Beavertown to brew in Belgium ahead of move to new brewery in 2019

North London craft brewery Beavertown is to produce some of its flagship beers at a family-owned brewery in Belgium ahead of a move to a new “large-scale production facility” next summer.

The brewery will produce and import kegs of its Gamma Ray and Neck Oil beers at Brouwerij De Brabandere, Belgium, to keep up with rising demand while it plans and builds its new site.

Announcing the news in a blog post on its website, Beavertown pointed to production and capacity constraints as the main reason for the decision to brew abroad, and outlined its vision for the new brewery, dubbed ‘Beaverworld’.

“Over the past four years we haven’t always been able to be immediately forthcoming with beer due to not growing beyond our production means and capacity constraints on site,” the post read. “It’s been update after update, new FV’s after new FV’s, hop cannons, centrifuges and brewing at Redchurch to help provide temporary respite from a lack of beer.”

'A glorious blank canvas'

“We knew a few years back that we needed more space to brew and to grow so that we could keep pushing the boundaries of where craft beer is seen and drunk. After all, there is no good reason to drink bad beer any more in the UK!"

The post describes Beaverworld as a “glorious blank canvas” that would enable the brewery to bring new drinkers into “the world of Beavertown”.

“Our vision for Beaverworld is a large-scale production facility and visitor experience designed and built by us, for us and you the drinker,” it said. “We are aiming to build one of the world’s best beer/brewing experiences all within this great city of London enabling us to bring more drinkers into the world of Beavertown, to entertain and stimulate and let people see what we do, how we do it and why we do it first-hand.”

'Part of the transition'

The brewery goes on to describe partnering with Brouwerij De Brabandere as “part of the transition” to its new brewery site, and insisted that the beers brewed in Belgium would be brewed “to the exact same specifications” as those at its home in Tottenham Hale.

“Over the course of the next 18 months, brewing with Brouwerij De Brabandere will allow us to organically grow the amount of beer available to the trade,” it said. “But also, very importantly, it will mean that when Beaverworld is fully operational we will have spent serious time learning how to brew on a kit the same size and specification as we are investing in, helping us to transition seamlessly into our new home and hit the ground running.”

“The beers brewed at Brouwerij De Brabandere will be kegs of our two most in-demand brews, Gamma Ray and Neck Oil. These will both be brewed using the exact same ingredients (that we will be shipping over), to the exact same specifications and brewed and monitored by Team Beaver.”

The  amount of beer to be brewed at Brouwerij De Brabandere, or whether beer will continue to be brewed at Redchurch Brewery, has not been revealed by Beavertown.