Lets start at the very Beguine, a very fine place to start.
For our first day of brewery tours, we loaded up in Serge's van and headed towards Antwerp. Not far from there, in the area of Mechelen is
Het Anker, a brewery that is on a location where beer had been brewed for over 700 years. In the 1400s, the Beguine sisters received permission to brew beer here.
Beguines and Beghards were an indigenous Catholic religious order, whose adherents performed works of mercy, which included running hospitals, baking bread for the poor and, at this particular Beguinage (convent), brewed beer.
A local volunteer took us on a tour of Het Anker. We tried to explain that we were an owner and employees of a brewery in the States, but the point got lost. Tyler especially enjoyed hearing how beer includes four basic ingredients and how yeast turns sugar to C02 and alcohol.
