neau beer from Eupen

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Art & Beer & Detlev

Back from the Offline Zone 🍺

Okay, confession time: Detlev went a bit quiet. Not because of a lack of stories, but because of roughly 2,599 other things on the to-do list. At some point, something had to get cut, and this time it was the blog and Hive.

Than, a few days later even the "beer saturday bot" for calculating the challenge stopped working and we couldn't fix it so I got p!ssed about that even more. Btw. any help on this is very welcome!

But let’s be honest: a good beer always finds its way back into my life, and so does this blog and his owner and Hive lover.

Here’s the quick catch-up:

Photos?
Plenty. My camera roll is full and begging to be shared, so get ready for a content wave.

Business?
Lots of new projects got off the ground, and a surprising amount of it with AI as my sidekick. Some days I wasn’t sure who was assisting whom.

Egypt?
Survived it, and solidly. Pyramids still standing, me too. Fish is still there and diving was great.

Next trips?
Already planned. Why? Simple: my WorldMappin map needs more pins. A traveler with blank spots on his map is like a beer glass that’s half empty. Unacceptable.

So where do we restart? Not with pyramids, not with business talk, but with a quiet Sunday visit to a gallery. A completely different kind of gallery: no white-cube museum vibes, no whispering guards. Think old factory walls, black-and-white art and an artist who used to design buildings.

More on that in the next post. After that, we’ll see what the coming weeks bring. Spoiler: probably more beer, more pins, and more pictures.

Stay tuned.

Hey Hive Family
Have a good beer and some art
and let us travel the world again

Néau: Eupen’s Old Name, Poured Into a Glass

Eupen has had a few names over the centuries. The French once called it Néau. Then history moved on, the borders shuffled, and the name quietly slipped out of use.

Maurice Collard brought it back in the best way possible: on a beer label.

Since 2018, Maurice has been brewing his own beer right here in Eupen. No giant brewhouse, no corporate marketing department, just a guy who decided the capital of German-speaking Belgium deserved a beer with a bit of attitude. Naming it after the town’s forgotten French alias is a nice touch, half history lesson and half wink at the locals.

^{Pic of Maurice Collard by brauerei-neau.com}

And then there’s Hygge, the Christmas beer. Most brewers get their inspiration from hops. Maurice got his from a deer salami. He sat down with the Eupen butcher Metzgerei Klein, tasted their venison salami, and thought: what if the beer had those spices too? The result is a stronger but still pale beer, lightly smoky, with a festive hit of spice. It’s probably the only beer in Belgium that owes its existence to a sausage.

Only 600 bottles were made, which is less “mass production” and more “if you blink, it’s gone.” Hygge is the Danish word for cosiness and togetherness, and that’s exactly how it’s meant to be drunk: with friends, with family, near a fire, and preferably with a slice of that salami on the side.

Néau: a forgotten name, a local brewer, and a Christmas beer that teamed up with a butcher. Eupen, we see you. Read more at https://brauerei-neau.com/ 🍺

A Sunday, Two Architects and an Old Cloth Factory 🎨

Remember when I said we’d restart with a gallery visit? Here it is. And no, it wasn’t one of those whisper-quiet white-cube museums where you feel like you should apologise for breathing.

The place: ART-Loft Eupen
The ART-Loft is tucked into the historic administration building of the former Peters cloth factory, founded in 1841 on the banks of the Weser. That’s the little Eupen Weser, not the one in Bremen. Where clerks once counted bolts of wool, you now find canvases, light and old walls with plenty of stories in them.

The doors open on the first Sunday of every month as part of the Open Art Sunday art route. You stroll in, look around, chat with the artists and nobody pushes a price list into your hand. Perfect Sunday material.

The host: Boogie Hebel - https://boogie-hebel.eu/

Boogie is a former architect who switched sides and now makes contemporary art in black and white only. No pastels, no “let’s add a little teal”, just form, surface and contrast. Abstract, geometric, figurative, and always precise. His motto: “art follows architecture.” When you’ve spent decades drawing floor plans, you know the difference between a line and a good line.

The guest: Tanja Elmazović - https://tanja-elmazovic-art.de/
And because one architect-turned-artist apparently wasn’t enough, Boogie invited Tanja Elmazović from Aachen as his guest. Yes, she’s an architect too. Something in the water around here?

Tanja is Boogie’s colourful counterpart. For her, painting is a sixth sense that sorts out everyday impressions. Most of us need a beer for that. 🍺 Her figurative paintings show people as they are: imperfect, a bit fragmented, marked by life, often lost in their own thoughts. Around them she paints colour spaces that wrap the figures like an aura. The Aachener Zeitung compared her work to frescoes in old Italian churches.

^{Pic by tanja-elmazovic-art.de}

Her newer series go in a different direction: lines create spaces, and people fill them. She builds up layers of acrylic, partly hidden behind a white veil. Spoken like a true architect. Back home in Aachen she’s part of the producer gallery Artikel 5, and her track record so far is 11 exhibitions and 11 completed series.

Black & white meets full colour
The two have shared walls before, in the group show “Zwischenmensch” in Aachen. In the ART-Loft you see the contrast up close: Boogie’s monochrome precision next to Tanja’s colourful, human figures. Two architects, two completely different answers to the same question: what happens when you stop designing buildings and start designing feelings?

My verdict: a historic factory, two strong artists, great conversations, and a Sunday well spent. Highly recommended if you’re anywhere near Eupen on a first Sunday of the month.

Tanja Elmazovic & Boogie Hebel

This sunday at the Art Loft in Eupen, we met the owner of the living art galery and another artist - Tanja Elmazovic see her Website here. While spending some time there, the local brewery neau delivered some of their well made beers.

Art and Beer is great for a sunday afternoon. ;-)

Boogie Hebel: Art Follows Architecture (and Sometimes Overtakes It)

Some architects retire and take up golf. Boogie Hebel picked up a brush and went monochrome.

The former architect now makes contemporary art in black and white only. No pastels, no “let’s add a touch of teal.” Just form, surface and contrast. His work moves between abstract compositions, geometric structures and figurative pieces, all built on the same idea: strip it down and let the composition do the talking. Very architect, really. If you’ve spent decades drawing floor plans, you know the difference between a line and a good line.

His motto is “art follows architecture.” Fitting, because his studio is a piece of architecture with a story of its own.

The ART-Loft Eupen sits in the historic administration building of the former Peters cloth factory, founded in 1841 on the banks of the Weser. That’s the Eupen Weser, the little river, not the big one in Bremen. Where clerks once counted bolts of wool cloth, Boogie now counts brushstrokes. Eupen’s textile past, in black and white. You couldn’t script it better.

Better still, you can actually get in. The ART-Loft is part of the Open Art Sunday art route, which means the doors open on the first Sunday of every month. You can wander through, look at the art, chat with the artist, and soak up the old-factory atmosphere without anyone handing you a price list at the door. Boogie also invites guest artists to show their work alongside his own, so every visit can bring something new.

Boogie Hebel: an architect who swapped blueprints for black and white, a studio in a 19th-century cloth factory, and an open door once a month. Eupen, you’ve got taste. 🖤🤍

Peiffer in Membach: From Waffles to Beer to Campers 🍺🧇

Close to Eupen is my beloved beer refilling station. It's called Peiffer see more at https://www.peiffer.be/news/

They have big big bottles

but as well a lot different beers

and even more

Some family businesses do one thing and do it well. The Peiffer family in Membach, just a stone’s throw from Eupen, looked at that idea and said: why stop at one?

It all started with a bakery in the heart of Membach, run by the family for several generations. Bread, cakes, the classics. Then in 2002, Augustin Peiffer, son of Gaston, decided that the humble Liège waffle (the one with the crunchy pearl sugar) deserved the same respect as chocolate, fries and beer. So he created Augustin’s Waffles, mainly for export, so people far beyond Belgium can get a proper Liège waffle anytime, anywhere. Belgian soft power, one waffle at a time.

But a bakery and waffles weren’t enough. Next came Peiffer Drink, a drinks trade that has kept countless parties and festivals in the region from running dry. If you’ve been to a local party around here, there’s a decent chance your beer came from Membach.

And then they added:
🍕 a café with original Italian pizzas
🍽️ a brasserie with homemade cooking
🚐 a camper parking spot, because why not move into tourism as well?

Their motto: