Brasserie Taymans Brouwerij

Taymans is a striking little brewery on a quiet residential street, barely five minutes’ walk from Jette railway station through a small park — part of which once belonged to the original brewery. The present operation occupies part of the historic family site and is small even by Belgian microbrewery standards. It opens directly onto the pavement and feels slightly improbable in its surroundings, but very welcome.

The six Taymans brothers have restored the surviving buildings carefully and with obvious affection.

The brewery usually opens to the public only about once a month, with dates advertised on social media. I found one of these openings rather accidentally on Instagram and booked through the brewery website. Booking took very little effort, although visitors can also simply turn up to buy beer. Because we had booked, however, we were fortunate enough to be shown around by François Taymans, one of the six brothers.

François talked us through the family history, including the brewery’s earlier roots in Molenbeek and the move to Jette, when the family shifted from supplying a wholesaler to brewing, bottling and selling beer themselves. We saw the small modern brewing and bottling equipment before climbing into the loft, where lambic is exposed to naturally occurring yeasts in the air. François explained that the space is deliberately left less than pristine because the resident microflora form part of the process.

From there we went underground. The brothers excavated the basement when they revived the brewery in 2022, creating space for the wooden barrels in which their lambic matures for up to three years. Production has increased slowly since the restart, but remains tiny. At the back of the cellar sit remnants of the earlier brewery: old barrels, bottles, signs, crates and even their grandfather’s brewing coat, all gathering a respectable layer of dust. François readily acknowledged that Taymans is becoming part museum as well as working brewery.

The scale of the operation becomes still more remarkable when you discover that brewing is not the brothers’ day job. Each has another career and the brewery occupies their weekends. Several of them will gather early on a Saturday and brew through much of the day. One brother is the qualified Master Brewer; the others, François admitted cheerfully, have learned largely by doing.

We finished with a taste of their Saison-Lambic, an unusual meeting of two Belgian traditions. To my palate it was a lighter and more approachable expression of lambic than many examples of the style. Taymans also produces Saison Jetse/Jettoise, Bruxelles IPA and Jett’Amber in 33cl bottles, while its lambic and gueuze are sold in corked-and-capped 75cl bottles.

Taymans is tiny, but it is run with real care and conviction. The brothers would like to expand production and see their beers sold more widely, but not at the expense of quality. For now, this remains very much a micro-business — and, in my view, a rather important one within the Brussels brewing landscape. Something genuinely historic has been revived here, rather than merely rebranded. It will be fascinating to see what Taymans looks like in another ten years.

For the moment, unless you are in or around Jette, you may struggle to encounter its beers casually in a bar, restaurant or bottle shop. That is all the more reason to seek out one of the brewery’s occasional openings if you have the chance.