Brasserie Vanuxeem
Brasserie
About this Brewery
Place: Ploegsteert
Vanuxeem was founded in Ploegsteert in 1906 by Henri Vanuxeem. The brewery originally produced pils, table beer, Bacchus, lemonade and mineral water, supplying the surrounding area. Brewing continued under the next generation until 1966, when Vanuxeem stopped brewing on site and concentrated instead on distributing beers from other breweries. Today the business remains family-run and operates from the same Ploegsteert site.
Vanuxeem is now best understood as a large drinks distributor, retailer and beer-brand owner rather than a conventional working brewery. It supplies hospitality businesses across Belgium, exports Belgian beer internationally and operates an extensive shop at its Ploegsteert headquarters, less than two kilometres from the French border.
Its principal house brand is Queue de Charrue, introduced in modern form in 1986 from an older Vanuxeem recipe. The name is a French rendering of Ploegsteert: ploeg meaning plough and steert meaning tail. The range has since expanded to include several beer styles. Vanuxeem no longer brews these beers itself; they are produced on its behalf by independent breweries in both Flanders and Wallonia.
Glasses in this collection
Curator's Note
Vanuxeem’s premises are not especially picturesque: from the outside, it is essentially a large, functional warehouse with a relatively modest shop entrance and only a handful of parking spaces immediately in front. Inside, however, the scale becomes apparent. The shop opens first onto substantial soft-drink and wine sections before reaching the main attraction: aisle after aisle of Belgian beer. The beers are grouped loosely by style — lambics, Trappist beers, fruit beers and so on — although, like the Museum itself, Vanuxeem occasionally seems happy to break its own taxonomy.
Most beers are available individually as well as in packs or crates. Above many of the beer displays sits the corresponding branded glass, also for sale and generally at very reasonable prices. I counted at least eight beer aisles before giving up trying to keep track.
Further into the warehouse are enormous bags and tubs of salty bar snacks, followed by a good spirits section. Near the tills are gift packs, particularly for Vanuxeem’s own Queue de Charrue range, often pairing beer with a glass.
This is emphatically a working drinks warehouse rather than a polished specialist boutique. Many customers were wheeling large trolleys and buying beer by the crate. For anyone interested in Belgian beer glassware, though, it is particularly rewarding: the range of branded glasses is unusually broad, the prices are sensible, and there is always the possibility of finding something unexpected on the shelves.