Since 1997

De Leite

Brewer- owner Luc Vermeersch is fascinated by old handicrafts. It can therefore not come as a surprise that he installed a bread oven and a small brewery in his garden house. He purchased the 30-litre microbrewery in 1997 in Finland. The manufacturer gave him a training course of exactly one weekend. Thanks to much self-study and by making numerous small test batches, both his knowledge of, and his interest for brewing, grew. After 10 years’ brewing experience he enlisted for a brewery course. During his tuition year, he forged plans for a larger brewery and he started purchasing parts of the installation in various places. In April 2008 Brewery De Leite was a fact.

The first brewery installation was installed even before the hobby brewer finished his course. It was established in the buildings of Helbig of which the brewer was manager. The brewery had at that moment a capacity of 500 litres per batch. It availed of a brewing kettle of 800 litres, a warm water tank and a yeasting and maturing tank of 650 litres. Each brewing day saw two brewing sessions, and this was repeated once or twice per month over a period of three years. Because the demand for the beers kept going up, the brewery was extended in December 2011.

New tanks were delivered in February 2011:

  • a boiling kettle of 6000 litres,
  • a filtration tank of 9800 litres,
  • a whirlpool,
  • a water buffer tank and some yeasting and maturing tanks varying from 4000 to 10,000 litres.

During the subsequent years, the installation was further improved and expanded:

  • all tanks were connected by permanent stainless-steel pipes
  • a new mash/boiling kettle of 11,000 litres was installed
  • part of the brewing process was automated, meaning that the mashing became fully automated
  • new cylindric-conical yeasting tanks of 8000 litres were installed
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