Qualla: Duvel Moortgat Brewery

Duvel Moortgat Brewery: Introduction

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Amin, CC BY-SA 4.0. In the early 1920s, a man took a long drink of the new Moortgat ale and reportedly said, "nen echten duvel" - a real devil. The brewers, four years removed from the end of the First World War, had been calling their flagship beer Victory Ale. They thought about it, looked at the 8.5 percent alcohol the drinker was responding to, and changed the name. Duvel was Brabantian dialect for devil, and the bottle has carried that name ever since. The brewery itself sits in Breendonk in Antwerp Province, has been controlled by the same family since 1871, and quietly now owns breweries in five countries.

Read more: Duvel Moortgat Brewery on Qualla

Image: Amin | CC BY-SA 4.0

Duvel Moortgat Brewery: The Moortgat Family

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit User Jeantosti, CC BY-SA 3.0. Jan-Leonard Moortgat founded the brewery in 1871. He came from a brewing family in Steenhuffel, a village in the Flemish Brabant farmland north of Brussels, and set up in the neighboring hamlet of Breendonk. The third generation took over in the 1950s. By the early 1970s the brew...

Read more: Duvel Moortgat Brewery on Qualla

Image: User Jeantosti | CC BY-SA 3.0

Duvel Moortgat Brewery: Scottish Yeast and American Hops

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Paul Hermans, CC BY-SA 4.0. What goes into Duvel is closer to a relic than a recipe. Albert Moortgat, Jan-Leonard's son, travelled through the United Kingdom just after the First World War and brought home a culture of Scottish yeast. That same yeast strain - propagated, guarded, but never replaced - still ...

Read more: Duvel Moortgat Brewery on Qualla

Image: Paul Hermans | CC BY-SA 4.0

Duvel Moortgat Brewery: The Quiet Empire

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ohnoitsjamie, CC BY-SA 3.0. Most beer drinkers know Duvel. Fewer know how much of their cellar comes from the same parent company. In 1997, Duvel Moortgat was a founding investor in Brewery Ommegang in Cooperstown, New York, a Belgian-style craft brewery run by the American importers who had been carrying D...

Read more: Duvel Moortgat Brewery on Qualla

Image: Ohnoitsjamie | CC BY-SA 3.0

Duvel Moortgat Brewery: Vedett and the Village Brewers

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Paul Hermans, CC BY-SA 3.0. The second-best-known beer to come out of Breendonk is probably Vedett, a pilsener Albert Moortgat first brewed in 1945. It spent decades as an unfashionable working-class lager before being relaunched in 2003 as a kind of self-aware urban hipster brand - the kind that lets custo...

Read more: Duvel Moortgat Brewery on Qualla

Image: Paul Hermans | CC BY-SA 3.0