La Source Beer Co: Brussels, poured straight from the tank
Brussels is a city that rewards curiosity. Walk far enough past the postcard centre and you’ll hit the kind of spaces where the city’s next chapter is being written in real time: big industrial halls, plants everywhere, a buzz of small producers, and—if you’re lucky—the clean hiss of beer being poured directly from a stainless-steel tank.
That’s La Source Beer Co, tucked inside BE-HERE in Laeken. A brewpub that took one idea and pushed it until it became an identity: drink it straight from the source.
Inside the brewery
A brewpub built around freshness
La Source was created by brewer Mathieu Huygens and his partner Nina Carleer, and it set up at BE-HERE in 2019. The bar runs with 20 taps, and the signature flex is that five taps are installed directly on their service tanks (600L each)—ultra-fresh beer, with the shortest possible distance between fermentation vessel and glass.
The Brussels Bulletin captured the logic perfectly: with the beer going straight from vat to customer, you cut out the enemies of flavour, oxygen, light, heat—so the beer lands in your glass the way the brewer intended.
This commitment to the "short circuit" is absolute. La Source adheres to a strict no export policy outside of Belgium. They favor direct delivery within Brussels and sales on-site to ensure quality. It’s a simple idea, but it hits a deeper truth about fermentation: the “magic” doesn’t end when the yeast finishes its work. Beer stays alive. It oxidises, it evolves, it reacts. Freshness is part of the craft.
Fermentation, turned into a live show
At most bars, fermentation is invisible—something that happened somewhere else. At La Source, it’s part of the room’s architecture: shiny tanks behind the bar, a lineup that changes with the season, and a style range that invites you to taste fermentation as a spectrum.
Early reporting on La Source’s opening described a menu spanning stouts and porters, a triple, hop-forward beers, and a selection of sours. To achieve this variety, they source ingredients with precision. While they use about 1,500kg of hops annually, leaning into the bold, aromatic profiles of the USA (Yakima Chief) and New Zealand (Freestyle Hops) for their IPAs. They keep a foot in Belgian soil by working with t'Hoppecruyt in Poperinge for local hops.
And if you’re following our fermentation tour, that’s exactly why La Source belongs in the lineup. It shows fermentation in motion: clean ferments, expressive hop aromatics, and the deeper, funkier end of the pool where wild microbes and time become ingredients.
Inside the brewery
A sustainable mindset (without the sermon)
La Source also fits the “future of food” conversation because it treats sustainability as design, not decoration.
It starts with the grain. The brewery goes through approximately 18 tonnes of malt a year, prioritizing local partnerships with Belgian malthouses like Dingemans and BelgoMalt.
But the real fermentation mastery happens with the yeast. While sourced from WHC Lab in Scotland, very little volume is actually ordered. Why? Because the brewers reuse their yeast for at least 10 generations. This isn't just cost-saving; it's a biological skill that allows the culture to adapt and minimizes waste.
In an interview at launch, Huygens talked about trying to run the business as “green” as possible, and one concrete choice stood out: selling beers in cans, with designs by Carleer. The argument wasn’t aesthetic; it was practical: cans are lighter than bottles, so transport can have a lower footprint.
That same piece quotes Huygens describing La Source as a “full-circle brewpub”, a phrase that clicks when you’re standing inside BE-HERE, surrounded by producers who treat “waste” as a starting point for the next product.
More than beer: a cultural living room in a warehouse
One reason La Source works so well as a tour stop is that it’s not a sterile “tasting room.” It’s a place people actually use.
Multiple write-ups describe the setting as relaxed and welcoming, and Brussels Times notes how the brewery has hosted concerts—a reminder that fermentation cultures and music cultures often share the same instinct: independent, local, communal. Even the bar setup is designed for real life—La Source’s own site calls out the space and the fact that kids have room to move, which matters in a city where great food is often woven into everyday routines.
Entrance to the brewery
Why La Source is part of our tour
Brussels fermentation is often told through heritage: lambic, gueuze, old barrels, spontaneous cultures. That story matters—and we love it. But the city’s fermentation future is happening in places like BE-HERE, where modern craft meets circular thinking and cross-pollination.
La Source sits right in that ecosystem. Brussels Beer City linked La Source’s arrival to the wider BE-HERE fermentation cluster (alongside Fermenthings), and BX1 reported on the same neighborhood energy—products, collaborations, shared momentum.
So when we bring you to La Source, we’re not just offering “a beer stop.” We’re showing what fermentation looks like when it’s treated as a living system: fresh beer straight from the tank, local ingredients, smart yeast management, experiments on tap, and a community space that makes craft feel accessible.
In a city obsessed with tradition, La Source proves that innovation can still be deeply Brussels, unpretentious, social, and powered by microbes.