germany we have the problem that most of the breweries that do it, they sell it very, very expensively, or maybe they have to, because most of these hop waters are treated and canned and/or bottled, and so there’s a lot of work on them. But that’s the problem. If you bring these products into the pubs and they cost more than the regular beer and definitely more than just normal plain water or things like that, then they don’t have a chance to get into the market. And if I try these with people, they always like it, but you kind of take the chance away for it to take off, because people are afraid because of the price. So I think it’s good to have easy access to that and also bring that variation.

Bart: Yeah, I think hop water you should consider as a like from a market point of view as a soda more than just sparkling water, because it’s more taste than just sparkling water, so from a price point of view. If it’s the same price or a little bit higher than let’s say any other lemonade, it’s fine. People, people will accept it. You know what a homemade iced tea costs in most pubs in Belgium? It’s twice the price of a beer, so that’s right.

Markus: Yeah, that’s a good example and that’s

Bart: just some tea with water that they chilled.

Markus: Yeah, we have these at the cafés here, also in Germany. Or if they make their own, let’s say lemonade, but it’s just water, syrup and some fruit. And they also charge like eight, nine euros, so that’s crazy. What is happening there?

Bart: nobody complains about that?

Markus: So one question about your recipe making. So if you are approaching a new beer and you always find this special twist or special idea, how does that go? Are you having an idea overnight? Or are you sitting there and studying or trying other beers? Or what is your approach?

Bart: It’s a combination of everything. It’s definitely tasting a lot of other beers and tasting different ingredients and making extracts from different spices and coffees. I don’t know. Did you try the white stout when you were over at the Bidon Café?

Markus: Probably not, because I would remember that.

Bart: Okay, so that’s a nice example. So that white stout was in my head from when I started the brewery. I wanted to make something a complete mindfuck, where your eyes completely fool you because you look at a beer that looks like a pils and when you close your eyes, the drink tastes like a stout. That’s the idea of a white stout. But to do that you have to find a bean that gives you enough of the coffee without giving color and without negatively impacting the foam stability. And it took me two years to get to a point where I found a roastery just around the corner in Kessel-Lo that would provide me a coffee bean that was not too much roasted. So not like an espresso bean, but a very slowly and not too dark roasted coffee bean. And that’s the perfect match. So now we have a beer, Bidon Café, which looks like a pilsner, but it tastes like a stout. A refreshing stout where the freshness is hop-like, its fruitiness. The coffee beans are giving fruitiness, floral touches, but not the astringent, very bitter aftertaste of the coffee. It’s a really refreshing good beer.

Markus: How were your feelings when you had the first pint of it, when you first tried it?

Bart: Oh, amazing, yeah. So even while we were testing it, so the first test obviously, you don’t make a batch of five hundred liters. You test it by putting a few beans in a can and sealing the can, or doing a few cans. And then after two days, after three days, after four days, after five days, to know at what moment you got like: bam, this is it. This is just enough, not too much. The foam is still there and then it’s like, aha, this is what people will be happy about.

Markus: Great. And what did the first customer say?

Bart: Oh, they loved it. That being said, we also have, you know, Untappd. I’m sure you know Untappd. Sometimes I make the mistake to look at Untappd. And then with this Bidon Café sometimes people check it in and you get like 0.25 out of 5. And then you look and you see that they only drink tripels. And then you look at the comment on the beer and it’s: I hate coffee. I don’t like coffee. Yeah, guys. Then don’t order a coffee beer, you know.

Markus: Yes, yeah, we had that especially with the Berliner Weisse here in Germany. So these: I don’t like sour beers.

Bart: Yeah, and don’t order the sour beer.

Markus: Yeah, yeah. These guys who make the real stuff in Berlin, we are very good friends. And to read the comments sometimes on Untappd or other websites like this, it’s so unbelievable. So they complain about the beer being sour. They complain about the beer being weak in alcohol. They complain about everything, but they simply didn’t understand that’s the style.

Bart: Yeah, that’s the style.

Markus: Or whatever. Do you have other really crazy beers that you made?

Bart: Yeah, the ones with chili, and using chili is always a balancing exercise. So I like to make beers that I like. That’s the main goal, right? If I don’t like a beer and everybody else likes it, I’m not going to be happy about it, right? Number one is: I like it. And I like chili, but I don’t want my mouth to be burning for the rest of the day. And that’s the balancing exercise. You never make a chili beer that will please everybody. For some it will be too spicy. For others they will say, oh, I would like it to be more spicy. Something in between, right?

Markus: But you got there. And how do you use the chili? Do you make an extract before? Do you put them in the boil? Or how do you?

Bart: Yeah, never in the boil, because I want to keep as much as possible of the aroma as well from the chili. So it depends a little bit on the chili, whether I make an extract or not. When I use chipotle, it will be an extract based on bourbon. When I do pasilla, it will be an extract based on rum. So it really depends on the chili that I’m using. The jalapeño, for example, you mentioned Berliner Weisse. In summer we do sour gose, and one of the iterations on the sour gose is a jalapeño sour gose and that is just amazing. So I just put in six jalapeño peppers, I slice them — I don’t slice them, I cut them from the top to the tip, not completely through, so the beer can get to the seeds, but seeds are not completely open — and I put six per twenty liters. That’s more or less the experience where it doesn’t get too hot. But if you pour the beer, it smells like opening a can or a jar of pickled jalapeños and it’s so refreshing, it’s so good. Like on a warm summer day to have jalapeño beer and then when Leah comes with her tacos, the perfect combination. Wow.

Markus: So that’s the reason to come back. Fantastic, I have to do that in summertime. And maybe if people now want to visit you and your brewery, what is, what is the best way to do? What is the best time in the year? Maybe the best weekday, best time in the year.

Bart: It’s not going to be February, because February is our annual closing. So then we take one week of vacation, but also I’ll disassemble the brewery to do a bit of maintenance. And as our taproom is in the brewery, so you’ll drink the beers with the kettles next to you, I cannot have the brewery disassembled while opening the taproom. So definitely not February. The rest of the year, we’re open five days a week, so we’re open on Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays. If you want to connect with the locals, come during the week. So Wednesday, Thursday, even Friday. Those are very good days to connect with the locals. If you want to connect with other tourists, then definitely Saturday is a day to come. Then we have a lot of tourists from within Belgium, but also outside of Belgium, visiting us for tours. So we do tours on the weekends. You can buy a ticket via the ticketing site of Visit Leuven, so the tourism office of Leuven, to have individual tours. Or you can come with a group and we also do private tours. So the tours are not being held by a marketing person. It’s being done by myself. I do the tours and then within the tour you also will be able to taste four of our beers. Sunday is more like family time, so we have a lot of families in and outside of Leuven that are coming to the taproom. Some tourists that are still hanging around on Sunday and then also some locals, just individuals also coming to the taproom. So timing over the year: if you want to sit in the small beer garden, definitely go in summer. It’s Belgium, right? We’re not in LA. So the weather can be tricky in spring and even fall. So if you want to be sure about good weather, come in summer. We do have a very small beer garden. We can seat eight people maximum outside, but it’s nice and cozy. It’s like the garden of a house in the city.

Markus: Fantastic, so perfect. That’s the best advice ever. And so I will definitely come back in the summer and we will put the links in the show notes, so that people can easily find and contact you. Thank you for all your information. Thank you for your passion and thank you for the brewery. That’s fantastic. And see you soon.

Bart: Thank you for having me on the podcast, Markus. And yeah, see you in two weeks.

Markus: I’m really looking forward to it. That will be great.

Bart: Thank you.

Markus: Bye.

Bart: Have a good one.

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