Find out more about Brussels Beer City’s new weekly series, “A History Of Brussels Beer In 50 Objects” here.

Object #25 - Dog Ale Matchbox

20th century

Brewery Life

In post-1918 Brussels, German beer was out and English beer was in. That may be an oversimplification of the city’s beer industry in the years immediately following WWI. Breweries in Brussels did continue to make Bavarian Lager beers throughout the 1920s. And English beer’s presence in the city long-predated post-war Anglomania. London’s Whitbread brewery for example established their own bottling and distribution centre in Molenbeek in 1907, and in 1913 Belgium imported 154,037 hectolitres of Pale Ales, Stouts and Scotch Ales. 

Following the Germans withdrawal in November 1918, English beer’s popularity resumed its upward trajectory. On Christmas Day 1919 the Royal Greenwich café at the Botanique was advertising “the celebrated beers Pale Ale, Stout Worthington, as well as the Scotch Ale [and] Christmas Ale Mac-Ewan [sic])”. Trade magazines and newspapers were full of colourful advertisements for Bass Pale-Ale and Stout alongside Campbell and Co.’s Royal Edinburgh Christmas Beer, and by 1920 annual English beer imports reached 159,750 hectolitres. 

Then, all of a sudden, imports plummeted. One brewery claimed to be behind their precipitous decline: Brasserie Wielemans-Ceuppens in Vorst. Having moved from brewing traditional Lambic and Faro to Munich and Petit Bavière in the 1880s, by 1927 the Wielemans brothers were proclaiming their Crown Trees Stout and Scotch as “vanquishers of the foreigners” that were almost single-handedly responsible for reducing annual English beer imports to a paltry 71,000 hectolitres. Wielemans offered what Brussels’ drinkers wanted - English beer - but at a more competitive price point and delivered through its extensive network of Brussels cafés. 

Brewing in Brussels had suffered grievously during the war. But by the early 1920s production capacity in the capital was recovering, and Wielemans were not alone in seeking the lucrative market share of the Pale Ales and Stouts of their English rivals. Brasserie du Marly, on the canal in Neder-over-Heembeek, found success with Navy’s Scotch Ale, Bark Ale and Sweet Stout. In Molenbeek the Vandenheuvel brewery brewed a Stout V.D.B. and Christmas Holly Stout.

Schaarbeek’s Brasserie Roelants (or Roelandts), founded around 1900 and located near the railway sidings in the Collignon neighbourhood, also hitched their post-war recovery to the English bandwagon. Roelants produced a diverse range of beers - alongside Faro, Bock and Munich, they brewed a Scotch and Big Ben Stout, made “according [to] English process” according to the beer’s label. But perhaps their most popular, or at least most advertised, English-style beer was their Speciale Dog Ale.

Lacking the industrial scale of the Wielemans, Roelants pitched themselves as a David among goliaths. Dog Ale was their slingshot, the “perfect imitation of the English Pale Ale”, brewed by Roelants “[t]o English tastes but Belgium-made and sold at Belgian prices”. Contemporary advertisements claimed the beer would make English-brewed Pale Ale drinkers jealous of Dog Ale drinkers, who in turn would become condescendingly sympathetic towards these rubes for not choosing a Roelants. And ever-present in the ad copy the Dog Ale drinker was accompanied by the Englishman’s best friend, the loyal British bulldog.