INFO
Beer bottle, winner Brand Pilsbrouw competition
2012
glass, metal, papier
21 x 5.5 cm
and
Table tent, winner Brand Pilsbrouw competition
2012
papier, bedrukt
17 x 13,5 x 9,5 cm
Winning microbrewers
The Brand beer-brewing competition was an annual event between 2012 and 2019. Homebrewers could enter their own recipes and win an opportunity to be temporarily included in Brand's Dutch product range. Heineken's subsidiary, Brand, represents small-scale, craft beer within the Heineken portfolio – perfect for a competition like this.
This is the winning beer bottle and the billboard on which Heineken announced the first winner in 2012: hobby brewer Marc Vriends, with his pilsner creation ’t Mag, which translates as 'It's allowed.’
Southern tradition
In 1989, Heineken acquired the Koninklijke Bierbrouwerij Brand NV in the South Limburg village of Wijlre. Although not the oldest brewery in the Netherlands, as was long assumed, it is one with a history stretching back to the Middle Ages. The founder of the brewery on the current site, Frederik Brand, was a 19th-century contemporary of Heineken's founder, Gerard Adriaan Heineken. After the takeover, Heineken decided to respect southern traditions and focus on artisanal brewing at Brand.
Microbrewery
In 2019, exactly 82 years after the opening of Brand's original tasting room 't Kelderke, a new tasting room was opened in an old rectory on the brewery grounds. This was the last year that Brand held the brewing competition. The final winner was Piet Remiers' winter beer. The following year, in 2020, Brand announced it was discontinuing the competition due to plans to build a microbrewery on the site, to create a 'breeding ground' for innovative speciality beers.
Homebrewers
In 2022, it emerged that the entire Brand Brewery would continue as a sustainable microbrewery, producing only special craft beers, such as Brand UP and Brand Imperator. Large-scale production of the popular, award-winning Brand Pilsner had already moved to the Heineken breweries in Den Bosch and Zoeterwoude. Other collaborations with home brewers are expected to emerge in the new microbrewery.
Fluctuating success
What happened in the end? Marc Vriens’ pilsner was a one-off beer in a 'very limited edition.' Bart Engel's Saison, Dennis Pancras and Niels Bosman's Porter, and Jens van Reil's Gose is almost nowhere to be found. But you can find Jeroen Free's IPA and Session IPA fairly regularly and Jacques Bertens' Zwaar Blond became a huge commercial success as Brand Blond.