Outside Brewery

Purifying water and brewing beer was once something that people did themselves. In 2008, when brewing for a hobby was a lot less popular than it is today, Henriette Waal designed the Buitenbrouwerij (Dutch for ‘Outside Brewery’), a mobile mini-brewery that made it possible to brew local and unique beers anywhere with guest brewers. The Outside Brewery purifies water from ditches and adds wild plants, allowing drinkers to taste the landscape in their beer. To date, various landscapes with their own uniquely tasting water have given rise to beer recipes with telling names such as Sloterplas Blond and Gracht, made from water taken from Amsterdam canals, and Zeebier, the world’s first beer made from seawater in collaboration with an amateur brewer on Terschelling Island.

The mobile installation consists of a number of hop boilers at various heights, so that brews can be transferred without a pump or heavy lifting. An extra water filter for micro-organisms is integrated. The boilers can be tilted while suspended so that the grains can be discarded.

The Outside Brewery has been travelling for over a decade to various venues, including exhibitions at the National Maritime Museum in Amsterdam, Pioneer Works in New York 2014 and Cultural Capital 2010 in the Ruhr Area, as to international events such as the IGA international horticulture exhibition in Berlin and Dutch festivals such as Into The Great Wide Open and Museum Night. The Outside Brewery can be rented through Rent-a-Project and is not only a steaming attraction but also an opportunity to experience the surroundings in unique fashion.