We have close relationships with brewers here and abroad. One thing we noticed as a difference between many/most US craft brewers and the Belgium brewers we visited is that all of the Belgians had their own labs. We rarely see this in the US microbrewers.


In Belgium, they have colleges that award a four-year degree in Brewery Engineering. This is very serious work to them. We pointed out that US brewers seem to be a little more experimental, a little more entreprenurial, in their crafting of beers than the Belgians. But the Belgians are very disciplined in their brew process. With the handling of lambics which use wild, airborne yeasts, one can better appreciate the need for rigorous controls unless one wants highly variable beers.