The Budelse Brouwerij is a Dutch brewery in

Budel Budel is a town in the Dutch province of North Brabant. It is located in the municipality of Cranendonck, 25 km outside Eindhoven. Kempen Airport is located near Budel. History It was first mentioned in 779 as in Budilio, and means "place ...

North Brabant North Brabant ( nl, Noord-Brabant ; Brabantian: ; ), also unofficially called Brabant, is a province in the south of the Netherlands. It borders the provinces of South Holland and Gelderland to the north, Limburg to the east, Zeeland to the we ...

History

The brewery was founded in 1870 as Brewery De Hoop. In the 1960s, the name of the brewery was changed to Budelse Brouwerij. Founder Gerardus Arts came from Oss, and had learned brewing at the Snieders family (later

Dommelsch Brewery Dommelsch Brewery is a brewery founded in 1744 in the village of Dommelen, Netherlands. It is part of the Anheuser-Busch InBev group, and brews ''Dommelsch Pilsener'' for the Dutch market. History Dommelsch was founded in 1744 in the village ...

) in Dommelen, and at brewery De Kroon in Oirschot. In 1870 he had married Anna Maria Maas. The Maas family provided the funding for the small brewery. In 1879 the railroad

Iron Rhine The Iron Rhine or Steel Rhine ( nl, IJzeren Rijn; german: Eiserner Rhein) is a partially nonoperational freight railway connecting the port of Antwerp (Belgium) and Mönchengladbach (Germany) by way of Neerpelt and the Dutch towns of Weert and ...

was finished, and a railway station was opened in Budel-Schoot. Gerard Arts opened a hotel named Brouwershuis. Meanwhile Budel expanded and a

zinc smelting Zinc smelting is the process of converting zinc concentrates (ores that contain zinc) into pure zinc. Zinc smelting has historically been more difficult than the smelting of other metals, e.g. iron, because in contrast, zinc has a low boiling point ...

factory was founded. At the time De Hoop competed with the older brewery of the Rutten family, who were very influential in Budel. In 1899 a third brewery was founded by A.J. de Winkel, later led by Nelissen.

Early twentieth century

The invention of

Pilsner Pilsner (also pilsener or simply pils) is a type of pale lager. It takes its name from the Bohemian city of Plzeň (german: Pilsen), where the world's first pale lager (now known as Pilsner Urquell) was produced in 1842 by Pilsner Urquell Brewe ...

beer in 1842 would radically change the beer market. Producing Pilsner in the Netherlands required artificial refrigeration. From about 1870, the first steam powered pilsner breweries were founded in the Netherlands. At the time, brewing pilsner required so much capital, that small breweries like Budels could not compete on that market. Meanwhile the public moved towards the new industrial beers. During World War I a shortage of

commodities In economics, a commodity is an economic good, usually a resource, that has full or substantial fungibility: that is, the market treats instances of the good as equivalent or nearly so with no regard to who produced them. The price of a comm ...

would spell the end for many small Dutch brewers. Both the Rutten brewery, and the Nelissen brewery closed down in 1917. In 1921 Budels started to mechanize its production. In 1922 the brewery also started to produce

Lemonade Lemonade is a sweetened lemon-flavored beverage. There are varieties of lemonade found throughout the world. In North America and South Asia, cloudy still lemonade is the most common variety. There it is traditionally a homemade drink using le ...

, using the label . The really significant investments took place in the 1930s, when most local competitors had disappeared.

Post World War II

The Budelse Brouwerij was one of the few breweries which survived the rigorous concentration in the Dutch beer market after World War II. In 1945 there were 80 breweries left in the Netherlands. In 1950 there were 58 breweries left in the Netherlands. By 1968 there were only 20 Dutch breweries left. In 1975 the number was 13. Meanwhile, the pilsner part of the beer market had increased from just over 50% before the war to almost 99% in 1980. The average consumption of beer increased from 10.1 liter just after the war to 89.1 liter

per capita ''Per capita'' is a Latin phrase literally meaning "by heads" or "for each head", and idiomatically used to mean "per person". The term is used in a wide variety of social sciences and statistical research contexts, including government statistic ...

in 1981.

Budelse Brouwerij today

The 1980s were the time that the Dutch public started to look for something different, whether this was traditional beer, or foreign beers. Up till the mid-1980s the Budelse Brouwerij brewery made Pilsner, 'sweetened Oud bruin' (not to be confused with

Oud Bruin Oud Bruin (Old Brown), also known as Flanders Brown, is a style of beer originating from the Flemish region of Belgium. The Dutch name refers to the long aging process, up to a year. It undergoes a secondary fermentation, which takes several weeks ...

), and

Bock Bock is a strong beer in Germany, usually a dark lager. Several substyles exist, including: *Doppelbock (''Double Bock''), a stronger and maltier version *Eisbock (''Ice Bock''), a much stronger version made by partially freezing the beer an ...

. It then expanded its portfolio with Capucijn abdijbier (warm fermentation),

Altbier Altbier (German: ''old beer'') is a style of beer brewed in the Rhineland, especially around the city of Düsseldorf, Germany. It is a copper coloured beer whose name comes from it being top-fermented, an older method than the bottom fermenta ...

and introduced the name for some specialty beers. Brewing eco-friendly beer is a specialization of Budelse Brouwerij. The brewery was ahead of its time when it started on this market in the 1990s. In 2009 Budelse Brouwerij was one of the country's largest microbreweries.

References

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Notes

Breweries in the Netherlands Breweries in North Brabant Cranendonck Dutch companies established in 1870 Food and drink companies established in 1870 {{Netherlands-company-stub