A Farm Brewery

In between rainstorms last weekend we ventured to the farm brewery of Hof Ten Dormaal in Tildonk. This brewery opened a bit more than a year ago. Pulling up to the farm there was a tractor parked out front and various farm implements in view. The brewery is actually housed in one of the farm buildings and they use grain from the surrounding fields in the brewing. This is a genuine farmhouse brewery where they produce and bottle everything on site. The tasting room shares space with the mash tun and brew kettle along with an old coal stove.

Hof Ten Dormaal currently makes an amber ale of 7.5% abv and a blonde ale of 8%. The brewer Andre Janssens says his focus is not on making a large range of beers but on doing just a few really well. The blonde has a nice bitterness to it with a dry yeasty character. The amber has a faint sweetness with a touch of coriander spice. The beers are bottle conditioned at the brewery before being shipped out. It was a great to see a true farm brewery in action (they actually were finishing up a bottling run when we arrived) and to taste beers not just locally but made using local ingredients.