In 2007 Bart Landuyt and Bart Liesenborghs came to the conclusion that they possessed the required knowledge and experience to brew their own beer and fairly quickly realised this dream.

Although our region produces many famous and less famous beers, we had to wait quite a while before Landen had its own beer. After some years of experimenting De Kale Ridders finally succeeded in making a unique beer. And since De Kale Ridders are not the only citizens of Landen that like a nice beer it was decided to commercialise it. The name of the beer refers to the rich Hesbaye region where important citizens used to be honoured with impressive burial tombs or tumuli. Even today these tumuli are visibly present in the landscape of Landen with amongst others the Borntombe in Walsbets, de Middelwinde tombe in Neerwinden, the Plattetombe in Waasmont and of course de Tombe of Pepijn in Landen.

The power and mystery surrounding these tumuli is also present in the beers produced by De Kale Ridders. The name is therefore not only a reference to the region of origin but also describes this beer brewed according traditional recipes and without any artificial additions.

De Kale Ridders use the most innovative brewing techniques, obtained through an intense collaboration with various labs of K.U.Leuven, KaHo St-Lieven and the Vlaams Instituut voor Biotechnologie (VIB). The recipes for our beers were optimised in a small own brewing installation. This installation had however insufficient capacity to serve the demand of friends and family, let alone that of the wider market. Therefore we looked to increase our production by renting capacity in another larger brewery. Already our first visit to the Proefbrouwerij convinced us. De Proefbrouwerij brews on small and middle large scale according the stringiest rules for hygiene, food safety and brewing techniques. Our collaboration with De Proefbrouwerij guarantees an end product of the highest quality and with a minimal variance between the different brews.