Struise Brouwers to Get Own Brewhouse.

Among the most popular brewers in geekdom, Struise is nevertheless not a brewery at all. For the past few years Urbain, Carlo and Co. have been brewing on the equipment at Deca in Vleteren, just a few minutes drive from the Sint-Sixtus abbey in Westvleteren. The beers didn't seem to worry about the arrangement and usually got rave reviews anyway. Just the same, brewing on someone else's kit was never an ideal path to long-term survival.

The word this weekend is that Struise is finally planning to get a house of their own. Head brewer Urbain Coutteau told me Friday that they were in the "building out" process for new digs in nearby Oostvleteren. Some of the kit will come from their "field brewery" at the Struise farm in Lo. I assume the ostriches are staying put, though.

That seems to me the bigger news coming out of an awkward situation in Maine. That's where Struise had been working in cooperation with Jen and Chris Lively (of Ebenezer's fame) to open a new brewpub to be called Pannepot Café. Now it will be called something else and Struise will have no involvement. The split does not appear to have been amicable, but I'm not sure that fact is either relevant or interesting to most of us.

More interesting are the facts that some popular brewers will be getting their own home, and that the owners of a popular pub will be opening a second location—also bound to be much loved by Belgian beer geeks—later this summer in Brunswick, Maine. The new name hasn't been announced. Best of luck to all of them.