Brouwerij De Koninck

I passed by this place a few times but never actually bothered to go in, until a couple of weeks ago; I did not take the tour and limited my visit to a few drinks in the bar, which was very spacious, crowded and sleek. Ordered with the Billy payment system and got served seconds after finishing the procedure - fastest service I have ever seen in any 'horeca' business. Moortgat clearly invested a lot of money in this place and it is clearly very popular (include bunches of drunk students and dito Dutch people as well) - an investment well spent, I suppose, but a bit too 'clean', busy and tourist-y for me personally, with the true value lying in the fact that those unlikely, experimental 'new generation' De Koninck beers rotate here and the odd Moortgat rarity can be found as well, though all well overpriced. Not a place I would recommend to the true beer connoisseur for lack of diversity, but admittedly linked to an important part of Antwerp beer history and who knows, I might just pop by again for another of those new De Koninck one-offs.

Not too bad but I do feel the tour was way overpriced.

Tijdens een wandeling langsgekomen en in het café wat gedronken, dus geen tour gedaan. Ziet er leuk uit, waarschijnlijk een voormalige voorraadschuur, maalderij of werkplaats die zoveel mogelijk in takt is gehouden. Diverse bieren van tap en ook nog wat flessen voorradig. je komt hier voor bier want eten heb ik niet gezien, afgezien van wat kaas en worst wat mijns inziens te duur verkocht wordt. Ik krijg de indruk dat men zich iets te veel op de internationale toerist richt.

In the old location of what once was the brewery with the highest turnover/surface ration in Belgium, the setting (also ideal after the sponsored brewery 'tour') is quite welcoming, so is the bottle and parafernalia shop. Everything is slick and neat, the offered beers well-known. Exception made for the infrequently appearing testbrews from the brewery itself, as well as the sometimes landed specials from Duvel-Moortgat's more exotic acquisitions. These last culminating in the recent Firestone-Walker tap takeover which must be a true first in Belgium. Unfortunately, service can be very variable, some staff are technically well-learned, if not beergeek, and additional staff (students...) have yet to learn the first syllabe of craftbeer, I'm afraid. The snacks offerings are unremarkable, but that can be remedied in the rooftop restaurant, as well if you go catering yourself in the bakery, the fantastic cheeseshop, and ultimately, in the butchershop which must be the Butchery from the Gods. If you're in the neighbourhood, hop in, you might find something interesting, and if you've got an hour to spare, the tour might be a good stopgap.

I haven’t done the tour yet which is supposed to be neat & the government added a lot of money into next to Duvel in order to stimulate tourism etc. I have been twice to the taproom / bar. Convenient to reach with the tram & very easy to find. I have lived most of my life near this brewery & it is back to smelling of wort – neat. Very modern & slick, silly giftshop & some fancy and cheese plus meat etc. Taproom is very slick; They offer what De Koninck has and big Duvel products, nothing rare but they will have the new specialif De Koninck just made one which is why I have been here twice. Sampels available, mainly non-beer geek visitors, lots of people from the NL. Nothing of note to beer geeks really, if you are not from BE you can probably find one tick here. Beers are what they are and they offer what they have. Their crowlers are a joke a) being pre-filled sometimes weeks in advance & b) being insanely expensive & c) never the specials. They are clearly not used to beer geeks, first time I needed to ask multiple times for their Test Brew, kept getting wrong beers despite them offering just one special and having a small menu, quite a mess. Hard to blame the place, they offer the beers that they have & it looks modern and clean. Just the beers are far from exciting, sometimes bad & nothing interesting for geeks.

Huge touristic place to show off DeKoninck beers. Flights are offered. I found a couple of ticks, even rare local Sours. Decent to check if there are ticks here and you are in the area, else don't bother.

Met de ganse familie langs geweest. Met is zeker een mooie brouwerij, rondleiding is mooi maar het is meer een product dan een ambacht. Het is eerder een tellertje op het rad waarop meteen duidelijk is hoeveel de nieuw dag heeft opgebracht ipv liefde voor het product. De verbruikerszaal en de bediening waren in ons geval erg tegenvallend, er werden dure hapjes verkocht waar geen score voor eten voor mogelijk was, een gemiste kans!

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