The parades may not take place for the second year in a row, but they did not like that at Bouwclub De Dijkrakkers from Fijnaart for another year. And so they’ve been brewing their own beer for the past few weeks. “It does taste like more.” With the beer they hope to recoup a large part of the costs they have incurred in the past year.
The ball started rolling in December, says builder Johan de Keijzer. “Then we felt the downpour again. Again no parades and therefore no building a car again.” But let the heads hang? “Certainly not, we want to show ourselves.”
That’s how the fun idea arose for Johan. “Your own beer, how nice is that? I called local brewery De Toekomst and they were immediately enthusiastic. That same evening everything was in pitchers and pitchers.”
Still, the hardest part of the process had yet to begin: the taste. “We have a club of about thirty people. Then it is still quite a thing to choose a type of beer.” But miraculously, it went surprisingly smoothly. “The brewery gave us a number of existing beers. We tried it at Christmas. The family is also involved for a while.”
In the end, the choice fell on a blond beer. “The Blonde Dyke Rakker, he will be called. At the moment the beer is still maturing, but in a week and a half the brewing builders can finally open the first bottle. An exciting moment, you might think. “Mwa… We secretly tasted something when the beer came out of the barrel”, Johan laughs. “We have full confidence in it.”
And the blood creeps where it can’t go with the creatives. “We built a large doll in the shape of a beer bottle. And now we are busy assembling wooden boxes, which the bottles can fit in later.”
All in all, it is such a success that Johan does not rule out a successor to the Blonde Dijkrakker. “It does taste like more. But let’s not beat around the bush: this year we also hope to recoup a mountain of costs with the sale of the beer. Let’s hope that won’t be necessary next year and we can just drive around with a nice car.”
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