It is said that on the night of January 27 1687, a man under the influence of several beers stepped out of a café in Mechelen. Looking up, the man saw yellow-reddish lights and smoke emanating from the top of the city’s cathedral, Saint Rumbold’s.
The man alarmed the neighbours and the city council was called in haste, organising an effort to extinguish the blaze above them. Buckets of water were passed hand to hand by Mechelaars in one long chain up the tower stairs as they frantically tried to douse the flames.
But at the top, there was no fire. What they thought had been smoke was the backlit haze of a full moon’s yellow-reddish glow shining brightly behind low clouds. It was all a terrible mistake. In the following days, the city’s inhabitants tried to keep the event a secret, but soon Brusseliers and Antwerpenaars found out what had happened and ridiculed the Mechelaars for their drunken stupidity. They called inhabitants of Mechelen the maneblussers, or moon extinguishers, a slight which, 337 years later, is still used as a nickname for Mechelaars.
The last remaining brewery
Charles Leclef is a maneblusser. He is tall, moderately built, and dresses smart casual – jeans, shirt, and jacket – sporting a mop of floppy dusty blond hair, and a relaxed, disarming demeanour. He was born and bred in Mechelen, and grew up on the grounds of his Uncle’s brewery, Het Anker, on the city’s Guido Gezellelaan.
There had been other breweries in Mechelen – once as many as 30 - but by the early 1980s, even a large brewing company such as Brouwerij Lamot (once a lager behemoth) had been picked off by ambitious giants Bass and Piedboeuf, with production moved away from the city in 1994. Het Anker was soon the last remaining brewery in Mechelen.
Charles Leclef
When Leclef was a child, Het Anker’s Belgian Dark Ale, Gouden Carolus, was one of the most respected specialty beers in Belgium. Leclef’s grandfather Charles Van Breedam had named the brand after Emperor Charles V who ruled Europe from Mechelen in the 1500s (it was also the name of the golden coins the Emperor designated as currency in the city).
But Leclef’s grandfather Charles Van Breedam died unexpectedly, at the age of 62. His successor was Leclef’s uncle Michel Van Breedam, who despite being a competent brewmaster, did not possess strong management skills. The brewery fell into disrepair. The beers suffered, as did the reputation of the brewery.
Mechelen was once the seat of European power in the Middle Ages, with rich histories of tapestry and lace, wood carving and sculpture, and the carillon musical instrument. It boasted fabulous architecture – there are more listed buildings per square metre in Mechelen than in Bruges. But Mechelen itself was in poor health at the time when Michel Van Breedam owned Het Anker.
The city had numerous negative records such as the dirtiest city in Belgium and the city with the highest crime rate. One international organisation wrote that it was a “blot” on the Belgian landscape.
In 1990, when Leclef was just 24 years old, his uncle Michel Van Breedam stood down from running Brouwerij Het Anker. Van Breedam’s children – Leclef’s cousins – had no desire to take the brewery on, mostly because they wanted to pursue careers in other industries, but also because the brewery was run-down and worn-out, in financial ruin, and on the verge of filing for bankruptcy.
Sources at Het Anker describe the brewery at that time as being “clinically dead”. The Belgian broadsheet newspaper De Tijd wrote that the site of the brewery was “een kankervlek in de stad”: “a cancer stain on the city.”
The family toyed with the idea of asking an outsider to buy the brewery. Leclef was concerned. “But then the soul would be away,” he says. In 1990, after completing studies in Applied Economic Science at KU Leuven, Leclef took over simply because no-one else in the family would, becoming the fifth generation of the Van Breedam-Leclef family to lead Brouwerij Het Anker.
If Leclef failed to save the brewery, it would mean an end to 118 years of family heritage. Most importantly, it would be a kick in the gut to all those city inhabitants who had worked at, partnered with, and supported Het Anker across Mechelen. Their pride was on the line. And the maneblussers were tired of being a laughing stock.
Lifting the Anker
When Leclef took over Het Anker in 1990, he inherited its history. In the 1400s, a semi-monastic community of religious women – the Mechelen Beguinage – brewed beer on the site to comfort the sick and dying who were in their care. When they eventually vacated the buildings in 1865, it was taken into the ownership of Louis Van Breedam (Van Breedam was the surname of Leclef’s mother).
The name of the brewery translates literally as The Anchor and there are several stories about the name’s provenance. One is that it is a maritime reference to the Antwerp sea port. Another is that it comes from the Dutch verb ‘verankeren’, meaning to firmly secure in position or provide a basis or foundation. Most likely, it was as a mark of respect to the famous Mechelen maltster and brewer of the 1300s, Jan In Den Anker.
Leclef also inherited the catastrophic problems of the brewery, especially relating to neglected production equipment and inadequate financial planning. Faced with the challenge of how to save Brouwerij Het Anker, young Charles Leclef vowed to draw upon the history of the brewery, and the pride of Mechelaars.
The brewery
He entered into short-term commercial brewing relationships with other breweries (with Riva between 1991-1993 and the Anthony Martin brewery group between 1995-1997) so that he could scrape together enough finance to improve the brewing and packaging equipment. It required intelligent negotiation and people skills. As a brand building exercise and additional source of income, he opened Het Anker to visitors at a time when few breweries in Belgium were doing so (Het Anker receives about 25,000 visitors per year).
Importantly, Leclef doubled down on the Gouden Carolus, renaming it Gouden Carolus Classic and introducing a range of line extensions in the 2000s, including Gouden Carolus Tripel, Gouden Carolus Ambrio, Gouden Carolus Hopsinjoor, Gouden Carolus U.L.T.R.A., Gouden Carolus Christmas and Gouden Carolus Indulgence. In 2009, Leclef introduced a Belgian Blonde Ale of 5.8% ABV to the line-up, an easier-drinking, more approachable option for those who might find the Gouden Carolus Tripel too intense as an everyday beer. He called it Manneblusser.
Every year on February 24, the birthday of Emperor Charles V, Het Anker brews a special high alcohol ale called Gouden Carolus Cuvée van de Keizer Imperial Dark – the Grand Cru of the Emperor, a beer that has garnered a cult following. One variant, the Gouden Carolus Cuvée van de Keizer Whisky Infused, would win the Consumers Trophy of the annual Zythos beer festival in Belgium on three consecutive occasions. The feat demonstrated that Het Anker could not only provide the everyday beer for the working Mechelaar like the Maneblusser Belgian Ale, but also serve as the darling of the beer geek.
In other words, Leclef brought the brewery back from the brink. Bart Somers, Mechelen’s mayor since 2001, had known Leclef since they were children, witnessed how Leclef had saved Mechelen’s brewery and beers and brought pride back to its inhabitants. Recognisiing that Leclef’s business connections and negotiation skills would be an asset to the Mechelen city council, Somers asked him to run for local office.
But Leclef wasn’t a politician, and he didn’t want to align with any political party. Besides, he was way too busy managing his family brewery. Het Anker needed new equipment in the brewhouse and the packaging hall again, and Leclef needed to find a way to secure additional finance.
Pride of Mechelen
In 2016, Leclef says, a Dutch private equity investment group called Waterland offered to invest large sums of money in Het Anker in exchange for a controlling stake in the business. Waterland was creating a portfolio of respected Belgian family breweries such as the producer of Tripel Karmeliet – Brouwerij Bosteels – in which they had already acquired a large stake. The pitch to Leclef was that Het Anker would occupy a key position in that portfolio.
Leclef needed the funds but felt uncomfortable partnering with Waterland. Instead, he asked for a meeting with his bank, BNP Paribas Fortis, with whom Leclef had forged a strategic financial partnership over 30 years. Leclef had learned from family mistakes in the past that he should think longterm, and eventually was able to strike a deal that would give the bank a minority shareholding in Het Anker in exchange for investment. Thanks to their ongoing relationship, Leclef was able to build a clear exit strategy and protections for the family ownership of Het Anker into the deal.
Bosteels was eventually off-loaded by Waterland to AB InBev, the largest brewing company in the world, through its ZX Ventures division. It was the end of 225 years of family ownership for the Bosteels family. Het Anker, on the other hand, had avoided that fate and continued to grow slowly and steadily in the hands of the Leclefs.
These discussions about capital and returns on investment led Leclef to reflect on the disparity of opportunity in the brewing world, but also inequities in the society in which he lived. Het Anker had been able to turn its fortunes around through the goodwill of people who had helped him in the early days, the hard work of his employees, and the Mechelaars’s pride in the brewery of their city. People mattered more than anything else, yet Leclef often saw those with less being treated unfairly.
At meetings of the Belgian Brewers Federation, brewers would ask Leclef about his volume of production in hectolitres, his growth figures, his turnover numbers – parameters about which Leclef felt more and more disinterested.
“Most of the entrepreneurs and business people only think about themselves all the time and say, ‘What can I do to have more?’.” says Leclef. “But economics is in the function of people, not the other way around.”
Around that time, Leclef decided to publish statements which demonstrated Het Anker’s re-focusing not on financial gain, but on the relationship between the brewery and the people working for and with it.
“Het Anker aims to be a company that everyone is proud of,” read the new mission statement. The text used both the words proud and pride. In the Standards and Values section of Het Anker’s statement, the word pride yet features again.
Het Anker’s focus on people and their well-being intentionally contrasted with what Leclef saw in politics and business. While strengthening his reputation as an entrepreneur by developing new initiatives at Het Anker, Leclef was also becoming more publicly outspoken on social issues such as poverty, racism and climate change.
On his personal Facebook page, he posted videos of Alexandria Osario Cortez, quotes from Nelson Mandella, and talks from Greta Thunberg. Then, he focused his attention on changing mindsets in Belgium’s beer industry.
Knight vision
Leclef’s charming nature and Het Anker’s growing commercial influence made him a leading figure in the Belgian Brewers Federation, which was established in the 14th century. The Federation’s members include well-known family concerns such as Duvel Moortgat and Brasserie Dupont, all the Belgian Trappist breweries, the majority of Lambic producers, as well as AB InBev and Alken-Maes.
Leclef was chosen to serve a three-year term between 2011 and 2014 as Grandmaster of the Knighthood of the Brewer’s Mash Staff, a largely ceremonial role at the head of the Federation which would see him representing the organisation at national events such as the Belgian Beer Weekend in the Grand Place in Brussels each year.
But despite being responsible for the vast majority of beer produced in Belgium by volume, members of the Belgian Brewer’s Federation made up only a quarter of the number of breweries in the country. In addition to an outdated system of membership fees based on archaic excise calculations and large annual production capacities, the rules stipulated that breweries wishing to join should be at least five years old and first be proposed to the board for acceptance by two current members of the Federation.
“The Federation is not really sexy for new breweries,” Leclef said at the time. At a meeting of the Federation in early 2018, Leclef suggested they reach out to these newer, smaller, contemporary breweries. No one in the Federation offered to lead the project, so Leclef volunteered to do it himself.
Thus 2018, Leclef travelled all around Belgium on his own, personally visiting 94 breweries who were not members of the Federation but who had answered his call.
“Leclef’s approach was humble,” says Olivier De Brauwere of Brussels Beer Project. “He was clearly there to listen to us. He is an open-minded person.” Leclef presented his findings to the Federation and suggested changes which would make it more fair for smaller breweries to be part of the Belgian brewing landscape.
Impressed by his comprehensive report and passionate presentation, the Belgian Brewers Federation accepted Leclef’s suggestions, scrapping the rules requiring the need for a brewery to be at least five years old before it became a member, as well as the requirement for members to have a minimum annual production amount. Breweries wishing to join the Federation would no longer need to be proposed by two existing members. Instead, it was decided that different categories of membership would be created based on hectolitre production. This way, more breweries would have their voices heard.
Leclef (middle) with Belgian Brewers chair Jean-Louis Van de Perre (left) and Zhythos beer consumer chair Freddy Van Daele
Some 46 breweries joined as new members as a direct result of Leclef’s attempts. If such outreach could yield a fairer situation for smaller breweries, perhaps there was a way that a more open dialogue in politics and business could lead to a fairer way of life in Mechelen?
Leclef doesn’t like the term “giving back” – “If you think ‘I have to give back’, you probably took too much,” he once wrote. But when Bart Somers asked him to run for the City Council again, this time on the 2018 ballot, Leclef reconsidered. He agreed to his name being listed on the ballot alongside 260 other names vying for the 43 spots on the Mechelen City Council.
He was running not with any political party, but as an independent. To improve his chances, he entered a campaign coalition with other independents: the Greens and the Open VLD. Having never been involved in politics before, he had no idea of his prospects, but Leclef would see it through. “I want to reinforce my commitment to the city,” he said.
Fairism
The Mechelen council elections took place in October 2018. Leclef came 25th out of the 260 candidates and was duly elected. At the city hall, he heard the results when they came in, drinking a Gouden Carolus.
Leclef’s term on the city council runs until October, and his impact has mainly been in the role of facilitator, offering what he describes as “an objective way to look at things.”
A few days after the 2018 election, he publicly launched a new ideology which he called ‘Fairism’, something he describes as a fair way to organise societies. Leclef says other “isms” – liberalism, socialism, capitalism – don’t ensure a fair society. One of Fairism’s main principles is that of limiting capital, where people must accept that there is a fair limit to their personal assets. In 2019, he published a book entitled ‘Fairism: an equitable form of coexistence’ which set out the five pillars of the ideology: Transparency; Commitment; Basic rights; Value; and Freedom of Choice.
Fairism has been met with intrigue as well as confusion. In interviews with the Flemish media, Leclef has been asked why the complex machinery of Belgian politics needs yet another political ideology. They have suggested to him that he is perhaps too naive. Leclef responds with a question: Are we going to keep going up against a brick wall?
Het Anker continues to grow with Leclef at the helm. In the 1990s, the brewery produced roughly 1,300 hectolitres (hL) of beer per year. Today, it brews around 45,000hL of beer every year, and enjoys a turnover in the region of €15 million.
Anker's chimney
Not only did he bring Het Anker back from the brink, but he invested in a range of initiatives including the brewery restaurant, a robust visitor infrastructure, an on-site hotel and a whiskey distillery located on a 17th century farm in Blaasveld to the North West of Mechelen. He also invested in people: Het Anker has 90 employees. Leclef’s son William Leclef is now involved in the brewery with a view to succession in the future.
Battel for community
In 2020, Brouwerij Het Anker won a tender to buy the small Sint-Jozef church in the Mechelen suburb of Battel, and converted it into a microbrewery, microdistillery and restaurant, Batteliek.
After Het Anker won the tender, Leclef reflected on the fairness of the deal. “Who am I to say because I can find some money, I have all the rights?” he asks. “If in a few years, I cannot realise the project because it’s not possible or it’s not working, I still have all the rights to the church. That’s not fair.”
Leclef encouraged the community of Battel to establish an association, and several hundred inhabitants joined. He then made the Battel community association a co-owner of the church without them having to put money on the table, securing a right of pre-emption should Het Anker sell the property. It’s an example of the type of “co-existence” between business and community which might appear as a story in his book “Fairism''.
The next time you visit Mechelen, you might do two things. The first is to order a Gouden Carolus beer. There will be little difficulty finding a bar in the city that serves it; the people there feel an ownership of these brands and it’s ubiquitous across the city’s hospitality venues. The second thing you might do is look up towards St Rumbold’s Cathedral and see the tower where, according to folklore, the Mechelaars of 1687 tried to put out the nebulous glow of the moon.
The maneblusser nickname was concocted by Brusseleirs and Antwerpenaars trying to shame the Mechelaars and make a joke at their expense. Interpreted differently, however, the tale is also about the honour of the city. The Mechelaars saw their beautiful cathedral in jeopardy and everyone jumped into action to save it. That sort of civic pride might facilitate the type of equitable co-existence of which Charles Leclef dreams – a pride that is impossible to extinguish.
