Brouwerij Het Nest

Brouwerij Het Nest grew from a Turnhout beer-tasting club into a brewery built around Belgian brewing craft and a distinctive playing-card identity. Its story begins with amateur experiments, develops through collaborations with established Belgian breweries, and reaches a defining moment in 2015, when Het Nest brewed its first beer in its own modern installation on the border of Turnhout and Oud-Turnhout. From tasting club to brewer The roots of Het Nest lie in a closed beer-tasting club founded at the end of 2000, originally called the Order of the Drunken Sparrow. Several members took a brewing course in 2006 and began making amateur batches. After one recipe won third place at the Dutch Open Championship for Hobby Brewers, the group decided to develop it further rather than leave it as a hobby project. The first beers and the card-table identity The first 500 litres of the developing recipe were brewed at Boelens in Belsele. It appeared first as Festivaltripel at Het Nest’s inaugural beer festival and was later named Schuppenboer. Because the founders came from the Turnhout region, playing cards became the organizing idea for the brewery’s beer names. Growing demand soon led to production at 't Hofbrouwerijke and then at Scheldebrouwerij. A brewery of its own In 2015 Het Nest completed a new brewery at Beyntel, on the Turnhout–Oud-Turnhout border, and brewed its first beer in its own kettles at the end of July. The installation included a 30-hectolitre brewhouse, larger fermentation and storage tanks, a bottling line, and space for barrel-matured beers. Later expansion doubled the site’s surface area, while the 2023 relocation of Brouwerij Pirlot’s brewery and distillery to Oud-Turnhout added further flexibility. A Turnhout-born brewery that turned a tasting club, Belgian brewing practice, and playing-card symbolism into a recognizable modern beer house. Turnhout region, Antwerp Province, Belgium; current brewery in Oud-Turnhout 2015 2000: A closed beer-tasting club was founded in the Turnhout region. 2006: Members took brewing training, made their first amateur brews, and began developing the recipe that led to Festivaltripel and Schuppenboer. 2009: The success of Schuppenboer required production at larger partner breweries. 2015: Het Nest built its own brewery at Beyntel and brewed its first beer in its own kettles. 2023: Brouwerij Pirlot’s brewery and distillery moved from Zandhoven to Het Nest’s Oud-Turnhout site.