I am Jef Goetelen, or simply Brewer Jef. Sounds better, and in a way it just tells you what it’s all about.
Already a decennia ago, we poured our first own-brewed Trappist through the drain. The tasting went oh so well, but the brewing it selve ... , young as we were.
The love for the liquid Gold never fainted, the brewing however I putted on a low ebb.
After a deadly silence of 15 years in 2001 I decided to go to school again and finish the study of brewmaster.

Blood – or is it beer- is thicker than water I would say.
The successive trials did work out well.
We heave a Dutch expression. It was the drop that let’s overflow the bucket - or better – the brewkettle.

I had the chance to experiment in a 200 l vessel from a brewing guild in Mol.
Up at 5 AM and home at 10Pm were quite some long days, even for a hobby.
The thought of brewing closer at home was already playing in the back of my head. And ...
It became very close. The house beside mine. And the full garden became a brewery.

And so the name ’t Hofbrouwerijke was born, sometimes meaning garden brewery, but you can also see it as the brewery serving the royal court (also called “hof” in Flamish).