History
visit brussels historical places brewery
How it all started...
Tipsy Tribe is a family-owned craft brewery-distillery run by first-generation immigrants from the US and Turkey.
Our journey started under the name Tipsy Brewing before adopting the name "Tipsy Tribe" as an homage to Aylin's central Asian horseback riding ancestors (kidding not kidding). We first started brewing beer in 2016 and quickly found an interest in distilling spirits as well! We began looking for a home for Tipsy Tribe and finally found it in the hidden gem commune of Koekelberg in Brussels, Belgium.
​We decided early on in our journey to take the hard route; to build our dream from scratch and make our own beers and spirits in-house entirely.
A building with heritage
Located in the back of a 1909 maison de maitre in the vibrant commune of Koekelberg in Brussels, Belgium, the Brewstillery was over time home to many different dreams.
From what we gather, for most of the 20th century, the location was used as a simple storage area, home to numerous businesses just needing some extra space. In the early 2000’s the fun started...
Religious worshipers found the place and made it their temporary home. After unsuccessfully trying to convert the garden into a bathroom and randomly opening an emergency exit in the wall that led to the neighbor’s back yard (allegedly, of course), the group decided to preach elsewhere. We were fortunate enough to be left with some pretty cool tile artwork of a castle... or something...
One thing’s for sure though, we guess this qualifies the Brewstillery as a church... So what’s more appropriate and original than making high quality alcohol in an old church? We may not be monks but we can brew like the best of them!
We don't have records of all the different groups that called this magical location their home, but word on the street is that sometime after the evangelicals left, some very industrious renters chose to set up a marijuana growing operation at this location (again... allegedly)... Thanks to some shoddy electrical wiring, the place went up in flames, taking most of the roof with it. Strangely, the renters were never seen or heard from again... bizarre huh?
On the bright side though, the roof was brand new when we found it... (Score!)
Today...
More than 100 years after its initial construction, during our long, long, very long, too long, search for a place to brew, we stumbled across the Brewstillery and despite the sad state of it, we fell in love. We made this place our new home in 2021 and embarked on major renovation works, bringing new life to a building that had many others over the years.
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Today we are proud to be the home of the first whiskey made in Brussels and the only whiskey distillery in town.