In their youth some of the brothers Herteleer experimented in a washtub with their own brews.  With their 33^rd test (1979) they were satisfied; this would be their beer a brew that beer lovers now know as Oerbeer. 

The following year they could get going on as real brewers.  They bought a house the brewery Sint-Henricus in Esen, a couple of months after that the ex-brewer filled his last bottle of beer. 

This brewery was built on a long tradition.  In 1842 there was already a beer brewery.  In that time there were more than 7 breweries in Esen.  Not that all those brewers only lived from the brewery.  Often the job of the brewer was combined with other jobs.  So there is a case knew when the brewer was also a hairdresser and a pub owner. 

The Dolle Brouwers (the mad brewers) find a couple of elements very important: hygiene, time and good ancient materials.  The Dolle Brouwers don’t want to be economical with their materials.  The Esense brewers also want to stay small-scale: with yearly sales of forty browses of each 3000 l.  These artisanale browses don’t contain chemical products (pigments, foam stabilisers) and the beer isn’t filtered or pasteurised. 

The name Oerbeer refer to one of the basic principles of the Dolle Brouwers: they only wont to brew with ‘products’: spring water, hop in the form of hop bells, yeast and malt.  ‘In good soup belongs a lot different vegetables’ is a rule that the brewer Herteleer follows when he’s brewing.  They use 6 different kinds of malt.  Oerbeer is a dark, sweet beer with a round flavour, that contain 7,5% alcohol and knows a fermentation on the bottle.  You can keep the beer for a couple of years.  The flavour evolves a little bit to the taste of wine.

Visit: 

every Sunday at 15.00 h conducted tour in charge of the mother from the Dolle Brouwers, free and without appointment.  Visiting at other times are possible with an appointment for groups of at least 25 persons.  The prise contains than € 2 per person but you than get a free consumption.

Wesley Van den Heuvel